Bug 233601 - Icons sizes and text in the application launcher do not follow System Settings
Summary: Icons sizes and text in the application launcher do not follow System Settings
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Alias: None
Product: plasma4
Classification: Plasma
Component: general (show other bugs)
Version: 4.8.3
Platform: Unlisted Binaries Unspecified
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-04-07 14:21 UTC by Dotan Cohen
Modified: 2018-06-08 19:52 UTC (History)
3 users (show)

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Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In:


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Description Dotan Cohen 2010-04-07 14:21:11 UTC
Version:            (using KDE 4.4.0)
Installed from:    Unspecified Linux

The KDE main menu (and also Lancelot) do not respect the Systems Settings' configured Icon Size and icon/text settings.
Comment 1 Dotan Cohen 2010-04-07 14:22:28 UTC
Specifically, I am referring to the "Favourites", "Applications", "Computer", "Recently Used", and "Leave" icons.
Comment 2 Ivan Čukić 2010-04-07 14:31:34 UTC
The size settings, as far as I can see, are for 'Desktop', 'Toolbar', 'Main Toolbar', 'Small Icons' and 'Dialogs' - neither apply to kickoff nor lancelot.

If there was a 'Section icon for the application launcher', then this would be a valid issue :)
Comment 3 Alvise 2010-04-09 00:43:12 UTC
So...
Who should take care of adding an "Application launcher" section?

@ivan: this issue is anyways still valid regarding the icon/text setting ;)
Comment 4 Ivan Čukić 2010-04-09 09:17:53 UTC
It is not "Application launcher" - it is only a specific icon type in an ALI (application launcher menu).

Apart from that, at least for L, it is not applicable - there are two sizes for section icons - one normal, and one when the user chooses to have narrower sections bar.

@Alvise
What do you mean - none of the sections above matches any part of an ALI
Comment 5 Dotan Cohen 2010-04-11 10:36:43 UTC
> It is not "Application launcher"

It appears that Alvise is referring to the listing of Lancelot as an "Application launcher" in the "Add Widgets" settings. So Alvise is asking that in addition to 'Desktop', 'Toolbar', 'Main Toolbar', 'Small Icons' and 'Dialogs' having configurable icon sizes, so should Lancelot and Kmenu, aka the "Application launchers".


> Apart from that, at least for L, it is not applicable - there are two
> sizes for section icons - one normal, and one when the user chooses to
> have narrower sections bar.

I cannot find that option, where is it?
Comment 6 Ivan Čukić 2010-04-11 10:42:21 UTC
> 'Dialogs' having configurable icon sizes, so should Lancelot and Kmenu, aka the
> "Application launchers".

Icon sizes when in panel, icon sizes in the applet browser itself or what?

> I cannot find that option, where is it?

Right-click the section buttons -> Make buttons narrower

http://ivan.fomentgroup.org/blog/2010/02/02/less-wasted-space/

(I need to make a proper Lancelot page on userbase...)
Comment 7 Dotan Cohen 2010-04-11 10:57:16 UTC
> Icon sizes when in panel, icon sizes in the applet browser itself or what?

The icons on the side, those same icons that your blog post mentions! By the way, I'm on 4.4, that is why I could not find the option (I did try the context menu).

While we are on the subject, it is weird that the Favourites icons are not the same size as the menu items' (on the right side) and breadcrumbs' (on top) icons. For consistencies sake, they should all be the same size, and the favourites should be a list spaced exactly like the menu items (even though they do not have the same amount of items). As it is, it looks sloppy (my personal opinion). But that is a peeve, I am being constructively critical. I love Lancelot.
Comment 8 Ivan Čukić 2010-04-11 11:09:01 UTC
Well, that's something I totally disagree with - I don't care if it looks sloppy, it is a great usability thing - if there is enough space, make the items easier to click (make them bigger).

