Remove Apps and Launchers from within Slingshot

Registered by Danielle Foré

With the latest release of Midori, we've added the ability to save a web page into a launcher a la iOS. This, however, leads to a problem of removal. There needs to be a way for a user to remove apps from Slingshot.

Blueprint information

Status:
Complete
Approver:
None
Priority:
Low
Drafter:
elementary UX
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
Superseded
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Not started
Milestone target:
None
Completed by
Danielle Foré

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

I think the most obvious thing we can do is "Drag to Remove" here. Drag a launcher outside of Slingshot and "poof" it's gone. One thing we have to be careful of, however, is we need to be able to (somehow) distinguish between launchers that are tied to an app and launchers that are just shortcuts. For launchers that are tied to an installed app, we don't want to just poof the launcher, we actually want to launch packagekit and uninstall the app. -- DanRabbit

I don't like the idea of dragging to uninstall proposed by Dan above. It could happen accidentally when dragging to Dock, and it's far easier for a user to do it from a Software Centre when that does get implemented. At the same time, an icon for a "web page" could be drawn (just like a dog eared page with the Midori icon on it), which would indicate a webpage. Pulling favicons would quite likely be ugly, IMO. ~satchitb

removing things from slingshot should be intuitive and drag to remove is good IMO, we could keep the distance that must be covered to remove must be a little longer ( a little away from the window )
so that accidental removes can be avoided. many things can be implemented for keeping a log of
things installed but thats being too nosy IMO. --voldyman

There's also the possibility of having a sort of definite target for the drag, like in Android (a red "Uninstall" target comes in from the top of the launcher when you start dragging an icon). I've added the UX team as the drafter and we can investigate some options. ~cassidyjames

I agree with the Android idea. Maybe dragging out could extend it to creating shortcuts in places. The top search and view plane would be hidden whilst dragging, which would show a remove function. More functions, such as uninstall could also be shown. -- Jacob

The Android idea is pretty good. You could make two different targets one as "Remove Shortcut" and the other as "Uninstall". But the only problem that I see is that if there's a "Remove Shortcut" option, there must be an "All the Apps" option too, to be able to access that App again. --Alexis

Superseded by this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/slingshot/+bug/1211570 --DanRabbit

(?)

Work Items

Work items:
Explore prior art: TODO
Decide which approach to do: TODO
Mock it up: TODO
Implement in a branch: TODO
Test test test!: TODO
Merge it: TODO

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