Bangarang --touch packages in Balsam KDE:Active

[Sebastian Kügler]

Hi Andrew,

[Are you on the active at kde.org list? I CC:'ed you just in case you're not.]

I'm a big fan of Bangarang, and I'm using it on my Plasma Active tablets. 

During the Active sprint this week, we've discussed multimedia players, and 
decided to ship Bangarang as part of Plasma Active One, I hope you're cool 
with that =)
I was happy to read on http://bangarangkde.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/bangarang-
touchificationism/ that you're working on some touch improvements. I agree 
that it makes a lot of sense to concentrate on some low-hanging fruit first. 
Bangarang already works pretty well on a touchscreen, and with some minor 
improvements, the biggest interaction problems right now can be fixed.

When using Bangarang on the train back home today, I spent some thoughts on 
some immediate improvements that struck me while using it. Not knowing the 
codebase, I think there is some very low-hanging fruit that would address the 
main interaction problems I see right now, in order of priority to improve the 
ergonomy of the interface:

- open button in central file-browsing view. When using the "Files and 
  Folders" view on the left to browse files on the filesystem, opening folders 
  in the mainview is a bit cumbersome. Two things strike me here:
  - the arrow icon on the right is very hard to hit, especially with the 
    "invisible" resizing grip right next to it. The SingleClick setting is not 
    respected there, but the need to double-tap or use the arrow introduces 
    inconsistencies with other UIs, and therefore make it hard to navigate 
    into folders. Is this a conscious choice to make selection easier?
	Proposed fixes: 
	  - increase the icon size of the arrow, 
	  - add a bit of space to the grip line,

I've put a copy of the bangarang package from KDE:Extra into KDE:Active, 
updated the tarball to master, and enabled --touch in the .desktop files, so 
that Plasma Active users now get this version by default. Let's see how we 
fare :)

The larger sizes for the listview on the left works well and is both visually 
and interactively an improvement. I've not looked in details into the other 
improvements, and haven't tried the --touch version on the device yet, but 
that will be very easy now, and others can test this as well, by just 
installing the bangarang package included in the KDE:Active package.

I've noticed that the URL loading from the commandline, or through %U was 
broken when --touch was supplied on the command line, a patch is attached. 
(This patch is already in the package.)

Cheers,
-- 
sebas

http://www.kde.org | http://vizZzion.org | GPG Key ID: 9119 0EF9
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