unity-design team mailing list archive

[Matthew Paul Thomas <mpt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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Jonathan Meek wrote on 07/04/11 03:22:
>...
> An example: Go to Power Management preferences and click the combobox
> for action to take on laptop lid closing, a menu will appear and you
> can choose an item at your leisure. Now, go run CCSM and go to the
> Unity plugin's settings, click on the combobox for hide behavior and it
> appears nothing happens. The two boxes look the same, but for one, you
> have to seemingly arbitrarily click and hold the combobox to select
> items and the other you don't. An even better example, I see THREE
> different comboboxes used in the Software Sources dialog: 1) In the
> Ubuntu Software tab, a click and hold combobox. 2)In the Updates tab a
> combobox that you can type in for some reason.(The Check for updates
> one) 3) Below that in the Updates tab as well, a combobox with the
> "correct behavior. (The Release upgrade combobox)
>...

A radio menu, or option menu, lets you choose one of several choices,
and displays the current choice in the closed menu. It's the menu
equivalent of a set of radio buttons.

A combo box is a combination of a text field and a radio menu, and
displays the current choice in the text field.

Windows calls a radio menu a "drop-down list", while Mac OS X calls it a
"pop-up menu". GTK mistakenly calls it a "combo box", and then calls an
actual combo box a "combo box entry".

In both Ambiance and Radiance, I see no difference in appearance or
behavior between the Power Management Preferences "When laptop lid is
closed" menu, the CCSM Unity "Hide Launcher" menu, and the Software
Sources "Download from" and "Show new distribution releases" menus. If
you still see a difference, perhaps you could publish a screencast
somewhere demonstrating it?

The "Check for updates" menu is a combo box, and should not be. Someone
has just reported this bug. <http://launchpad.net/bugs/750507>

- -- 
mpt
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