Re: few things

[Karsten Bräckelmann <guenther rudersport de>]

On Tue, 2008-01-29 at 12:23 +0100, John Keller wrote:
> I think I understand: In some apps, the right-click contextual menu
> appears with its first item selected by default. If you release the
> right button, the first item is chosen.

Wow. Never noticed this before. More on that later... Just checked with
the Desktop, and this indeed is the case for Nautilus.

> This seems contrary to the behavior in some - but not all - other Gnome
> apps, where the contextual menu appears with no item selected. In those
> apps, releasing the right mouse button leaves the menu open but doesn't
> execute an option.
> 
> Even worse, if the menu is near the bottom of the screen, the *last*
> item is selected, since the menu appears anchored to the lower-left
> corner instead of the usual upper-left corner. And that doesn't always
> seem to be automatically executed on mouse release (contrary to the
> first item, which always seems to be executed).
> 
> So you're not ever sure what will happen if you click and release the
> right button without moving the mouse: select item 1 + execute, select
> item n + execute, select item n + no execute, no item selected + menu
> remains, ...

Checked with 2.14.x and 2.20.x. Of course, the context menu position
depends on it's size and the screen border. Means, if you right-click
near the bottom, the context menu will appear "on top" of the mouse
pointer. This is consistent for both versions.

However, with 2.14.x, there is *no* context menu item selected after the
right click. With 2.20.x, there is...  *boggle*


Another "however". This depends on the definition of "click".

For a *click* (read: hit the mouse button and get your finger off of
that button), the context menu stays on screen -- waiting for the user
to select an item and activate it by a click. This is the case for both
GNOME versions.

For a *click-and-hold* (read: half a second or thereabout), the context
menu does *not* stay on screen but disappear after finally releasing the
mouse button. Again, this is the case for both GNOME versions. [1]

Nothing changed. So far. The *difference* is, that with recent GNOME,
there is an automatically selected item. Which, in the latter case of
click-and-hold, is activated on releasing the mouse button...


[1] GAR, just found out, that this is not true with the Simple and Thin
    Ice GTK themes, even on a recent GNOME. The actual difference here
    appears to be the (top) border of the context menu. A single pixel
    *does* make a difference...


> Not sure what causes this inconsistency (GTK+, theme, user error [e.g.
> me!]). But I agree, my personal preference would be that no contextual
> menu item is ever selected by default (emphasis on personal preference).
> 
> In any case, doesn't seem to be Nautilus-specific. For usability list?

Usability list, yeah, Cc'ed. And the theme designers headquarters. Maybe
even GTK+, though I don't think so.

  guenther


-- 
char *t="\10pse\0r\0dtu\0  ghno\x4e\xc8\x79\xf4\xab\x51\x8a\x10\xf4\xf4\xc4";
main(){ char h,m=h=*t++,*x=t+2*h,c,i,l=*x,s=0; for (i=0;i<l;i++){ i%8? c<<=1:
(c=*++x); c&128 && (s+=h); if (!(h>>=1)||!t[s+h]){ putchar(t[s]);h=m;s=0; }}}