[Panel-devel] Lots of plasma concepts - pdf - plain text

[Dennis P]

Sorry, it seems the OpenOffice Beta was not Beta quality at all and the odt I 
send was unreadable by all but version 1.9.104. A flacky PDF was created 
(crashed Ghostscript) and is kindly hosted at

http://ervin.ipsquad.net/share/plasma_kicker_tour2.pdf

Here follows a plaintext version with picture links so you can read it in your 
favorite application:

Plasma design concepts presented as a user manual.
By Dennis Pennekamp
Thursday, 2005-08-11

Sheets
Application windows and applet widgets can be placed on a panel or a sheet. 
Sheets can be switched between being a desktop sheet or a work sheet.

Desktop sheets
A desktop sheet is like your real world desktop: A nice surface texture or 
picture place-mat on which you place the objects you work with. As the 
virtual computer world does not occupy any of your real world office space we 
took the liberty to replace your desk with a big filling cabinet so you can 
pull out different desktops as if they are drawers. This allows you to 
organize different tasks or projects onto different dedicated desks.

Tool sheets
A tool sheet analogy could be a big transparent plastic sheet on which you 
sketch notes without messing up the original underneath. As the virtual 
computer world does not have any weight you can stick all kinds of handy 
additional tools onto a work sheet, which you can store away and place on top 
of the windows on your desktop when needed without messing it up. And because 
in the virtual world we don't have to adhere to the third dimension you can 
just as easily slide a work sheet with its tools in between your desktop 
surface and its windows. A sheet can even contain a different and isolated 
log-in session.

Panels
Besides sheets and their content there are special objects to control, store 
and access your sheets and contents, called panels. In many respects they are 
similar to what you find on other operating systems although here they can 
have many shapes, the most recognizable configuration would be as a (button) 
bar at the bottom of the screen named kicker and as an optional menu-bar at 
the top of the screen.

Kicker layout
This panel is named kicker because it uses much the same layout as the Kicker 
application on previous incarnations of KDE, and is made available to ease 
the transition of experienced KDE, Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X 
users.

Hidden kicker
When kicker is hidden it will not annoyingly pop-up when you hit the bottom of 
the screen. However it will tease you to let you know it is hidden down there 
by flipping up a border near in the corner of the screen. This dog ear corner 
may be big enough to show you a small preview of the clock.

When you scrape across the bottom of the screen towards the teasing dog-ear it 
will unfold further. Mouse movement in any other direction will cause the 
dog-ear to retract. This is called discoverability of a feature, a word 
which, according to OpenOffice, you will not find in a vocabulary. When you 
discovered that you can make the dog-ear grow by scrapping across the screen 
bottom you will soon have traveled the short required distance for a 
full-pull which causes the entire kicker panel to snap onto the screen.

Accolades
Above kicker accolades will fade-in to describe each section of kicker. You 
can continue to scrape across the bottom of the screen to your desired 
section without causing the sections to pop-up any additional information. 
Once you move your mouse onto kicker the accolades fade-away to keep any 
additional information popping up appear uncluttered. The accolades will not 
reappear during this session of interaction with kicker. You can no longer 
use the screen bottom to travel along and avoid interaction with kicker 
content as it is now used to make it easy to hit items on kicker in 
accordance with Fitt's law (small items are easy to hit if you can't 
overshoot them because when extend to the screen border). To travel across 
kicker without invoking extenders you can use the safety zone.

Safety zone
Above kicker there is a safety zone, sized as big or bigger then kicker, 
allowing you free movement along kicker without additional information 
appearing. Once you move above the safety zone kicker will start to recede 
slowly, the further you move away the faster it recedes, when fully hidden 
this session of interaction with kicker has ended. However moving back (down) 
towards kicker before it has become hidden will cause it to move up into full 
view again, allowing you to change your mind and continue this session. 
Extenders usually have a neck that crosses the safety zone, giving you easy 
access to both the extender and the safety zone.

Undo session
When a session has ended and you made some mistakes you can undo most of them 
with a single undo command 'undo changes made in kicker'. Items will be 
placed back in their original order, started applications will be asked to 
stop and stopped applications will be asked to start again. However documents 
saved and closed by those applications will not be automatically reopened, 
most applications will have a list of recent documents to help you out.