As for the icons - I have two sizes - one for the breadcrumb and categories, and another for /real/ items. Again, making a visual difference between two completely different things - one is for navigation, and the other is for activation.
Comment 9 Alvise 2010-04-11 11:58:21 UTC
Having a visual difference between different things is indeed very good.

What we are proposing here with this feature request is to have those -two- icon sizes user-configurable rather than hardcoded.
The reasons for this proposal are:
- consistency across the whole desktop matters. A user can define all the icons sizes, except in Kickoff and Lancelot. Having eg rather small icons across the whole desktop, and big icons in Lancelot can be considered as an inconsistency.
- on small screen (netbooks), where there is NO enough space, size optimisation is crucial. Standard kickoff or Lancelot take almost 1/3 of the screen. A user will want to optimise the icons size in order to have better usability (make them smaller)
Comment 10 Ivan Čukić 2010-04-11 12:12:24 UTC
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against the ability to configure this, but we'd need some proper name for the configuration dialogue.

The problem is that in L, we have 3 (+1 for collapsed sections) different icon sizes. Kickoff has 2 (iirc). So, we'd have to go with creating 3 new totally specific and non-general categories in the settings dialogue?

And apart from that, panel icon size is not configurable...
Comment 11 Dotan Cohen 2010-04-11 13:20:56 UTC
> Well, that's something I totally disagree with

I really do not want to take this thread off topic, Ivan, I am sorry that I caused that to happen. I simply saw a place to mention my thoughts. I will take it over to the forums, which are meant for that. I apologize.
Comment 12 Ivan Čukić 2010-04-11 13:25:13 UTC
> which are meant for that. I apologize.

You don't need to apologize, the work that you're doing is more than welcome. Ok, bug report discussions should not go off-topic, but it happens :)
Comment 13 Dotan Cohen 2010-04-28 21:23:05 UTC
All right, I posted the hijack to the Forum:
http://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=15049&start=150#p156007

Now to bring the discussion back on topic: how about the icons respect the System Settings "Main Toolbar" icon configuration. Arguably, the icons in question are in fact Lancelot's Main Toolbar.
Comment 14 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-05-17 14:03:14 UTC
Closing for lack of feedback. Please feel free to reopen this report if you can still reproduce this with KDE 4.8.3 or later.
Comment 15 Dotan Cohen 2012-05-17 18:17:30 UTC
I can still reproduce this issue in KDE 4.8.3. To reproduce:
System Settings -> Application Appearance -> Icons -> Advanced -> Size

Lancelot does not respect this setting. Users with small screens and netbooks need these icons to be smaller. Also, one user once (about two years ago!) mentioned to me that it was a pain because it moved the menus too far from the Lancelot button on the panel. Like me, he has (had) his panel on the left side of the screen, not the bottom.
Comment 16 Ivan Čukić 2012-05-18 10:35:00 UTC
And the resolution is like before - the specified configuration dialogue has nothing to do with Lancelot.

> ... to me that it was a pain because it moved the menus too far
> from the Lancelot button on the panel

Didn't quite get this one
Comment 17 Dotan Cohen 2012-05-18 21:11:01 UTC
>> ... to me that it was a pain because it moved the menus too far > from the Lancelot button on
>> the panel
>
> Didn't quite get this one

Some netbook user mentioned to me that to get to Applications he had to swipe the touchpad twice (swipe to the right, pick up his finger, and swipe again) because the Applications were too far away (too far to the right) from his Lancelot button (on a panel on the left). For me that's not a problem, I use the keyboard, but I thought that I should mention it.

In any case, if you don't feel that Lancelot should follow the System Settings for icon sizes that is your choice to make. I have no qualms. I filed this issue because I thought that I found a bug and that you would like to know about it. If you already know about the issue and decide that it is intended behaviour then I apologize for trying to convince you otherwise. I appreciate all of your hard work.
Comment 18 Alvise 2012-05-19 07:09:09 UTC
Well...

