Re: Question about popovers

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Mon, Jan 29, 2018 at 3:31 PM, Tomasz Gąsior <mail tomaszgasior kao pl> wrote:

I want to ask question about GtkPopover. GTK3 documentation says "GtkPopover is a bubble-like context window  [...]" but popover is not a real window but it is a floating widget inside other window. From perspective of window managers and compositors popovers don't exist.

Appearance of popover is similar to window but it is not window — this causes inconsistences in animations. Window animation is defined by WM and compositor, popover animation — in GTK theme.

There are also problems with big popovers in small windows. See example: Mousepad GTK3, "Find and replace" dialog.
First:     http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/przechwycenieobrazuekranu2018-01-2915-15-00.php
and then:  http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/przechwycenieobrazuekranu2018-01-2915-15-22.php

Why did you — my question is directed to GNOME devs — chosen this way of implementation of this feature? Why popovers are not normal windows (with disabled server side decoration and with client side shadow)? I don't want to criticize your decision, probably you are more experienced, just I want to understand.

Firefox uses in some parts of its UI widgets with appearance similar to GTK popovers. Fx devs implemented it as real window. See http://en.zimagez.com/zimage/przechwycenieobrazuekranu2018-01-2915-27-18.php

It was hard to do this in GTK+ 3. We are looking at doing this for GTK+ 4.

 

I have also second question. Why GNOME uses popovers instead normal menus for menus purposes?

Because it provides a different user experience, somewhere between menus and dialogs.