Visible kicker
When kicker is set to be permanently visible the accolades tease you with 
their existence, without trying to grab full attention by quickly fading-in 
and out as your mouse passes the border of kicker. To actually read them you 
have to start over and keep your mouse on the top border of kicker, once you 
have moved onto the contents of kicker they will not reappear again during 
this session.

To hide kicker (or any screen-border anchored panel) you must scrape in the 
reverse direction (downwards or to the left) to make this functionality 
discoverable the panel slowly drifts off screen when the mouse is left 
unattended while residing backed into the screen-border. Roll-up buttons on 
the side of kicker are no longer necessary or available. An extender appears 
when you mouse over the button, to make them easy to hit you can also place 
the mouse at the screen bottom underneath. When a button allows direct 
interaction without its extender, the extender will go away when you hold 
your mouse still at the screen bottom.

Launch extender
In the lower left corner there is the familiar launch menu button which can be 
opened by either clicking it or by making a single mouse gesture consisting 
simply of crossing through the icon or screen corner and scraping the mouse 
upward along side the left screen border. Once open you can either navigate 
its elegant new structure (I have not seen it or thought of it yet:-) or just 
start typing keywords which will narrow down your options. Even if your 
language is not installed you can launch KDE applications you know by typing 
a 'perfect match'.

Quick-launch buttons
Next to the launch extender are quick-launch buttons, applications, menus and 
or locations deemed popular enough to warrant direct access. When you move 
your mouse over quick-launch buttons a diagonal representation extender 
appears. The name and subtext of the item you are hovering is instantly 
highlighted. When you move your mouse to an icon on the left or right the 
diagonal list scrolls smoothly along, up or down, removing any jitter. The 
highlighting of the current icon name is however instant giving you fast 
access and feedback when selecting an item by name.

http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/6661/diagonalmockupplain3lz.png

(technical picture of diagonal representation, note mouse position and icon 
underneath and its float above)

Diagonal representation fun
At first the big icons are translucent. From behind the first icon you moused 
over a bigger version rises up like a float from behind a hill in an American 
balloon parade. This to accentuate the direct link between the small icon on 
the icon-bar and its big text enhanced version in the extender, it rises 
straight up through the neck of the extender to its destination, in its 
trailing wake the other big icons also turn from translucent to solid, this 
wake continues upwards even after the big icon reaches its destination. 

It is even more fun when you move your mouse across the icon-bar before the 
big icon has risen through the neck as this will cause for other big icons to 
rise from behind the icon underneath your mouse also, creating something like 
a helium balloon release party. (I advice organizers to use biodegradable 
balloons and finders to return the cards and recycle the balloon contents by 
popping the balloon in a upside down bucket and inhaling it with a straw 
while standing up straight and saying 'The chipmunks have left the building, 
thank you very much and goodnight.' :-)

Please notice that the width of the neck will expand to allow all the floats 
to go 'through' and that you are required to initially keep your mouse still 
above the first icon you encountered and must move to one of the adjacent 
icons before the big rising icon has left the neck. This is because eye-candy 
is nice to show of when you are bored but should not clutter your work 
(s)pace when you are focusing on your job. While the default theme is 
animated to be non-intrusively informative, note that other themes may use 
incredibly beautiful and distracting svg or open-gl animations, for example 
to mimic a realistic trailing air flow through icons which animate like flag 
fabric. (Based on home-video footage filming actual fabric with a 
multicolored grid painted on. Not that I have the time and skill for that but 
I'm just saying... :-)

Conveyor-belt scrolling
On the quick-launch button bar the scroll-wheel has a new and efficient 
function. By scrolling up all the quick launch icons start a slow and 
continuous movement to the left, effectively all quick-launch buttons will 
eventually pass underneath the mouse. Scrolling further increases the speed 
stepwise. As a result the diagonal representation content, the icon and 
labels list, scrolls up, making it easy to read lots of text labels at your 
preferred pace. When the desired speed has been set your mouse has complete 
free movement, the conveyor belt will continue uninterrupted. Once you have 
spotted the button you want to select you can scroll in the opposite 
direction which will force the scrolling to make a full stop. Now you can 
easily select the button by moving and clicking with the mouse, or if you are 
still fascinated by scrolling icons you can make the conveyor belt slowly 
move in the required direction.

