Hi,

can you please help my. I started kde 5 and when I look at the status & notification area I can't understand one thing. First of all they looks nice and the behavior is quite good.


When you klick on the array up at the Status & Navigations area you get a list with two options (notifications, battery). One klick on battery and you will get the battery settings. Are in the list only non visible options from the system tray shown? Because when you click on clipboard at the system tray you get the clipboard settings and on the left are the two "unvisible" options.


At the first time I used the system tray, for me it was difficalt to understand. When you show every system tray entry in the left list I would have a better overview.

andreas_k wrote:
At the first time I used the system tray, for me it was difficalt to understand. When you show every system tray entry in the left list I would have a better overview.

I strongly disagree with that! That duplication only clutters things and does not improve anything imho. What you did simply makes the items on the left completely obsolete since you have the identical entries in both, the system tray and on the left side.

In case you did not notice: In Plasma 1 (KDE4 for those who still insist on the wrong term) inactive system tray items were not shown, until you clicked the arrow left to the clock. Now I suppose the idea for Plasma 5 was to simply show those hidden items anyway in the popup to

1. not require an additional popup

2. easy accessibility for hidden items, even from the context of an active popup

I agree however that positioning these items on the left can cause confusion to new users, despite the tiny grey line, since in applications icons on the left often act as side bars.
I think once the users understands how it is supposed to work, it is quite comfortable that way.

Only way I can think of to give the hidden items less importance: move the bar to the right like this:



but I think it does not make the situation much better.

andreas_k wrote:I started kde 5

Sorry for that comment, but please call it "Plasma 5", KDE is all of us.

andreas_k wrote:Are in the list only non visible options from the system tray shown?

Like in Plasma 1 you can configure the visibility of items in the system tray options.

Yes, the current layout is definitely confusing, precisely in the way you described.
I also agree with kdeuserk that showing everything in the popup but only some things in the tray won't make things much less confusing, though.
We'll have to look for a way to make the distinction between hidden and visible entries clearer in some way.

I agree that the way the System tray works is a little counter-intuitively when it comes to hidden/visible icons and would like to suggest a solution.

I'm using the latest Neon 5 ISO (the one released on 17 Oct 2014) - everything around the tray is lovely & smoothly animated, nice clear tooltips etc, it's all really great apart from this issue. I don't think fixing this is a matter of urgency, it's more that it will add a little polish & make the System tray perfect.

Currently the pane that pops up when you click on one of the System tray icons has a kind of vertical sidebar down its left side containing the hidden icons, that seems a bit strange. If you want to view the content of a visible System tray icon ('Keyboard layout' in this case), you click on its icon down in the System tray itself, if you switch to another icon, say the 'Clipboard' icon then the content area changes from the 'Keyboard' to 'Clipboard' - exactly how it should be. What's strange is that the side bar displaying the hidden System tray icons is visible at all times when by definition you don't want to have them displayed by default!

This makes the hidden System tray icons easier to access and more prominent than the visible ones which is the opposite way to how it should be. The whole point of having hidden System tray icons (I thought) was to make the tray less cluttered & either you or the system could hide away icons that were rarely or never used or those that didn't have any useful information to convey to the user at that time, why are those icons visible whenever the tray's open?

My solution is to remove the sidebar from the System tray pane when any of the visible icons are clicked - the side bar is only made visible when the arrow to show the hidden icons is clicked. The content area (where the 'Keyboard Layout' information is displayed) would stay the same size as it is now so the System tray modules won't need to be resized. To make it a little more intuitive i've moved the arrow in the System tray to show the hidden icons to the left of the tray - the sidebar will be on the left of the System tray pane so the icon should be on the left too.



This would make the System tray pane look like this when a visible tray icon is clicked - nice and free of clutter:



When the System tray arrow to show the hidden icons is clicked the side bar appears (nicely animated) and it looks something like this:



The icons in the sidebar (the hidden ones) all have really good tooltips so i thought that they could probably get away without permanent text to say what they are - they have been hidden after all. When one of the hidden icons is clicked it's content appears on the right side of the System tray pane as normal so again no resizing would be needed.

Yes, I think this is a good solution to our problem!

I was under the impression that all the icons were supposed to be displayed in the sidebar all the time?

Veqz,

When I was trying it out, it was just the hidden icons that were displayed in the side bar.

If all of the icons were displayed in that sidebar as well as in the System tray then there would be lots of duplication and unnecessary clutter. I really can't see why the hidden icons are displayed in that sidebar whenever the System tray pane is displayed because you've clicked on a visible System tray icon - that's just adding clutter too IMO.

+1 to ken300's idea of hiding the sidebar when a visible S&N icon is clicked.. When that "show me the hidden icons" arrow is clicked I think the current behavior is fine: It shows a list of the hidden icons which collapse to the left sidebar when one is selected. No need to change that I don't think. (I'm not at my computer, so can someone post a screenshot?)

But I definitely think it would be helpful to hide that sidebar when a visible S&N icon is clicked. It satisfies the Simple by default design principle of Make it easy to focus on what matters. It also keeps the disclosure mechanism for showing hidden icons singular, consistent and predictable: Click the arrow to show the hidden icons. I recommend filing a "wishlist" bug report to have this proposal considered.

ken300 wrote:Veqz,

When I was trying it out, it was just the hidden icons that were displayed in the side bar.

If all of the icons were displayed in that sidebar as well as in the System tray then there would be lots of duplication and unnecessary clutter. I really can't see why the hidden icons are displayed in that sidebar whenever the System tray pane is displayed because you've clicked on a visible System tray icon - that's just adding clutter too IMO.

Well, if that is really the case, I'm in agreements with your analysis and all for your suggestion.

alake,

alake said:
When that "show me the hidden icons" arrow is clicked I think the current behavior is fine

Agreed - oops

I'll file a Wishlist bug report on Friday to just remove the sidebar from the S&N pane when a visible System tray icon has been clicked, thanks!

ken300 wrote:alake,

alake said:
When that "show me the hidden icons" arrow is clicked I think the current behavior is fine

Agreed - oops

I'll file a Wishlist bug report on Friday to just remove the sidebar from the S&N pane when a visible System tray icon has been clicked, thanks!

And mention that this was already OK'ed by both Andrew and me.

There's an existing bug report that seems to be related to this issue so i posted a comment & screenshots to make our request rather than filing a new bug report - please let me know if this isn't correct.

The existing bug is here:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334823

ken300 wrote:There's an existing bug report that seems to be related to this issue so i posted a comment & screenshots to make our request rather than filing a new bug report - please let me know if this isn't correct.

The existing bug is here:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=334823

Ha, just saw that a certain Andrew Lake had already suggested exactly what we're suggesting now in a comment on that bug in June:

"Since only the hidden icons are shown in the Status and Notifications sidebar, might it make sense to not show the sidebar when a visible icon in the status area is selected? (Show the sidebar when the "^" icon or notifications bubble is selected?)"

So yes, it's good that we didn't open another bug for the same suggestion

https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/120778/

One comment about moving the expand button on the left:
that would clearly be a regression, because right now it's in a completely predictable position, if it was on the left it would dance around depending on how many icons are visible (the ideal case would even be always on the right when the systray is on the right in the panel, always on the left when the systray is always on the left)

On each change is done it always has to be asked: does this interfere with muscle memory? this would