The Decision on appletstrip vs Contour containment (was:re orging of plasma mobile repository)

[Marco Martin]

On Thursday 14 July 2011, Fania Jöck wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I would suggest to make a confcall on that subject (interface and
> interaction wise, merge with Contour...), I think thats way easier than
> discuss in text...
> How about next tuesday, at 11am? Or afternoon 2pm?

to me it's ok both times

> 
> Am 12.07.2011 23:25, schrieb Marco Martin:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > as everybody knows, right now we have a quite odd situation that we
> > have at the moment what it looks like two different plasma workspace
> > for the tabet, since what starts with plasma-tablet loads a workspace
> > with applet strips as main screen for the activities
> > 
> > plasma-contour has the main contour containment, is focused on
> > resource icons instead, but capability to put plasmoids will come as
> > well.
> > 
> > considered that a) this gives an impression of a not clear direction
> > and b) we don't have so much resources to do one interface, let alone
> > two ;)
> > 
> > that said, the two main containments serve well two very different
> > kinds of scenarios:
> > 
> > * the contour one serves better the concept of "activity", what i'm
> > doing now, that is more around files, contacts, running applications,
> > whatever. it also serves pretty well as container for plasmoids that
> > can be very specific for a task (classical example, weather forecast
> > in a trip planning activity)
> > 
> > * the applet strip serves in a much better way a quite different use
> > case: applets that give me informations about news, social networking
> > and whatever, this goes better there because a) it's not really
> > attached to an activity, i just want to glance at twitter ;) and b)
> > for a pure ui point of view, the contour ontainment has vertical
> > scrolling, and all of those plasmoid have vertical scrolling as well,
> > so they work only on a surface with no or horizontal scrolling. the
> > contour containment could be adapted, but would require a redesign of
> > the ui (and there would always be the reason a)
> > 
> > and let's not forget the web dashboard containment, another kind of
> > main screen. also letting the user choose the kind of containment
> > while is fine on the desktop, sounds quite confusing on a mobile
> > ideally simpler environment.
> > 
> > so, after talking about it with Aaron and Sebastian for a loong time,
> > that's the decision we came with:
> > 
> > * we will have a single, only one tablet user interface, at that will
> > be the contour ux
> > 
> > * the appletstrip is something different, that something different could 
be:
> >      * a separate application, something that is even launched by hand
> > 
> > from the user, and will have a default set of widgets: at least rss
> > feed and identica
> > 
> >      * a separate screen in the tablet ui, almost identical as the sal
> > 
> > now in plasma-tablet: a panel that is dragged from the bottom
> > 
> > in both cases there will be only one set, not influenced by activities
> > 
> > technically, the second option is way easier to achieve, but i'm
> > concerned that the tablet ui becomes way too complex (both in user
> > interaction and memory consumption)  it has waay too much chrome going
> > on into it already ;)
> > 
> > the second solution would instead be a bit longer to achieve (needs a
> > plasma shell that would take i guess 3-4 days to write) take more
> > memory when everything is running, but stoppable by the user.
> > 
> > i lean towards the second solution, but since the first is very easy
> > to do i can start with that one so can be tested (and eventually kept
> > or transitioned to the second).
> > 
> > so the bottom line, and most important thing is that there would  be
> > only a single tablet ui left.
> > i would also move the main contour containment in the plasma mobile
> > repo, to make it very easy to package: since the balsam image wants to
> > ship with more stable stuff, the recommendation screen would remain in
> > the contour repo (and not installed) while the contour activity screen
> > would instead be picked (and that one is working well enough nowdays,
> > since receives ~90% of development time ;)
> > 
> > ideas/comments?
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Marco Martin
> > _______________________________________________
> > Active mailing list
> > Active at kde.org
> > https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/active


-- 
Marco Martin