Note that conveyor-belt scrolling scrolls all the quick-launch buttons, even 
those separated by other types of panel buttons in between. Ungrouped 
quick-launch buttons will follow after a relevant gap.

The scrolling is also continuous; objects make a virtual round, like an O 
shaped model train track with an endless, as in Indian tail bitting snake, 
wagon setup. From the second pass and on, the distance between the objects 
can be slightly increased to allow for a very short pause by the leading 
object on its original location as following objects eat into their  
increased distance without changing the general speed, like railroad wagons 
using their collision cushions.
(Yes, sometimes I wonder about analogy usage but you do get strange questions 
when you explain a feature not yet seen in action on any other OS, perhaps I 
should mention the cushions are spring-loaded, greased and made of steel, 
truly the most manly of cushions har har har:-)    

Conveyor belt fun
Conveyor-belt scrolling can be used throughout KDE; whenever the length of a 
menu-bar is too short or on any button / tool bar. It can even be used at 
normal scrollbars; when placing your mouse exactly above the arrow button. 

For example:
Place your mouse above the down arrow on a window containing a large document 
or website and rotate your scroll-wheel down (towards you) until the desired 
speed has been achieved. Notice that if your computer supports alpha channel 
graphics the end of the document or site will fade to gray as the beginning 
scrolls onto the screen again making it easy to distinguish. Now move your 
mouse to the up-arrow and scroll the wheel up to slow down the speed, scroll 
up further to make it stop and even further to make it scroll upwards instead 
of down, when you scroll down (the opposite direction of the arrow) it will 
instantly stop. Notice that when you try to stop while both the end and the 
beginning of the page are shown together and the slider in scrollbar is split 
into two it will either scroll back or forward until the slider is complete 
(at the top or the bottom) depending on whether the end or the beginning of 
the document occupied the most window-space when you tried to stop.  (Now go 
to your local computer mega store, boot KDE4, make it scroll through the 
illustrated manual page and unplug the USB cables; promo time:-)

Moving into the extender
If you are unable or unwilling to click the tiny icons on the kicker panel, 
despite the fact that they are effectively anchored to the screen border 
making it impossible to overshoot them vertically, you don't have to make the 
bar bigger and less capable unless you want to. You can just as easily move 
your mouse through the neck of the extender and click the big icons instead.

Picture zooming
When above a big icon in the extender you can use the scroll-wheel to zoom in, 
similar to moving towards an object in real life, simply by scrolling up 
(towards the picture). If you keep your mouse near the detail you want to see 
up close, you can zoom all the way until you see its single intersection, as 
the icons are vector based. Zooming also affects the size and location of 
text within the extender border. By scrolling down you can zoom out and see 
more icons and more text labels until they are too tiny to read. To get back 
to the default zoom level you can click the mouse button underneath the 
scroll-wheel or by reopening the extender. 

Normal scrolling
When you move your mouse above the text labels you can scroll like on every 
modern OS. Even though scrolling can cause an icon to come underneath your 
mouse it continues to use scroll mode, to start zooming you first have to 
move off the icon picture to unlock text scroll mode.

The extender closes by moving your mouse outside its outline. This is also the 
reason as to why the extender has a neck, this clearly gives you plenty of 
space to close the extender when you are interacting with the panel. 

Notice that the extender tends to be pretty wide, not unlikely almost as wide 
as your screen. This is required to allow straight predictable scrolling with 
long text labels without dynamic readjustment of the outline, this gives a 
more peaceful experience. As the icons move more closer to the right edge of 
the screen there is less room for text labels which causes them to swap to 
the other side while the icons continue their diagonal path down. Near the 
edge of the screen a few big icons can no longer be placed diagonal, they 
will be placed straight above the last trouble free icon, they remain 
straight above their icon on the bar but are just not centered above theirs.

