Ubuntu Wiki

Ayatana Scroll Bar Working Space

This area is a workspace for the scroll bars. For more information see the Canonical Design Blog for more information.

• Where to Get It?

We provide packages for Natty:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ayatana-scrollbar-team/release; sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install liboverlay-scrollbar-0.1-0

Daily builds are now also available in the unity ppa: http://www.launchpad.net/~unity/+archive/daily

The project is hosted at: https://launchpad.net/ayatana-scrollbar

The source code is available as a simple bazaar branch: bzr branch lp:ayatana-scrollbar

• How to Test

To test the overlay scrollbars, prefix each application invocation with:

LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=foo <command>

for example

LIBOVERLAY_SCROLLBAR=foo gedit

• Debugging Procedures

In case you find bugs, please report them at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-scrollbar/+filebug

In particular, mention the version of the overlay library tested, and of the application that exposes the problem. If the application crashed, apport should have captured a crash file which can help narrow down the issue more quickly.

Test guidelines

For each GTK-based application that uses scrollbars for its interface, here are the individual tests to conduct:

• verify that the overlay scrollbar(s) appear in lieu of the classic GTK scrollbars; both horizontal or vertical scrollbars
• verify that scrolling the content pane works with keyboard shortcuts as they do normally; verify that the scrollbars do reflect the position of the content pane in the overlay content area
• verify that scrollbar "thumbs" do appear when approaching the scrollbars: the position of the thumbs should be outside, on the right, of the window containing the content pane, except when the window is close to the screen border, in which case it should be appear inside the content pane
• verify that the scrollbar thumbs can scroll the content pane either up/down or left/right depending on their orientation
• verify that scrollbar thumbs do disappear when the cursor is not in close proximity with the scrollbars anymore

Report bugs against only the scrollbar project for now, as we don't want to spam other projects bug list with a feature that is ubuntu and even ayatana specific.

In particular report:

• any kind of crashers, like when the application starts and tries to display the window(s) containing scrollbars
• slowdowns in using scrollable areas; measurements can help judge how much the scrollbar really impacts the application, or whether the application is just slow due to other circumstances
• any other kind of anomaly obviously due to the scrollbars that impacts the user experience

Bug on the radar: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ayatana-scrollbar/+bugs?orderby=-importance

Application Compatibility

Applications known to work

• Nautilus
• Evince
• Gedit
• Banshee
• Epiphany
• Midori
• Chromium
• Compiz
• Compiz Config Settings Manager
• Devhelp
• Totem
• Rhythmbox
• Xchat
• Empathy
• Cheese
• Gwibber
• Disk Usage Analizer
• Disk Utility
• Gnome System Monitor
• Shotwell
• Tomboy Notes
• System preferences dialogs, like gnome-appearance-properties
• ...

Applications known to have issues with the ayatana-scrollbar