Bug 242230

Summary: Put back the old behavior for showing hidden system tray icons
Product: [Unmaintained] plasma4 Reporter: Lukas Jirkovsky <l.jirkovsky>
Component: widget-systemtrayAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: aseigo, cyberbeat, redm, silver.salonen, tomas.linhart, vit
Priority: NOR    
Version: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: openSUSE   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Lukas Jirkovsky 2010-06-20 09:46:39 UTC
Version:           unspecified (using Devel) 
OS:                Linux

Please add option to use the old behavior for the showing hidden icons in system tray.

I really like the old behavior (enlarge system tray so the icons fits) which I found more logical than the current one. This thing looks too much like a bad copy of Windows 7 (and I found this as one of the most bugging features of Windows 7).

There is no possibility to change the settings. The only option I found is to show all icons all the time but it's space consuming.

I don't understand why KDE is converges to the Windows 7 (white icons, this thing) but certainly I don't like it, especially when I have no chance to set it to the old behavior.

BTW: The icons is too big. First time I was wondering what application is it.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
Install KDE 4.5
Comment 1 Vit Pelcak 2010-06-20 11:05:59 UTC
Another wrong copy of wrong feature from Windows?

Come on.

It makes no sense to have it impemented this way. Please revert to old behaviour.
Comment 2 Lukas Jirkovsky 2010-06-20 12:11:00 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 3 Aaron J. Seigo 2010-07-28 18:32:30 UTC
the change was made because expanding the system tray in place moves everything else on the panel, which does not work well at all for small fixed sized panels or panels where there isn't enough room. this triggered various bugs like icons appearing on top of other items.

as for "copying windows 7", none of these changes were inspired by windows 7 (or any other version of it). similar problems solved by different people often result in similar solutions.
Comment 4 Lukas Jirkovsky 2010-07-28 18:46:44 UTC
According to the number of votes I'd say that people are willing to "suffer" from several small bugs which the old behavior may cause (BTW I never saw any of the mentioned).

I'm not saying that the old behavior has to be on by default. But I don't see a reason why there can't be an option to switch it back. It was possible with application launcher.
Comment 5 Lukas Jirkovsky 2010-07-28 18:48:07 UTC
Maybe if you point me to the right file I can try to fix it myself.
Comment 6 Aaron J. Seigo 2010-07-28 20:00:14 UTC
"According to the number of votes I'd say that people are willing to "suffer"
from several small bugs which the old behavior may cause (BTW I never saw any
of the mentioned)."

we aren't willing to maintain the burden of development and maintenance of yet another system tray layout that has inherent flaws in the design. you and some others may not care, but we do. if the feature is offered, people will expect it to work properly in all reasonable cases and that's a valid expectation. as we can't deliver that with the old expansion style, we moved to something that can work in all cases.

"I'm not saying that the old behavior has to be on by default. But I don't see a
reason why there can't be an option to switch it back."

because we aren't willing to maintain something that is inherently buggy by design, even if some people want it that way. our manpower is slim as it is, we don't need to make it worse by adding broken features to the mix.

"It was possible with application launcher."

the application launcher is a separate plasmoid and it has a maintainer.

"Maybe if you point me to the right file I can try to fix it myself."

it's in kdebase/workspace/plasma/generic/applets/systemtray

note that there is no interest upstream in patches that restore the old behaviour. you are free (and encouraged even! :) to take the system tray plasmoid and fork it to add your own features and offer that up on, e.g., kde-look.org. or make your own from scratch. plasma allows for that kind of flexibility.

one more point of business here: do not re-open bugs that have been closed by the people doing the maintenance. when a bug is closed, that is a sign by those doing the work. you do not dictate what we work on. we collaborate with our users and then make decisions, but that does not mean you get to say "no, you WILL work on this". all you've done here is waste more of my time because i now have to notice that it's been re-opened and then re-close it.
Comment 7 Lukas Jirkovsky 2010-07-28 20:19:23 UTC
Sorry for reopening, it wasn't because I want to dictate you what to do but rather to show that someone (me) wants to work on it.

Thank you for pointing me to the right direction.
Comment 8 H.H. 2010-08-07 10:51:50 UTC
"Sorry for reopening, it wasn't because I want to dictate you what to do but
rather to show that someone (me) wants to work on it."

Please leave a comment here, when you have something to show, I am very interested.
Comment 9 Michael Reiher 2010-10-28 14:42:08 UTC
Just stumbled over this report. Not that I have a big problem with the new way to show hidden items, however I agree it feels a bit inconsistent, if half of the items are shown as icons and the other half are shown in a popup menu. My first thought when seeing this new popup was that these items are probably somehow special. Anyway, how about the following:

In case there is enough room to expand the systray (i.e. empty space or an applet which can be shrunk), show an arrow pointing to the left (assuming a horizontal layout) and expand on click. In case there is not enough room show an arrow pointing down and open the popup on click. 

IMHO this would be a solution that serves all use cases and would be sufficiently consistent.