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Session chooser usability issues (add "Login" button)
Status:
RESOLVED: FIXED
Product:
Xfce4-session
Component:
General

Comments

Description Magnus Bergman 2016-08-30 22:55:31 CEST
I think the usability of the session chooser dialog could be improved. I've always found it odd that there is no button for logging in. I'm used to always clicking on the rightmost button for proceeding with the default alternative, which in this case is logging in with the last used session. Instead the session has to be activated in the tree view (by either double clicking or pressing enter). This is not too bad in most cases. But when using it with a touch screen (on the Pandora handheld computer which used Xfce) I found clicking a button much preferred over double clicking something. Pressing enter has another issue. If there are multiple sessions in the list it's not the most recently used one used that is in the top of the list and selected. It's actually sorted the other way around (at least for me, maybe the order is simply undefined). And lastly I miss an option for deleting sessions.

To fix the session order I get the expected result (the most recently used session selected) by simply replacing gtk_list_store_append() with gtk_list_store_prepend() in xfsm_chooser_set_sessions(). But I don't know how the list of sessions sent to this function is supposed to be sorted. Is it perhaps better to fix it in the caller? Or perhaps assume the list is unsorted and sort it on access time before adding the sessions to the list store?

It's trivial to add a login button to the dialog, but the dialog isn't wide enough to have room for another button (with the DPI I'm using), which I guess is the reason for not having the button in the first place. If it's undesirable to make the dialog wider perhaps the options for creating and deleting sessions could be placed under the tree view (labeled + and - perhaps as seems to have become some common practice with GTK+ now)?
Comment 1 Simon Steinbeiss editbugs 2019-04-28 00:38:40 CEST
One part of your suggestions has been implemented (I felt the same way, didn't even know about your bugreport), there's a "Start" button now.
("Log in" felt wrong because you do that at the DM level. When the session chooser is loaded, you're already logged in a as a specific user.)

https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/commit/?id=ece82f353415e3436d0f1eca5d5a296bb1ccbce4

The other suggestions (especially deleting) also make sense. Please create a new bugreport for all further individual requests/ideas so we can track them more easily.
Comment 2 Git Bot editbugs 2019-04-29 00:20:08 CEST
Simon Steinbeiss referenced this bugreport in commit 1eb1cd1a3e9ceb9d830ac6e7ab7bf4731bdb9d39

Improve UI of chooser and add delete button (Bug #12799)

https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-session/commit?id=1eb1cd1a3e9ceb9d830ac6e7ab7bf4731bdb9d39
Comment 3 Simon Steinbeiss editbugs 2019-04-29 00:21:32 CEST
Ok, implemented the delete button anyway...

Bug #12799

Reported by:
Magnus Bergman
Reported on: 2016-08-30
Last modified on: 2019-04-29

People

Assignee:
Xfce Bug Triage
CC List:
3 users

Version

Version:
Unspecified

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