Comment 189 for bug 44082

this bug has become worse for me since upgrading to lucid. i had the problem with previous versions of ubuntu but after resetting the positions a few times gnome seemed to "learn". The problem is not related to rebooting or restarting x or anything like that. the problem is that at home i connect a big lcd monitor to my laptop via a vga cable, and when away obviously i just use the laptop screen. on changing from one to the other the applets are all in the wrong order, or floating in space.

im using the proprietary Nvidia driver, although in my opinion the problem is not related to that. i see the fix as being achieved by having the actual order of the applets saved, not just the positions. any space should be saved, as well as noting when applets are touching, or when an applet touches the end of the panel. when applets are touching each other or the edge they will remain stuck together or to the edge, with the space being dynamically altered. floating applets would be a special case, and are detected by noting that nothing is stuck to either side except space.

i realise this is probably far from the logic currently used to determine the locations, but i would point out that what i have suggested is very similar to the way the window controls are positioned on any gnome window. to see the way this is set up open gconf-editor and go to Apps -> Metacity -> General" and choose the key named "button_layout".

by the way, if like me you hate the new lucid window control layout see this link:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Move-Window-Controls-back-to-right-in-Ubuntu-1004

kind regards