Version: (using KDE 4.0.2) Installed from: Compiled From Sources A guest at the Chemnitz Linux day reported a usability regression: When the panel is located on the left side of the screen, Kickoff's menu appears right of the panel. This makes the "back" button hard to hit because it has a very small X dimension. It would be easier to hit if the Kickoff menu would appear at the left of the screen (overlapping the panel) because one can easily move the mouse to the very left to hit the button reliably.
Not a bad idea, that.
And how do you drop something from kickoff onto the panel, if that bit is hidden by kickoff?
the real solution here imho is to make the breadcrumbs clickable. overlapping the panel is a non-starter.
Maybe you could implement an option to let the user decide if s/he want that back stripe at the left or right (or top or bottom) of the menu. Adding a "back" context menu entry in first position would help too.
(In reply to comment #4) > Maybe you could implement an option to let the user decide if s/he want that > back stripe at the left or right (or top or bottom) of the menu. no, over configurability.
Even with the usual bottom position of the panel, the position of kickoff's "back" button in KDE4.2 is a regression. When I first saw kickoff some years ago, I thought "hm, i can only see one menu level at a time and need to use a "back" button. That will make navigating back and forth slow". Then, I saw Aaron's talk at some aKademy and he was talking about how he was a sensitive man and knew all about sweet spots. And as an example, he showed, that the large vertical back button in kickoff was aligned with the screen edge and this made it very easy to hit. Then I thought: "Wow, clever, that speeds up navigation, now I can really like kickoff". And with KDE4.1 I was happy. Now, in KDE4.2, theres a border frame around kickoff, which kills the idea. The button is no longer aligned with the screen edge, I have to slowly aim at it, instead of just flicking the mouse to the edge. And I'm sad.
Carsten is completely right. The button has to be clickable at the screen edge, otherwise its usability is severely reduced. More generally, would it be possible for someone to verify that all widgets are clickable from the outermost pixels? Scrollbars, tray icons etc.?
The back button situation is even worse than that, IMO. With KDE 4.2, and kickoff in it's default position (far left in the panel), kickoff touches the edge of the screen, and if you move your mouse all the way to the left of the screen, the back button is still highlighted. However, clicking at the screen edge doesn't actually do anything, and you have to move your mouse back quite a long ways (10-15px) to actually hit the back button, with the back highlighting never changing. In fact, I can mouse out of kickoff in any direction but right and move the cursor anywhere on the screen without the highlighting on the back button disappearing. The back button should only be highlighted when you're actually over top of it (or rather, only when clicking will actually trigger it).
In KDE 4.2.2 moving the mouse to the very edge of the screen causes the button to stop being highlighted and it isn’t clickable there, so at least it doesn’t mislead the user. Moreover, in some themes, such as Stripshine from kde-look.org, the button is clickable just as in KDE 4.1. Does anyone know of other themes that fix this regression?
it's fixed for all themes in Plasma::Dialog in 4.3