Blur on panel is applied as panel is on top of screen

[yozoon]

Blur on panel is applied as panel is on top of screen

[asant]

Hi, the attached patch fixes the panel background for me.

panel-bg-fix.txt

[asant]

@matfantinel I have to correct myself, dash to panel does work but only with blyr disabled. I'm going to send a fix for that soon.

[asant]

@yozoon oh oops sorry, I hadn't noticed that. The attached patch should fix that too. Let me know if that's ok, thanks.

panel-bg-fix-2.txt

[matfantinel]

@PHLAK I'm not OP, but I think that's the Overview button, not "Show Applications". That's doable with current Dash to Panel version. But you can actually reorder everything now in the feature-panel-positions branch in their GitHub. Not 100% stable yet, but usable (I'm running it right now on mine)

[mqzabin]

@matheusqueirozzabin Sorry this is off topic, but how do you get your app icons centered while keeping your "Show Applications" icon on the left (with Dash to Panel)?

It's actually Arc Menu, but Dash-to-Panel has implemented a new feature that you can set activities button to left corner too (with centered app icons), I don't know if it's on gnome.extensions yet, but you can download last version from github.

[mqzabin]

@yozoon You can give me some input of what I have to do to fix that? I can make a PR if I have success.

[yozoon]

The generation of the blurred panel background happens inside a method called _createBlurredPanelActor() which can be found on line 377 of extension.js. My best guess would be to modify the lines
this.panel_bg = new Meta.BackgroundActor({...});
to somehow change the x and y offset as well as the size of the copied background to match the position and size of the panel that's currently present. Good luck with the modifications! :)

[zhoupen9]

@asant Tried the patch, it works. Ubuntu 20.04 lts, GNOME 3.36.2, gnome-shell 3.36.1

[yozoon]

@asant great work! Indeed the proposed changes seem to fix the situation for Dash-to-Panel. But currently the problem is that, when Dash-to-Panel is disabled, the whole screen gets covered in a blurred panel background actor, rendering the Shell UI unusable. So we need to find a fix for that before applying the patches to the master branch.

[yozoon]

@asant Yes that fixes the problem when Dash-To-Panel is disabled. I'll test these changes over the next few days. If I don't encounter any new bugs I'll add the changes to the master branch. You can also create a pull request with your changes if you want to - then I can simply merge the PR.

[yozoon]

Okay, I found one issue: after returning from the lock screen the blur underneath the panel from dash-to-panel is for some reason once again applied as if its on top of the screen. Maybe that's because the panel blur regeneration is triggered while the panelBox is the one from the lock screen panel instead of the one from dash-to-panel...

[asant]

Thanks for your feedback @yozoon. I guess I fixed both bugs and created a pull request to merge the changes.

[asant]

Thanks, @yozoon !

[matfantinel]

Hey @asant , sorry for asking a question that's easily verifiable, but I can't get to my computer right now: Does that work if Dash to Panel is on left or right on the screen?

[asant]

Hey @matfantinel , sorry but I can't make dash to panel work at all when it's moved to either sides, even with blyr disabled. Anyway in theory blyr should still work fine in that case too.

[yozoon]

@matfantinel thanks for pointing that out! I did not think about that case. I just tried to change the position of the panel to the left and the blurred background was drawn as if the panel was placed on top. Additionally the whole Shell became unclickable, because the background actor seems to cover up the whole screen, even though the image is cropped to the actual size of the panel. So we definitely have to come up with some fix for that before I upload the extension to extensions.gnome.org

[matfantinel]

@yozoon no problem! I got to test it on my machine today. I use Dash to Panel with a side panel, and checking the option to maintain the original top panel (I know, my setup is very complex for Blyr to work hahah). I do this to "simulate" the default Ubuntu look, but I prefer Dash to Panel instead of Dash to Dock because of features like window previews and ungrouping apps.

For reference, my desktop:

And Dash to Panel settings:

I think this "Keep original top panel" setting is only on master branch right now, and not on extensions.gnome.org.

But from a quick look into Blyr's code, I think having two panels adds a whole other level of complexicity, so it's okay if the PR does not cover it.

[horvbalint]

Is there any update on this topic?

[matfantinel]

@horvbalint I cloned from master branch today and manually installed - the fix is already there. I don't know if it's published to the Extensions website yet.

[PHLAK]

@matheusqueirozzabin Sorry this is off topic, but how do you get your app icons centered while keeping your "Show Applications" icon on the left (with Dash to Panel)?

[yozoon]

I'm closing this issue, now that the original bug is fixed with Version 8 of the extension. @matfantinel if you want to, you can open a separate issue with the specific problem you encountered with this "keep original gnome-shell top panel" option in Dash-to-Panel. But you rightly assumed that this is quite an edge case and difficult to fix without affecting other users' experience.