Taskbar
With the left side of the kicker configured panel filled with quick-launch 
buttons the right side will quickly fill up the same with buttons of all your 
currently active interactive applications (programs) and open windows from 
all your desktops. They are ordered by task, meaning that the windows spawned 
by an application are grouped together and multiple launched instances of the 
same application are also grouped despite that the windows may be positioned 
apart over different desktops. Applications are listed in launching order and 
you can rearrange them by dragging. The extender works much the same as with 
the quick-launch buttons.

With its tiny label-less icons the KDE 4 taskbar can contain more items then 
KDE 3.5 without having to stack them in rows and menus. This gives each item 
a static location at the screen-border and as you can't overshoot the border 
they are very easy to access (2 points made by Fitt's law). The extender 
immediately highlights the name of the item you are hovering. As the smaller 
subtext can be much longer it can contain useful information to help pick the 
window you wanted. For example it can quote the text line on which the text 
cursor resides.

Even if you fill the taskbar beyond the capacity given by your screen size you 
can always use the conveyor-belt to elegantly scroll through your stretch of 
icons. As you can increase the speed and make an emergency break you can do 
it quite fast too, incredibly fast even if you know where the wanted icon 
should approximately be located along the line. Also note that you can start 
the conveyor-belt in reverse too, thereby letting the latest launched 
applications and their windows pass by first.

In the middle of the Kicker layout
In between the taskbar and the quick-launch icons there are three plasma 
buttons to navigate your application windows not grouped by task but by the 
order in which they are stacked on your screen, meaning: from your point of 
view. First there is Alt-tab giving you a list of names to pick from. For the 
more visual inclined there is Shuffle Windows which lets you uncover the real 
windows you are looking at. Thirdly there is the cabinet to switch desktops.

Alt-tab
When you mouse over the Alt-tab button an extender appears listing all the 
window names from the top to the bottom and you can move your mouse straight 
up and click the one you want. Alternatively you can press both the [Alt] and 
[Tab] key on the keyboard to make the extender appear. Then hit [Tab] 
repeatedly (while holding down [Alt]) until you selected the wanted window 
from the list and let go of both keys to make it move to the top of your 
stack of windows. 

If the wanted window does not appear in the list it may be located on another 
desktop; keep holding down the [Tab] key and press [CTRL] repeatedly to 
select another desktop from the swapped out list of desktops, then you can 
continue go through that list of windows either by holding down [Tab] and 
repeatedly hitting [Alt] or by holding down [Alt] and repeatedly hitting 
[Tab].

You can not only place obscured windows on top you can also give obscured 
windows commands, the most famous being 'quit after letting go of all keys' 
by hitting [Q] when at an unwanted window in the list. The application window 
(and all windows belonging to that application) in the list will be marked 
with the same X as seen at the top right of each window.

Advanced Alt-tab functions
Some of the default combinations should be familiar to Mac OS Lite Switch and 
Mac OS X users. Continue to hold down [Alt] and press:

[q]     To ask the application to quit after releasing [Alt].
[1]     To move the window to desktop 1 after releasing [Alt].
[w]     To hide (or else minimize) the window.
[i]     To hide (or else minimize) all the other windows in the list.
[s]     To ask the window to save its contents now.
[a]     To ask the window to select all its content now.
[c]     To ask the window to copy its content to the clipboard now.
[v]     To ask the clipboard to paste its content into this window now.
[`]     To tab to the window above (without pressing [shift]+[Tab])

The [Alt]+[`] combination can also be used invoke Alt-tab without an immediate 
switch to one of the next windows, allowing you to quickly paste or copy to 
and from the current window. As the location of [`] may be different 
depending on keyboard and keyboard layout settings another key close to [Tab] 
may have have been set to have the same functionality.

When using the mouse to access the Alt-tab extender most of the normal key 
commands can also be passed onto the windows in the selector. Some commands 
are delayed (like [Ctrl]+[Q]uit) others are first translated (like [CTRL]+[V] 
to paste onto a terminal window) to make for a predictable and consistent 
desktop environment.

Shuffle Windows
For those who find selecting the wanted window from the list available by 
pressing the keys [Alt] and [Tab] too abstract and prefer big as possible 
previews but without having your windows rearranged all over the desktop KDE 
4 introduces Shuffle Windows.