This bug was not related directly to Lancelot. Kickoff has the same misbehaviour. Regarding this bug (or this feature request, depending on the point of view), the 2 points below should be taken into consideration by developpers:
- Consistency across the desktop: A user who defines 16px for the icons across the whole KDE desktop, will still have 44px icons in the application launcher. If he put 16px icons everywhere, there must be a reason (small screen as already mentioned), so please respect his will: consistency matters
- Configurability of KDE: hyperconfigurability has always been the mantra of KDE. I understand that nowadays the KDE interface designers tend to privilege usability and consistency instead of configurability. But here, as already stated consistency and usability are not always there, so configurability should be added.

Now, with the redesign of those launchers in Qml, can this feature request be taken into consideration?

Thanks
Comment 19 Ivan Čukić 2012-05-19 07:56:36 UTC
@Dotan As always, thanks for this - the reason I didn't want to close this one in the first place is to remind me of the issue.

> Some netbook user mentioned to me that to get to Applications he had to swipe the
> touchpad twice

That user can resize the window and set the section buttons to be smaller (right-click -> make buttons narrower - that's how I use L)

@Alvise
The user specifies sizes of icons for a lot of things, but there is no setting for this in SysSettings.

Using the desktop icon size would be problematic because some people like really *large* icons, or *really* small. If I was to show everything with 256x256 icons, it would look rather silly, and if the icons for two-line items were 16x16, it would look ugly.

I'll try to see (for the qml version of L and Shelf) whether I could devise the icon size from the font size - that is - if there are two lines of text in an item, the icon size fills the desired height.
Comment 20 Dotan Cohen 2012-05-19 11:01:26 UTC
Thanks, Ivan. I am no longer in contact with that user!

I manged to get four neighbours to test Lancelot. Note that I configured the screen to have a panel at the bottom and the Lancelot icon was at the lower left, using the KDE Gear icon. The only running application was Firefox, opened to the Google homepage.

1) Older Romanian woman. I asked her to open the main menu, she asked what I meant. I explained that I want her to show me a list of the programs on the computer. She clicked the Gear icon as if it were obvious to her. I asked her to close the menu now. Her mouse pointer went to the upper right of Lancelot and she clicked there. She did not seem to notice that she focused the search field and started clicking and double clicking it. Then I think that she missed, she clicked just outside Lancelot and Lancelot closed. She smiled that Lancelot closed but I don't think that she knows how she closed it!

2) Her husband. He did not see his wife's test. He also opened Lancelot as if he knew that the icon in the bottom left corner would be the main menu. To close it he clicked the panel. This didn't work so he tried again on the system tray. He managed to click the RSIBreak system tray icon, and Lancelot closed as the RSIBreak dialogue opened. He then pressed the RSIBreak "Reset" button to close that dialogue, without even reading it!

3) A 12 year old boy. He first minimized Firefox then clicked the gear. To close Lancelot, he clicked the panel about 10 times, then clicked the icon.

4) A middle-aged woman. She pondered before clicking the Gear icon, then double clicked it as soon as the menu opened, closing it again. She then either double- or triple-clicked the icon to reopen the main menu, and started clicking the panel. When that didn't work she clicked on the Google logo.
Comment 21 Dotan Cohen 2012-05-20 09:39:04 UTC
Sorry, that last comment about the panel users should have been on this bug:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196140

I will repost it there.
Comment 22 Nate Graham 2018-06-08 19:52:56 UTC
Hello!

This bug report was filed for KDE Plasma 4, which reached end-of-support status in August 2015. KDE Plasma 5's desktop shell has been almost completely rewritten for better performance and usability, so it is likely that this bug is already resolved in Plasma 5.

Accordingly, we hope you understand why we must close this bug report. If the issue described  here is still present in KDE Plasma 5.12 or later, please feel free to open a new ticket in the "plasmashell" product after reading https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved/Bug_Reporting

If you would like to get involved in KDE's bug triaging effort so that future mass bug closes like this are less likely, please read https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved#Bug_Triaging

Thanks for your understanding!

Nate Graham