Remove ‘Open New Window’ and ‘Properties’ entries from desktop context menu

Submitted by Yousuf Philips @philipzae

Assigned to Xfce Bug Triage

Link to original bug (#16544)

Description

These two entries are suitable for a right-click context menu when in thunar, but not suitable for the desktop.

Version: Unspecified

Yousuf Philips @philipzae uploaded an attachment:

To clarify what i meant by 'not suitable', I meant that its not practical to access folder-level and window-level functionality in the desktop context menu, just like we don't add desktop-level functionality to the desktop's folder context menu in thunar.

Yes the desktop is a folder technically, but when viewed on the desktop, it has a wallpaper, arrangement of icon, particular icons that only appear on the desktop, etc. which are not visible in thunar when you open up the desktop folder. And as such, accessing the desktop folder's properties and opening up a thunar window to view the desktop, when the contents of the desktop folder are already visible on the desktop, is not necessary.

If its not agreed upon to remove the 'Open in New Window' entry, then atleast it should be moved from its position at the top of the menu to go along with other folder-level entries like 'Open Terminal Here' and 'Find in this folder'.

Attachment 9593, "DE context menus":

Theo Linkspfeifer submitted a patch:

I agree that the "Open in New Window" entry could be moved down. However, I am not sure if the "Properties" one should be hidden or not.

Patch 9597, "Reposition "Open in New Window" context menu entry":
0001-Reposition-Open-in-New-Window-context-menu-entry.patch

Frash said:

When ever i want to change the background settings i always click on "Properties" on the first try because i associate it with this function. Maybe i do it this way because "Properties" is the last entry. I never needed the "Properties" on the desktop doe.

@andreldm What do you think?

No strong opinion about "Properties". As for "Open New Window" I find it a bit useful, could be renamed to "Open in File Manager", but I don't really mind removing it.

You are viewing the contents of the desktop on the desktop, so what usefulness would be there to open the desktop from the context menu, when you have all file manager functionality on the desktop itself. If you have a folder on the desktop that you want to see the contents of, you click on it and then it opens in the file manager.

What usefulness would be there to open the desktop from the context menu

Bulk renamer, select by pattern, view only files not removable devices, etc...

I'm a bit reluctant by removing things other people might find useful, other DEs like to remove things and that's one thing appreciated in Xfce.

Like I said, I don't mind removing this entry, if people complain we can always restore it.

Bulk renamer, select by pattern, view only files not removable devices, etc...

You can run bulk renamer from the desktop, by selecting the files, right-click, 'Rename'. Yes the others are useful features that you get access in Thunar, but to clarify, why would a user open the desktop context menu to access Thunar rather than clicking on Home or File System on the desktop or the Thunar launcher in the panel or Menu.

I'm a bit reluctant by removing things other people might find useful, other DEs like to remove things and that's one thing appreciated in Xfce.

Other DEs never had this entry in the context menu.

Like I said, I don't mind removing this entry, if people complain we can always restore it.

If you feel that people will complain about it, then likely the better option would be that it be hidden by default and a checkbox be added to the Desktop Menu section of the Menu tab of the Desktop settings app, for those who want to re-enable it.

If you feel that people will complain about it, then likely the better option would be that it be hidden by default and a checkbox be added to the Desktop Menu section of the Menu tab of the Desktop settings app, for those who want to re-enable it.

I see no point in adding a setting for this. Either leave it or remove it.

In my MR I have repositioned the entry so that it is not at the top anymore (see KDE).

Similar to many of the other thunar bug reports, you will have people wanting both ways and the only way to appease them all is with a setting. If it is positioned under Paste, that would likely be a good place for it when the setting is on.

Similar to many of the other thunar bug reports, you will have people wanting both ways and the only way to appease them all is with a setting. If it is positioned under Paste, that would likely be a good place for it when the setting is on.

I disagree here. A dedicated setting for a very specific, minor context-menu item IMO is overkill. If you do that for all possible options for which there might be a hand full of users preferring it the other way around, the desktop-settings will soon look like an airplane cockpit.

I did not test/review the patch, though IMO moving the item down should be fine.

If at all, I would go for a freely configurable context menu, e.g. via xfconf. That would at least be some kind of complete, and not a nitpick for a specific item. Though that is far out of scope of this issue, I am really not interested in working on it.

Yes it would likely be over kill for just a single entry and likely could be for "Open New Window" and the directory-based custom actions that also appear in the menu. The checkbox could be called 'Include directory actions in the menu'.

I doubt there would be a need for a freely configurable context menu, but maybe others may disagree.

When ever i want to change the background settings i always click on "Properties" on the first try because i associate it with this function. Maybe i do it this way because "Properties" is the last entry. I never needed the "Properties" on the desktop doe.

As well happened to me. IMO "Properties" might be ok for the context menu of launchers, but for the desktop folder itself it can be confusing/ is not expected.

mentioned in merge request !2 (closed)

mentioned in commit 965c9594

I pushed a commit removing "Properties..." for the desktop context menu, as this is seems to be not controversial.

As for removing "Open New Window", it's matter of opinion and I don't really think either opinion (give more options to users or be less cluttered) is wrong or right, they are just opinions, not facts.

For this reason I'm leaving this issue open, I'm not interested in this discussion, any other Xfce dev is free to go ahead with this change or dismiss by closing this bug.

This case is covered by the bug description (comment 1):

If its not agreed upon to remove the 'Open in New Window' entry, then atleast it should be moved from its position at the top of the menu to go along with other folder-level entries like 'Open Terminal Here' and 'Find in this folder'.

mentioned in commit de9011f8

closed

There was slight mistake in the moving of the 'Open in New Window' entry. It should be at the top of the group with custom actions and not in the desktop group (desktop settings, arrange desktop, next background)

It is not a custom action, so it makes more sense to group it with other Desktop related entries.

Custom actions are folder level options, which opening a new window is related to. Opening a new window in thunar has nothing in common with the desktop settings options group. See gnome's desktop context menu which puts 'Show Desktop in Files' in the same group as 'Open in Terminal'.

mentioned in issue thunar#665