KDE Application About Dialog

[Benjamin Meyer]

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> With the developer photo at the left there is actually more
> vertical space required than before and having the mail address
> directly to the right makes it visually part of the name (esp.
> if there is no punctuation in between). This is bad for
> readability and somehow takes away fokus from the main thing
> ("who is this?"). IOW: I would leave the mail address where it
> is now.

Hmm, guess I should have made clear that they were two separate items.
1) E-mail is next to and not under the name.  The reason for this is 99%
 of all developers include an e-mail address in their name.  Often time they
don't include what they worked on, but their e-mail address.  Scrolling through
applications like KMail can be cut in half if the e-mail is next to the name.  Also
considering that the dialog is always wider then the name+email it shouldn't
 have a space problem (P.S. Why does KMail's Author tab have a horizontal
scroll bar?)

2) Add the ability for developers to add icons.  I don't see who a picture of the author is not related to "who is this?".  When someone clicks on the Authors tab I would think they would expect to see a list of the authors and information about them.  e-mail address, what they worked on, their name, and a photo all seem to fit into the category.  Also as this is optional developers don't have to put an image in their if they don't want to.  But there are a number of really big plus's to it.  The biggest one would be when we travel to events like LinuxWorld we would recognize each other and others might recognize us and say thanks for the work we have done.

> Also the translators' section is missing

Not quite sure what this is?  Does it only show up if you are in a
 non-English language?  I know there are more then the three
default tabs ("Thanks To" comes to mind), they were simply what I added in this mock application.

> and the worst looking
> thing of the present about dialog is not resolved: the GPL text
> not fitting into the default window, causing lots of strange
> looking line breaks.

Good point, I have taken the LGPL and htmlized it.  It might not be a bad idea to have the included License agreements htmlized
so that they can look good when resized. (check out the updated screenshot in the link below)

> Sorry, but I'm not sure whether this would be a big improvement
> for the present state.

This wasn't necessarily meant to be "the" replacement, but to bring up discusion about ideas.  I tried to toss in every idea that might be better to see what people said.

Another point that I didn't highlight before was that the current About dialog wastes quite a bit of screen space.  The tabs are in 10 pixels, and inside them there are browse windows inset 10 more pixels.  I removed them entirely and have the widgets take up the entire bottom to the screen.  (And no Close button too)

Along with the above changes I have converted the top to use a IconView (like in KJanusWidget, but horizontal).  I have generated new screenshots and placed them up here:

http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/about/phpquickgallery/dir.php?gallery=KDEAppAbout/

What do you think?  Are there features/changes that people might like as possible future feature changes to KAboutDialog?

- -Benjamin Meyer

- -- 
Public Key: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/public_key.asc
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