Potential input for the Extra Mile project

[Aurélien Gâteau]

> > > * 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.
> 
> I think this is related to the first issue with the quicklauncher that I
> mentioned. It seems very similar to me. If this is caused by shared
> KDE/plasma code: all reshapable widgets may have this problem, and therefore
> all benifit from having a 'horizontal alignment preference' vs. 'vertical
> alignment preference' switch option. If, however, this behaviour is caused
> by the individual widgets...I hope the widget maintainers read this post :-)

Plasma widgets are aware of the "form factor" (floating, vertical, horizontal) 
of their container, but code needs to be written in each widget to take this 
information into account and adjust the layout. Some widgets do it (for 
example the taskbar widget), others do not.

> * 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)
> > 
> 
> Why not just leave these popups out entirely, and have all the relevant info
> (+ hyperlink to the authors homepage / email) only appear in the "settings"
> dialog box. A convenient place would be a "sub-dialog" like the General,
> Keyboard Shortcut or Share- sub-dialogs. Make an additional sub-dialog, call
> it for example 'Background Info', and store all this info in that sub-
> dialog. This makes it easy to find for people who are interested in these 
> things (...which are the same kind of people who are willing to look around 
> until they find it anyway), but at the same time this keeps it out of the way 
> for people who do NOT want to read these info. Also, this avoids the pop-ups 
> from popping up, and thereby does not hamper the funcitoning of this widget 
> as it is now. 

That would work, and be cleaner. Indeed. I would add an About button to the 
bottom-left of the dialog, showing this information.

> > > * 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.
> > 
> 
> I understand what you mean. Couldn't this be solved by reserving an amount
> of space determined by the size of the Dolphin window and/or the screen 
> resolution? This space could be entirely filled in by a previewer, but also
> by a smaller icon to which a maximum size is defined. So if the icon is
> smaller than the reserved space, just centre it, or so. 

That could work as well, though it needs to be tried to ensure the result 
looks nice.
  
> > > *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. 
> > 
> That may be hard to digets for the average user...he/she just expects help.

Having help for applets might sound like a good idea, but I learned by 
experience such documentation tends to be outdated (and translations of 
documentations even more). I'd rather fix the configuration dialogs so that 
there is no need for a documentation in the first place, and add hints in the 
form of tooltips or small (?) buttons if there are configuration dialogs which 
really need explanations.

> OK, thanks. YOu indicated some of my comments as not-extra-mile, so for 
> these ideas I'll file a regular bug in the near future.
> 
> Thanks for your comments. I'm happy to contribute this way (I know it's the 
> easy way - but I'm not very much of a programmer)

Writing down all these problems and making constructive suggestions is serious 
work as well, so it's not really the "easy way". Thanks for all this.

Aurélien