Bug 420140

Summary:	Expand Application Launcher menu to fit more entries on screen when there is room
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Eric S <subscriber>
Component:	Application Launcher (Kickoff)	Assignee:	David Edmundson <kde>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	bugseforuns, nate, paul, plasma-bugs, tho.mei
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version:	5.18.4
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Chakra
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Eric S 2020-04-15 21:16:55 UTC

By default, the popup menu uses maybe half of the screen height. If you have more favorites than fit in this area, you are forced to scroll the menu to find them. This is a little frustrating where there is plenty of room on the screen to display them all.

It seems to me there is no advantage to not using the available space. It should expand menu upwards until either the screen edge is reached or there is no longer a scrollbar required.

There used to be a workaround in the ability to resize this menu. This ability seems to have been lost, but really it should not need to be customized by the user, the optimal size is what I have described above.

Comment 1 Patrick Silva 2020-04-16 13:58:08 UTC


*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 332512 ***

Comment 2 Eric S 2020-04-16 17:10:51 UTC

No! This is NOT a duplicate of 332512. That issue is about being able to manually resize the menu. This issue is about having it autoresize sensibly.

Comment 3 Thomas Meiner 2020-05-18 07:44:09 UTC

@Patrick Silva 

#332512 isn't a duplicate of #420140!
Application Launcher is one of the plasma Popups that does resize as all other should. 

For Application Launcher #332512 never appalyed. 

Pleas solve #332512 !! To march it with an other bug does not solve a 7 year old issue.

Comment 4 Paul Johnson 2021-05-31 10:24:46 UTC

Me too. I've moved to a 4k screen. Having to use scroll bars to navigate a tiny menu in the bottom left hand corner of the screen makes no sense. At least make it resize so that the primary menu does not require scroll bars.

Comment 5 Nate Graham 2021-06-01 14:09:19 UTC

If you have a 4K screen, you can set a 200% scale factor in System Settings > Display & Monitor to make everything have the exact same physical size as on a 1080p screen of the same size, but with twice the visual clarity and sharpness. That is the recommended method of scaling the UI elements on the screen.

Comment 6 Paul Johnson 2021-06-01 14:13:42 UTC

Thanks, but I already know about scale factor, and that isn't what I want. I don't want bigger text and icons, I want the dialog to show more items without needing scroll bars. Changing the scale factor won't do that.

Comment 7 Nate Graham 2021-06-01 16:07:53 UTC

Gotcha.

Comment 8 Nate Graham 2021-08-07 13:29:35 UTC

We investigated this possibility for the code rewrite in Plasma 5.23 but the results just didn't look that good. I'm afraid we're going to have to close this as "as designed", sorry.

Comment 9 Thomas Meiner 2021-08-07 15:20:16 UTC

(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #8)
> We investigated this possibility for the code rewrite in Plasma 5.23 but the
> results just didn't look that good. I'm afraid we're going to have to close
> this as "as designed", sorry.
WTF! And I'm really not sorry, any more! 

This issue is out the since 2014. (7 years!)
See: #332512 

If you close this bug isn't helpful at all. Your investigations are not a solution art all. 

This issue isn't only about Application Launcher. It's one of the main issues in usability of up to date Plasma desktop. It's folder view, it's Networkmanager Applet, Notifications, Clipboard... 

"Klipper" and "Clipboard" are good examples for what's very wrong! The "old fashion" Klipper uses 80% of the screen. (28 lines of Content!) The "new fashion" Clipboard is unusable, because is uses 20% of the screen! (only 9 lines of content!) 

Why not just using the scaling code of "Klipper" in "Clipboard" or Application Launcher? May do more investigations. 

Why can "Klipper", what you don't like to implement in other Plasma pup-ups? 


@Nate Graham P
lease, stop silly answers like the one form 2021-06-01 14:09:19!! That's very rude. Really.