I can't repro this behavior. It sounds similar to some things that have been reported in the past where the Z ordering of Steam windows doesn't match the window manager's window ordering, thus things like mouse input appear to "go through" windows. We haven't confirmed that, though, and all of these issues are waiting for solid repros.
I also think that's probably the case. I might try to reproduce the behavior in a fresh VM installation of Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon edition.
This has happened to me now. I think it's due to my current username being long enough to stretch past the right end of the notification menu. If I click the envelope icon and carefully navigate my pointer the long way around and come up from the bottom of the menu, I'm able to click on the "new comments" line successfully.
OK, as it turns out, this is not platform-specific; it happens in Windows, too, if your username is long enough and your client window is narrow enough. Basically, what's going on is that the hitbox for the "STORE LIBRARY COMMUNITY [YOURNAMEHERE]" links stretches higher than the top of the notification menu, so before your mouse pointer reaches the first item in the menu, it passes over the link area for [YOURNAMEHERE], canceling out the menu. It's not a matter of the links overlapping the menu (although they do seem to overlap the bottom couple pixels of the envelope button, which is part of the problem).
If you want my opinion, personally I think the user menu shouldn't match the username; it should be something generic like "MY STEAM" that's guaranteed to always be a reasonable length. It's weird seeing my username right up there in all caps, and that was before I changed it to something too long to fit.
You'll want to report this on the regular Steam forums then.
As far as I know, nobody from Valve actually reads those anymore. And they definitely haven't been treated as the standard place to report bugs in years.
Sorry, by "forums" I mean the regular Steam bug reporting area. As this isn't Linux-specific this isn't the right place to track it.
Hello @meowy, @stevethepocket, are either of you experiencing this issue with the current client?
Hey @kisak-valve, I cannot reproduce this, though I'm no longer on the Linux client.
Glad to hear it got fixed and thanks for retesting. Closing.
Nothing extracted yet.
After opening up the notification button menu, I'm unable to click on any items. It appears that the new big button beneath the menu is being told that the mouse hovers over it, making it open up its own menu. And that, for some reason, closes both menus, leaving me with none open.
The same issue occurs when I try to use the menu provided by the "username's Account" link when the Steam client is resized to its minimum width. However, this menu is still usable and functions completely normally under one condition: I have to move my cursor around the bounding box of the text before hovering over the menu; the cursor must not enter the bounding box. If I "enter" the menu with my cursor that way, it will not be closed abnormally.
This issue is illustrated in the following screen capture:
[dead link]
I haven't made a capture of the behavior when "username's Account" is clicked, but I could supply one if needed.
The menus that are opened by Steam's menu bar (Friends, Games, Help...) do not trigger this behavior, at least not with the other buttons.
System information:
Linux Mint 14 Nadia (64-bit)
Cinnamon desktop (GNOME 3-based)
Steam version/build: March 4 2013, at 13:20:23