Slackware 14.2 64-bit. I am testing MATE 1.18 from mateslackbuilds. I am using the TraditionalOK theme and MATE icons.

Is there a way to disable tooltips:

* In the panel app icons?
* mate-terminal tabs?
* Caja Places?
* Control Center?
* Everywhere?

dconf-editor: .org.mate.panel.tooltips-enabled is OFF

I lost the borders around the app icons in the panel. The borders only appear when the mouse pointer is hovering over. Any way to restore the borders?

Is DISABLING mouse wheel cycling supported anywhere?

Several times my desktop background reverted to black. Any idea why?

Thanks much.

Hello,

I'll try to answer, although I don't use mateslackbuilds but mate 1.18 not yet released on Slint64-14.2.1.1.

Here, with dconf-editor or.mate.panel tooltips-enabled off I do not have tooltips on the panel.

I don't know a way to disable tooltips elsewehere if you use marco. If you use Compiz 0.9 (from Ubuntu) you can deny showing tooltip windows on decorator functions with org.compiz.gwd use-tooltips off.

About the borders around the app icons, I am not sure to understand, please provide pics.

About mouse cycling I didn't see any setting, but please elaborate, maybe I don't understand what you mean.

I never had had my desktop background changed against my will.

Hi,

I am using Slacware64-14.2 along with Mate-1.18.1 from Mate SlackBuilds and actually experiencing the same problems.

Setting the following in dconf produces no effect what so ever:

org.mate.panel.general tooltips-enabled off

And my wallpaper also likes to revert back to some random solid color once in a while. Don't know how to reproduce this behavior, but it never happened while I was using older versions of MSB.

It would be good to test against some other distribution featuring Mate-1.18 to confirm if these problems are Slackware related or actually should be reported to the developers of Mate.

can you please show some screenshots?
also, can you try to switch back to the default theme (Adwaita). Does the problem still persists?
does it also happened on new account?

Willy,

Thank you and Chess for your hard work. I mean that. I do not hold either of you responsible for upstream issues.

The good news is MATE 1.18 feels MUCH snappier than 1.16.

In the Control Center Appearances config, the Adwaita icon has a big black question mark. This has always been true as long as I have used MATE. I never liked Adwaita so I never cared. Selecting the Adwaita icon results in the following warning banner:

The theme will not look as intended because the required window manager theme 'Adwaita' is not installed.

I have no idea how to resolve that error and I've looked around the web.

I haven't yet tried that.

Tooltips
The tooltips issue is...unacceptable.

Desktops should never interfere or distract users. With GTK3 the tooltips are annoyingly everywhere.

With GTK2 a simple gtkrc entry of gtk-enable-tooltips = 0 globally disabled all tooltips. That directive no longer is usable in GTK3. Reading around the web indicates the GNOME devs have removed all tooltip control support.

I have the same setting. That setting does indeed affect panel launcher icons, but does not affect the panel window list buttons.

For example, when I have the MATE Control Center open, there is a panel window list button with the text "Control Center." Hovering the mouse pointer over the button to select that window results in a useless duplicate tooltip that says "Control Center."

Borders
The missing borders in the panel window list buttons is distracting but livable. The difference seems to be a theme issue caused by GTK3. That is, under GTK2 each window list button had a distinct border. With GTK3 the borders appear only when hovering the mouse pointer over the button or only for the active window.

Mouse Wheel Cycling
By default MATE enables mouse wheel cycling in several areas. Mouse wheel cycling is a "feature" where moving the mouse wheel while hovering the pointer results in selecting different areas of the widget. For example, with the workplace switcher, this will cause the switcher to alternate among the different virtual desktops. Or, with the panel window list applet, cause the focus to change among all open windows. Another place mouse wheel cycling is used is the mate-terminal tabs.

This can be a useful feature for some people but not for everybody. For those not wanting this feature the behavior is annoying only. For non technical users who do not think like geeks, this behavior is exasperating. For myself, a technical user, I know exactly what is happening, yet many times I have inadvertently cycled the mouse wheel under the described events and the result is annoyingly disruptive.

In MATE there are no GUI or dconf controls to stop mouse wheel cycling. Anywhere.

Desktop Background Changes
I cannot replicate that problem, but since my original post I have seen Conky displays disappear. On other user accounts, using the exact same Conky configs, I have seen the Conky display appear as embossed with a raised shadow. I had to fiddle with the own_window_type attribute to fix, although I ran with those Conky configs for years. I have no idea why MATE 1.18 affected one user account in this manner and not my default account.

Animations
I have icon animations disabled on my normal account. With MATE 1.18 and GTK3 they remained disabled. Yet on another user account somehow the icon animations were enabled, despite years of having them disabled. I had to again manually disable the animations.

the adwaita gtk+ theme is included in the Slackware package gnome-themes-standard: could it be you are trying this on a partial installation?

Yes, I know. The package is installed. And reinstalled. No difference.

Long Term
There are two problems. One is GTK3. The other is missing MATE controls.

I can and will revert to MATE 1.16. Yet this only delays the inevitable because all dependent projects have moved or are moving to GTK3 and in GTK3, tooltip controls are explicitly removed.

With respect to missing MATE controls, I could stop using MATE. I would rather not as I like the desktop. I do not understand why mouse wheel cycling is forced on all users. Even if GUI controls do not exist -- although they should -- I could live with dconf settings.

I can use Xfce. Yesterday and today I spent time tweaking that desktop as similar as possible to my MATE config. To their credit, the Xfce devs provide controls to prevent tooltips. Sadly, they too are jumping on the GTK3 bandwagon. Eventually I fear Xfce will suffer from the same tooltips issues.

The Xfce workspace switcher provides a config control to disable mouse wheel cycling. Also can be disabled with the panel window list buttons. Unlike MATE, these controls let the user decide, but I found no control to stop the xfce4-terminal tab cycling.

I do not want this thread to be a useless rant. IMO GTK3 is a regression in certain ways, but the lack of controls in MATE leave a few things to be desired.

Once again, Willie and Chess, thank you. These issues are not your fault.

@upnort: Why not file your issues with the gtk3 and/or mate bug trackers?

I believe it's an known issue already and it's caused by the new libwnck which doesn't support disabling tooltip.

The migration to full GTK+3 is not an easy road for the upstream developers as well as they have to tackle every GTK+3 releases which different from one to another, causing them to create separate tarball for each GTK+3 version.

As for mouse cycling, you have asked this before

For Desktop Background Changes, i can't replicate your issue as i don't use conky, but i always get my wallpaper the same way i set it up long time ago (i rarely changed my desktop).

For animations, try this in dconf-editor:
org/mate/panel/general --uncheck the enable-animation dialogue