When you mouse over the Shuffle Windows button an extender appears wherein all 
the windows are resembled as  cards in a diagonal stack. By moving your mouse 
onto the visible edge of any of them the cards obscuring that card will move 
away, and at the same time the relative windows will also uncover your 
selected window by temporarily sliding off the screen to the left or the 
right. When the window you want is on top you can click the mouse button 
causing the windows off screen to shuffle back on screen, underneath the 
window you wanted on top.

This is very fast and direct, depending on your speed of placing your mouse on 
the cards multiple windows will slide off (or onto) the screen at the same 
time, if however you find the required precision of positioning your mouse 
too difficult you can scroll upwards to zoom into the picture thereby 
increasing the visible card edges making them easier to hit.

Technical explanation
While the usage is simply 'see what you want and click it' the idea behind it 
is more intricate. While the number of cards in the stack is directly related 
to the amount of windows on the desktop once the user is navigating the stack 
it is (and should always be) static; the icon of an unexpectedly closed 
window should become dim or invisible but not shake up the stack. This 
predictability allows for minimal mouse travel for sophisticated 
mouseketeers, the target edges of the cards could be as little as 3 pixels 
wide, on the other hand if you set the application logo in the middle of the 
card at 16x16 pixels the edge would be 12 pixels wide. Being diagonal gives 
the opportunity to make for an easy journey in the extender as the mouse-over 
surface can easily be stretched to make a rectangle, giving the option to 
travel not only diagonal but also either straight up or left to right, 
starting from the top card in the lower left corner:

http://img303.imageshack.us/img303/2306/cards140zc.png

(mouse-over surfaces highlighted in green, continued behind each card)

Three possible paths gives leeway for a different sightseeing tour. What if 
windows 3, 4 and 5 were not different windows but different tabs in one 
Konqueror window? Then you could have different tours along the sides: left 
to right to view all the windows and their tabs (ex-mdi windows) or straight 
up to only view the stand alone windows (and only the tabs which are active):

http://img305.imageshack.us/img305/8058/cards151bc.png

(when traveling horizontally mouse-over surfaces give access to individual 
tabs inside one window)

Using the scroll-wheel to auto uncover
If you don't know which window you are looking for you can look at them one by 
one at a steady pace. Do not move your mouse into the extender but keep it on 
top or below the Shuffle Windows icon and now give your scroll-wheel a big 
swing towards the screen to fly in (swing must be at least 5 bumps within 
half a second).

The windows will start to uncover one by one to the left or the right by 
temporarily moving off the screen. Once you have spotted the wanted window 
you can hit the break by giving the scroll-wheel a single tug towards you.

If the wanted window has not passed by and you are left starring at an empty 
desktop it may be located on another desktop. Give your scroll-wheel the same 
big swing towards the screen and the desktop will slide up and away, into the 
virtual filling cabinet for desktops, unveiling the lower numbered desktop 
and its windows below. After the first pass beyond a desktop Shuffle Windows 
will go on a never ending cycle through all the windows and desktops and each 
time it uncovers your original desktop it will even cycle through all the 
work sheets to help you find that window you were looking for. Again, once 
you do you can hit the break for a full stop by giving the scroll-wheel a 
single tug towards you.

You can navigate window by window by simply rolling the scroll-wheel towards 
the screen or yourself (up or down). Once you have the wanted window on top 
you can move your mouse off the Shuffle Windows icon (but do not go into the 
extender) causing the windows off screen to shuffle back on screen, 
underneath the window you wanted on top.

Toggling
If you just wanted a short visit to a window and you have made all the changes 
you wanted there, you can quickly go back to before the last time you used 
Shuffle Windows by clicking the Shuffle Windows icon. The windows will 
shuffle back without any time consuming animation. Click again to bring the 
window back on top again and toggle between the two states. On top of the 
Shuffle Windows icon you can repeatedly use the undo key-command [CTRL]+[Z] 
to go back to previous window arrangements.

Using Shuffle Windows when dragging object(s)
To make navigation easier you can stop holding down the mouse button when your 
mouse pointer is above the Shuffle Windows icon without losing the object(s) 
you were dragging. To paste the object(s) you will later have to click at the 
desired paste location.

