linuxmint/mint-themes — pull request #1 by OutsiderPerspective (2012-08-21 00:22:37+00:00)
Title: Add padding to Mint-Z menus

This is a very minor change with adds a 2px horizontal and vertical padding to the GTK menus in the Mint-Z theme.

It's needed because, in the default Mint configuration, the context-menus are very easy to mis-click on the top menu entry since it is under the mouse cursor when the menu is opened, and if the right-click is not fast enough then it becomes an option-selecting click.

Adding a 2px padding means the top most option is no longer able to be misclicked when the menu is opened if one is not fast enough with releasing the right-click mouse button (or misclicks, or any number of other problems).

Since Mint-Z is the default GTK theme for Linux Mint that new users will see, this change should improve the new user experience especially since this behaviour is undesirable yet not obvious in origin (i.e. the user will only notice they get a lot of unintended behaviour).

An obvious counter-argument would be that this slows down context-menu top item access by requiring the mouse to be moved to activate the top item, however it seems apparent to me that unintended option activation is the bigger problem, and this is the easiest fix since the alternate would require a change to disable right-clicks from activating context menu items (and it doesn't address the "accidental left click/key hit" case). Additionally, since to right-click one's hands are generally already on the mouse, the very slight wrist movement needed should be no additional burden.