Recent changes in Plasma Active

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi all,

This email gives you an overview over updates we've done to the current state 
of the art of Plasma Active:

New, user-visible changes:
- New lock screen: You now drag a lock onto a big area, more intuitive first-
  run
- New activity switcher: snazzy, moved over from Contour to Active, replaces 
  the old right-hand-side flap
- No mouse cursor: by using a fully translucent mouse cursor, we hide this 
  guy, feels more tablet-like
- appswitcher and panel are now roughly the same size, the appswitcher doesn't 
  hide window controls anymore
- Placement of the individual items in the system tray was improved, they're 
  now aligned and at the same size. One problem there: doesn't work on first 
  start, subsequent starts look beautiful.
- Reworked widgets explorer: more nicely animated, show more clearly which 
  widgets is selected

These changes are upcoming, they're basically implemented but not successfully 
tested:

- Draggin windows to close in overview mode: There's now a trashcan in the 
  present windows effect, dragging a window onto that closes it (brings us 
  closer to "kill the window decoration and save space)
- The onscreen keyboard was improved: a new layout with more keys is now used, 
  moving some of the often-used keys to the first page, there's also a sizing 
  fix merged upstream, which gives it a wider size by default (the latter 
  might take until Monday to show up)
- Theming improvements in dictionary (QML) and the tablet news reader

There's more stuff coming up, in the pipeline are:
- new panel and window switcher (swipable strip at the top)
- new bookmarks, other search through Nepomuk resources
- leaner packages for kde-workspace, removing windecos, removing desktop-
  oriented effects, kcontrol modules, etc.
- Work towards kwin on GLES, for Balsam/oS we're currently missing mesa-gles 
  packages
- [...]

Stefan is spinning a new image, but we've some problems with the X server 
right now (it comes up, but gives a strong impression of abuse of illegal, 
hallucinating substances, i.e. funny colors). Looking into that.

If anybody else has more news, please reply to this thread, so I can take it 
into my blog overview of what's new in Active.

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

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