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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: Kicker-annoyance
From:       Matt Bonyak <dingodonkey () stny ! rr ! com>
Date:       2002-08-23 10:12:15
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On Friday 23 August 2002 11:38 am, Roland Seuhs wrote:
> I installed KDE on a friend's machine and a month later I saw that her
> kicker was on the right side of the screen, I asked her "Do you really like
> it that way?" and she responded "No, you know how to get it back to the
> bottom?" (I think she uses KDE 2.1 IIRC) The sad part is that while moving
> it accidentally to the right side is quite easy, moving it back can be
> quite difficult because the right screen-edge is smaller than the bottom
> and there might be no more unoccupied room on kicker when on a side-edge.
> Of course I also accidentally moved kicker all over the place a hundred
> times but the above also shows that this behaviour is rather unexpected and
> unpredictable on top of being annoying.

This has happened to the best of us a thousand times.  I've had friends with 
the same problem on Windows, and they also needed help fixing it.  There is a 
rather simple solution, however...

> To reproduce:
>
> 1. Make room on the right side of kicker
> 2. Click on that area and drag the mouse in any direction (In KDE 3.0.1 you
> need to leave kicker with the mouse, but in my CVS-version just a 2-pixel
> drag will trigger it) 3. See kicker moved to the right side of the screen

That "2-pixel drag" is reproduced here when clicking on the taskbar.  I 
propose one of two things:
	1) A "quick hack" that increases the pixel length needed to move it.
	2) Require the mouse to be moved to that fourth of the screen (top half, 
bottom half, left half, right half).

The first choice is probable the simplest, and I cannot see any reason not to 
change it -- anybody familiar with the code, who also peeves this problem, 
willing to make a patch?

> When you miss a button you occasionally end up with kicker being somewhere.
> If you have some space beside the "K" menu, this is triggered quite often.

I usually encountre this on the taskbar, and end up with a right-side kicker.  
But then, there never should be that ever-so-thin strip between the last 
taskbar item and the edge of the screen (why not have it fill that 3 
pixels?).

> Because you actually only want to set kicker's position very, very rarely
> (usually only once), I think this "feature" should be removed altogether
> and the setting moved into kicker's context menu. (analogous to "Size" in a
> "Position" menu).

I like this suggestion, and would fully support its implementation.  However, 
I'm not so sure that the dragging should be removed altogether.  Perhaps that 
feature could be enabled/disabled (disabled by default) in the CC?  Or would 
having it in the menu render its functionality useless and it should 
therefore be removed completely, as you suggest?  Either way, I'd like to see 
a patch for this as well.

> Thanks,
>
> Roland

Thank you for your suggestions, I'm glad to hear that we may finally quench 
that little annoyance!

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