Yet another post of KDE 4.2 impressions

[Christian Henz]

On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 12:56:02PM +0000, Anne Wilson wrote:
> On Saturday 28 March 2009 12:32:27 Christian Henz wrote:
> 
> > Application launcher:
> > ---------------------
> > What makes no sense to me at all is that applications are listed by their
> > description and not their name. For example there are two entries called
> > "Web browser", and I have to distinguish them by their icons, or move the
> > mouse over the Description to find out what the actual application is
> > (konqueror, firefox). IMO this should be exactly the other way around: List
> > the application name (konqueror), and then show the description ("Web
> > Browser") when hovering over the entry.
> >
> This isn't my personal choice either.  However, it has been argued over in the 
> past, and I think preferences were about 50/50.  The good thing is the fuzzy 
> search, so that entering 'web' in the box will get you a list of all web-
> oriented applications.  Don't your menu entries have icons to distinguish 
> them?
> 

They do have icons, but that is just my point. Not every icon is immediately
recognizable, especially on seldom used applications, or they look similar...
I cannot understand how 50% would prefer this labeling scheme... I think it would only 
be helpful for a very unexperienced user for a short time and start to get in the way
rather quickly. I am annoyed by it every time I use the launcher now...

> > "Add Widgets" dialog:
> > ---------------------
> > I still have not quite figured out how the star icon is supposed to work.
> > Sometimes its grey (widget not installed?), sometimes its yellow (widget
> > installed? - but it is also yellow for "Web browser", which I cannot find
> > anywhere in the panel or on the desktop, and grey for "Pager" which is
> > definitely active and visible!),
> 
> > sometimes there is a little "-" ontop of
> > it (no idea what that means). 
> 
> It means that if you hit that, it will remove the widget in question.
> 

I don't mean the separate "-" icon - that one I understand :)
I mean the fact that the yellow star sometimes has a "-" drawn ontop of it.

> > Konqueror (web):
> > ----------------
> > Positive: The two features from Firefox I missed the most in Konqueror
> > where adopted: There is incremental search now, and it does not block the
> > view onto the page I'm trying to search. Also there is a sidebar with
> > incremental search for bookmarks etc. Negative: I imported several hundred
> > bookmarks from Firefox, and when I (accidentally) open the Bookmarks menu
> > now, they literally fill my entire screen - including the Konqueror menu
> > bar and the panel!
> >
> Not normal.  I also have several hundred imported bookmarks, and they work 
> fine.
> 

Mhh, they work for me too, it is just that too many of them are shown when 
I open the Bookmarks menu. In Firefox, this is implemented as a scrollable list, which looks
much more sane (even though it is not very practical to use with that many bookmarks) and does
not get in the way. BTW this is probably not a KDE 4.2 issue, I just noticed it now.

> > Konsole (or shortcuts in general):
> > ----------------------------------
> > Way too many keyboard shortcuts are set by default! I had to manually unmap
> > half of the shortcuts in Konsole in order to not accidentally trigger them
> > every 30 seconds (emacs user with clumsy fingers here ;-). Also, the
> > defaults for tab switching feel completely wrong: "Ctrl-PgUp/Down now" lets
> > me zap through tabs, like in Firefox or Gnome applications - only it works
> > in the oposite direction! On top of being "non-standard", having
> > Ctrl-PgDown switch to the previous tab instead of the next feels completely
> > unintuitive to me. Finally, "Ctrl-Shift-S", which is a shortcut for
> > "Save-As" in some applications somehow pops up Kopete instead now.
> >
> Take a look at the shortcuts in systemsettings/Advanced tab and see why that 
> is happening
> 

Obviously these shortcut can be (and habe been) changed by the user. But my point was 
that too many as well as conflicting shortcuts are enabled by default.

> > Crashes occur at least every couple of days (not so
> > minor problem).
> >
> Not normal.  I can't say mine never crashes, but no more than once in a couple 
> of weeks - and it generally recovers without any intervention from me.  What 
> do you actually see when plasma crashes?
> 

I guess I exagerated when I said every couple of days. It has actually been more like
once a week tops.

> > Audio:
> > ------
> >
> Sound is problematic on some hardware.  Please do not remove pulseaudio until 
> you have explored all possibilities of fixing it.  You need to ask specific 
> questions, probably both here and on a debian list.
> 

Well it has not been problematic on my hardware for quite some time, as long as applications
did not use OSS and stuck to the "default" Alsa PCM device. Now I see weird stuff like a "x-phonon" Alsa device 
(wasn't Phonon supposed to be high level?) and sound does not work properly... 

cheers,
Christian
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