Your opinion: web-aware plasmoids should only download if they are visible

[Mark Kretschmann]

On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 3:59 PM, Frank Steinmetzger <Warp_7 at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi people
>
> before I file this and make it about my opinion alone, I would like to know
> what you think about it:
>
> Context plasmoids such as the one for Wikipedia or similar artists should, in
> my opinion, only download new content if they are actually visible. At first
> sight this might be just another case of „I want Amarok 1 behavior back“, so
> let me explain:
>
> for space reasons, I put the collection browser and context area into tabs, so
> only one of them is visible at a time. (Another case: both are visible, but
> there are more plasmoids active than fit into the context area).
> I don’t use the Wikipedia feature that often, but I do from time to time, the
> same goes for similar artists and other plasmoids. Only the "Albums by
> <artist>" plasmoid I use quite regularly, because mostly I have a dynamic
> random playlist running and when I wanna hear more of the currently running
> artist, that’s the way to go.
>
> By principle, I don’t really like the idea that those web-aware plasmoids are
> making request for every track I play, no matter if I want to see the result
> or not. It’s one part privacy paranoia and one part my bad connection. If I
> download something and other requests are made in parallel, this thing has a
> tendency towards disconnecting or at least having a hangover for a minute or
> two.

That's more a matter of the technical implementation. Fetching the
data only when necessary makes sense, but it would add a bit of extra
complexity to the code, and in the end someone would have to do it.

So I'd assume a working patch would be welcome, but it's hard to say
if the Amarok team by itself has the time and motivation to do this.
Myself I'm not bothered by the current behavior at all, so I have very
little motivation to work on it.

It's how FOSS works :)

-- 
Mark Kretschmann
Amarok Developer
Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe
http://amarok.kde.org - http://www.fsfe.org