Xfce Forum

ddwmusic

Member

Registered: 2017-07-23

Posts: 28

Whiskers menu, couple of new annoyances

Hi,

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu Studio 20.04, which ships with XFCE 4.14.

I would say that the whiskers menu behavior is somewhat worse than the previous version that I used.

- Previous app search sequence: Open menu, type some characters, then if I needed to use the down-arrow key to get to the app I wanted, (if I recall correctly) it would immediately move through the list of matching apps.
  - Current app search sequence: Open menu, type some characters. Now, keystroke focus is in the search box. The first down-arrow key does *nothing* to move through the list -- it only focuses the list. It requires a second down arrow key to go to the second item. The first keystroke is redundant. The first item is already selected -- pushing the down arrow key to select an item that is already selected is pointless.

- Also: If I use a hotkey to open the whiskers menu and the mouse pointer happens to be in the region where the menu will appear, and I search for an app, then the item selection will jump to some other item. Curiously, it may have nothing to do with the actual mouse height. The behavior is essentially indeterminate. That's sloppy. It used to be that I could open an app on auto-pilot: e.g., hotkey - type sup - the one I want is at the top, so <return> and go. Now it's hotkey - type sup - then wait and see what the menu actually did before committing to an action. The old way flowed nicely; the new one is "why the bleep did it just do that."

Sorry to be picky, but IMO user experience degraded a little bit here. (EDIT: I should add that in general, I get along quite well with XFCE -- overall excellent user experience. Just... I don't know why the menu behavior had to change.)

hjh

Last edited by ddwmusic (2021-03-31 05:12:39)

Sadfa

Member

Registered: 2021-03-27

Posts: 47

Re: Whiskers menu, couple of new annoyances

Interesting that you get that behaviour while, its not an issue on Manjaro Xfce.

Here, I start typing, if your match is at the top hit ENTER and it launches. If you hit the DOWN arrow before the ENTER it goes to the second in list.

Yesterday I was thinking how great it would be if I could hit UP to select the 'logout' buttons. For some odd reason the UP key didn't go to the profile buttons and that actually was the bother I had.

Last edited by Sadfa (2021-03-31 04:00:11)

herbie643

Member

Registered: 2013-04-05

Posts: 138

Re: Whiskers menu, couple of new annoyances

^tab moves cursor to Buttons, logoot, estart, etc