Bug 466065

Summary: Show all icons in "Status and Notifications" popup
Product: [Plasma] plasmashell Reporter: Craig Drummond <craig>
Component: System Tray widgetAssignee: Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED INTENTIONAL    
Severity: wishlist CC: materka, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 5.26.5   
Target Milestone: 1.0   
Platform: Ubuntu   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Craig Drummond 2023-02-19 10:09:03 UTC 
SUMMARY
When you click on a non-hidden status/notification item a popup is shown with its details and a back button. Clicking the back button only shows the hidden status items. Perhaps it would be better to show all items (maybe separated)? In this way the click-target for items effectively becomes the whole status area - as you can click on any item, click the Back button, and then choose from all the larger icons.


STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Click any visible status/notification item
2. Click back button

OBSERVED RESULT
Only hidden status/notification items are shown - so you can't even get back to the one you just closed via "Back"

EXPECTED RESULT
All status icons are shown.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Kubuntu 22.10
KDE Plasma Version: 5.26.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.102.0
Qt Version: 5.15.6

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Comment 1 Nate Graham 2023-02-21 23:48:53 UTC 
If we did that, what's shown in the popup would change depending on how you got there, which would be *super* duper weird and confusing and we'd surely get complaints about it.

We could also address this by removing the back button for applets that are in the visible area, so that you can't go "back" to the hidden view. Or we could make the Back button just close the popup for such applets. But if we did that, we'd be removing a feature and we'd surely get complaints about it.

So I don't think there's anything we can do to change this, sorry!
Comment 2 Craig Drummond 2023-02-22 17:18:43 UTC 
Whilst I respect your decision to close this, I can't agree with the reasoning.

The idea is that what's shown in the popup would not change. Currently you click an icon shown in the notification area, you see its contents and a back button. The back button then fills the popup with the icons of all the hidden items. This is the same set of icons that you see if you click the up arrow to the right of the notification icons.

My suggestion was that this popup should show all icons if accessed via the up arrow, and show all icons if accessed from a back button in one of the other notification popups. Therefore its the same set of icons, so nothing changes depending on how you get there. e.g. Click battery icon, click <- button, all icons shown, now click wifi icon. etc. In this way if you click on the wrong notification icon from the panel, you can click <- and then click from the much larger icons.
Comment 3 Nate Graham 2023-02-22 21:15:38 UTC 
If it always showed all icons, wouldn't that be weird and redundant because the "active" icons that appear on the panel would therefore also be visible in the popup?

Right now we have a clean separation that's user-comprehensible: active icons live on the panel, and inactive icons live in the popup. It feels spatial: icons move between those two locations based on their status. If we always show everything in the popup, we would break that.