[Bug 51319] reduce default gtk-menu-popup-delay

[Mark Howard]

Public bug reported:

The speed of menus, especially the panel menu, are a very common cause
of complaints from users. Part of the performance problem is that there
is a 1/4s delay before a sub-menu pops up. I have created a local copy
of gtk+ with the default delay set to 0 and the panel seems much more
responsive, without any degredation in usability (IMHO). This was
achieved with the following patch:

Index: gtk/gtkmenu.c
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/gnome/gtk+/gtk/gtkmenu.c,v
retrieving revision 1.221
diff -u -r1.221 gtkmenu.c
--- gtk/gtkmenu.c       14 May 2006 04:25:29 -0000      1.221
+++ gtk/gtkmenu.c       29 Jun 2006 16:56:45 -0000
@@ -48,7 +48,7 @@

 #define MENU_ITEM_CLASS(w)   GTK_MENU_ITEM_GET_CLASS (w)

-#define DEFAULT_POPUP_DELAY    225
+#define DEFAULT_POPUP_DELAY    0
 #define DEFAULT_POPDOWN_DELAY  1000

 #define NAVIGATION_REGION_OVERSHOOT 50  /* How much the navigation region
gtk-menu-popup-delay

The only reason against setting it to 0 that I've found is:
"for usability reasons. If submenus appear immediately upon
mouseover, you'll lose the currently open submenu when you accidentally
moves your mouse outside the current submenu's space"
I've been trying this a few times today and don't agree with those comments. The annoyance from potentially losing a submenu by incorrect mouse movement is far less than the frustration with the menus being slow to respond to your movements. Also, if you do move onto another menu item accidentally the chances are that you won't move back to the original location within 1/4s anyway.

Obviously this is all subjective, so I was wondering if you could
possibly try applying the above patch to the edgy packages for a few
weeks and see what the general user response is. If say the ubuntu
forums are full of comments from "power users" saying they love the
speed increase then this will be a much better argument for making the
change upstream. If there are complaints, it's easy to remove a one line
patch.

** Affects: gtk+2.0 (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Untriaged
         Status: Unconfirmed

-- 
reduce default gtk-menu-popup-delay
https://launchpad.net/bugs/51319