Potential input for the Extra Mile project

Tue Nov 20 14:49:36 UTC 2012

Le jeudi 15 novembre 2012 23:44:12 A.B. Ole a écrit :

First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to write all this!
I am commenting your suggestions inline below.

> I've tried to categorize them, as I found some common factors.
> *
> Alignment issues:*
> * in the Quicklaunch widget: particularly when the launcher names are not
> shown, the icons seem to have strong preference for horizontal alignment.
> When making the widget bigger, the icons scale with it. That's good, except
> for that, when I want vertical alignment, I can only do that with small
> icons. It seems that this issue occurs specifically when showing launcher
> names.
> Suggestion for fixing : add an option to switch between horizontal and
> vertical alignment of icons, of alternatively: fix the number of
> rows/columns
> * Again the quicklaunch widget : If launcher names are shown, and the icons
> are aligned vertically, the quiklaunch widget can be made so narrow that
> the lables don't fit in. This looks very strange.

I think those two problems would be fixed if the labels were constrained to the 
panel width and wrapped or cut if they did not fit. This would help with 
layouting.

> * Activity bar widget: same strange preference for horizontal alignment of
> the activity buttons as the icons in the quicklaunch widget.

Agreed. This widget seems to completely ignore panel orientation.

> * ACtivity bar widget : the widget can be made smaller than the buttons.
> This looks very weird. I think this is the same problem as with the
> quicklaunch widget, as described above.

Agreed.

> * Panel adjustment: adjusting the width and position of the panel is very
> complicated and confusing. Also in the "more settings" drop-down menu: what
> do these panel alignment options exactly do? I understand they are
> mathematically very elegant ways to describe how the panel positioning
> works, but it seems unnecessarily complicated. 'Average users' won't
> understand. Only having it adjustable at the left and right ends would be
> good enough - perhaps add a button to have the panel always in the middle
> of the screen. That's already more than most people will use (probably they
> will have the panel bar filling the entire width of the screen).

I agree with those, but I don't think it qualify as extra mile bugs because it 
is not something which is "simple to fix". That does not mean it should not be 
fixed, but it requires one to dedicate a significant amount of time to come up 
with a more elegant design, get it approved and implement it.

> *Slowly responding interface:*
> * The system tray elegantly allows the user to hide certain items. That's
> really good. But, when scolling through the hidden items by mouse (after
> clicking on the up-arrow that reveals them), the highlighting of the item
> is slower than the mouse, if I move the pointer over the list of hidden
> tray items rapidly.

Probably easy to fix, might already be fixed in the upcoming version. I need to 
check.

> * The application launcher : it has this very convenient 'switch tabs on
> hover' option. However, if I want to reach the 'leave' section rapidly, the
> tab switching follows the mouse too slowly. Please add an option to let the
> user decide on how slowly the tabs switch on mouse hovering. Zero delay by
> default feels best to me, but that may be a matter of taste.
> * THe same holds for moving the mouse over the taskbar while 'window
> previews' are shown. When moving the mouse from one window to an other the
> previews want to follow, but they are too slow.
> * same issue when moving the mouse over the widgets in the 'add widget'
> thing.

I personally don't like the idea of adding options to fine-tune behaviors like 
that. I'd rather adjust the existing delays to "feel right", out of the box. 
That is harder, but better for the user experience.

> * Pop-ups :*
> * pop-ups appear when the 'add widget' thing is active, and they block the
> user interface. If, for example, the mouse is on the most left widget, a
> large popup appears, covering the search bar. If the mouse is on the second
> left widget the 'categories button' is blocked.
>
> * The popups in the 'add widget' thing are not necessary in the first
> place: they display the same description as the widgets do themselves, and
> they mention something about the author and the type of license. Most users
> don't care about that, and if they want to know these things nevertheless,
> I would suggest putting them in the configuration dialog box of each
> widget.

Agreed, they are annoying and would benefit from being clickable (for example 
to open the widget website or copy the author email)

> *Layout :*
> * the colour of the blue glow (of active windows): adjusting the colour of
> turning the glowing off is hard to find. Also, the glow colour is unique.
> It should be linked to a colour in the theme colours.

Agreed.

> * in Dolphin, the icon in the Information panel is huge compared to
> anything else in the Dolphin window. What does this icon add for the user
> in the first place?

I guess it is mostly there as a placeholder: it makes sense to have an icon 
like this when previewing images or videos. If the icon were not there, the 
content would jump up and down based on whether a file is selected or not.

One thing which would be easy to try is to just use empty space if nothing is 
there. I am not sure if it would look nice, but that should be easy to try 
out.

> * the 'multiple tabs' layout of the application launcher seems somewhat
> oldfashioned. Combining it into 1 thing is convenient. Look, for example,
> at Linux Mint. THeir menu is one of their most appreciated items...with
> good reason

That is not an extra mile bug: what you are asking there requires rewriting 
the whole launcher. I am not saying you are wrong, but it's out of the scope 
of extra miles.

> *Miscellaneous:*
> * battery indicator : show how many minutes of battery time I have left, or
> at least have the option to do so.

While this sounds sensible, it is surprisingly difficult to get right, and 
subject of many flamewars. You can find some of them on the plasma-devel mailing 
list. Latest one started from there:
http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2012-June/020063.html

> * the "add widgets" thing, normally put above the bottom panel, has an
> inconvenient layout. Making the 'widget objects'smaller would make them
> more easy to oversee. Now it's difficult.

Another complicated topic. I am no fan of the "add widgets" thing either, but 
changing it is again out of scope of extra mile bugs.

> *Unpleasant one to fix :*
> * when hitting the F1 button of the 'Help'button in any dialog box, I
> expect relevant information, not a link to the KDE manual/ plasma widgets
> section. I know this is a lot of work, but in the 21st century 'average
> users' expect this anyway. Also, after all dialog boxes have been updated,
> maintaining the consistency is relatively little work.

There is an embarrassing problem with this: we actually do not have manual 
pages for Plasma applet, so no real content to show :/
The best thing we can do there is probably not to open any documentation when 
one presses F1. There is already no Help button in Plasma applet configuration 
dialogs, so it would be consistent to have no Help shortcut as well.

Where to go from there? The best thing to do is to file bugs for your ideas on 
bugs.kde.org. As I said, a few of your ideas do not qualify as extra-mile, so 
they should not be marked as such, but you can still file bugs for them.

To learn more about bugs.kde.org, you can read:

http://techbase.kde.org/Contribute/Bugsquad/Quick_Introduction_to_Bugzilla

To learn more about extra-mile bugs, have a look at:

http://community.kde.org/Getinvolved/Extra_Mile

Thanks again,
Aurélien