Scrolling with a mouse without a scroll-wheel
You can use the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard instead of the 
scroll-wheel. The Home key will start the auto uncover mode, all when your 
mouse pointer is on top of the Shuffle Windows icon.

Desktop Cabinet
When all the desktops can be cached on the GPU in VRAM then KDE will replace 
the KDE desktop pager with the Desktop Cabinet. It works as fast and direct 
as Shuffle Windows. The bottom drawer contains desktop 1. Your current 
desktop is on top and all lower drawers are always opened underneath. 

http://img343.imageshack.us/img343/2443/1bigcabinet1285le.png

(Lacking the required artistic skills (hey, no ones laughing) to make a cool 
metallic paper-sheet cabinet, Dennis opted for an ugly wooden cabinet but 
only to get the point across. The mouse can never reach any closed drawer as 
they all open on mouse-over, making navigation as simple as traversing 
horizontal bars.)

If you remember the number of the desktop you want you can immediately type 
the number while your mouse is on top of the Desktop Cabinet button, or you 
can quickly move the mouse into the extender and on top of the wanted drawer 
and click it. 

If you first want to review what is on each desktop you can use the 
scroll-wheel on top of the Desktop Cabinet button, scroll-up to look at 
higher numbered desktops or scroll down to look at lower numbered desktops. 
The desktops will retract up and away into the cabinet (or come out when 
scrolling upward) one by one with a quick animation of movement. Not far 
behind the actual desktop appears; when 'located ' underneath then your 
current desktop moves up and away. Otherwise the desktop appears to slide 
onto the screen from above:

http://img267.imageshack.us/img267/8339/desktopdrawerhandle28si.png

(mock up of the 'desktop 2 drawer gets pulled on top of desktop 1' principle 
with a metallic handle)

To automatically cycle through your desktops give your scroll-wheel a big 
swing (swing must be at least 5 bumps within half a second). There will be a 
short pause between the desktops so you can observe their content, a 
countdown timer or animation is shown in the extender. If you don't want to 
see the extender you can move your mouse onto the screen border below the 
button. Once you have spotted the wanted desktop you can scroll reverse to 
stop the retraction cycle or simply move your mouse off the button and 
extender.

In the right corner of the Kicker layout
Besides Alt-tab, Shuffle Windows and Desktop Cabinet there are other common 
interactive status buttons:

Oops button
In the lower right corner you'll find the Oops button which is like an 
interactive version of the Esc key and the Undo command combined. It grows 
and alerts you when you can cancel or undo a command or operation. Whenever 
you panic and think you made a mistake you can slam the mouse into the lower 
right corner and click on Oops. KDE will then try to minimize the damage and 
gives you information from the help system, and options to choose from to 
resolve the issue. If you have a support person or support company contract 
one of the options is connecting to the helpdesk which will automatically 
receive information about active applications and the task at hand so you can 
more easily be helped. 

Cancel drag operations
If you are dragging an object and you changed your mind you can drop it onto 
the oops button to cancel.

Clock
The new plasma clock tells you what time it is, really it does.

Trashcan
You can quickly drag items into the trashcan, no questions asked.
When you normally place your mouse above the trashcan an extender appears, or 
after a mouse click.
At the top of the extender you'll see the status of all the partitions 
containing trashed objects; available space now and available space when you 
empty the trashcan. Each partition has an Empty trashcan button.
In the middle of the extender all the objects scroll by, you can change the 
pace with your scroll-wheel.
Most of the objects can be restored to their original location by clicking 
their restore button.
Overwritten items must first be renamed.
At the bottom of the extender is the Empty all trashcans button, move your 
mouse through the neck of the extender onto the button and click to delete 
(marks the space on your disk to be freely overwritten).

To securely erase your files you should encrypt the contents of your 
partitions.

Next are other interactive status buttons in what looks like an inversion of 
the kicker bar, praise those inventive graphic designers. Formally named 
system tray, a name which would now be (or has always been) confusing. A 
panel section containing (interactive) status buttons is more descriptive for 
the user.

Intro repeat
A tool sheet analogy could be a big transparent plastic sheet on which you 
sketch notes without messing up the original underneath. As the virtual 
computer world does not have any weight you can stick all kinds of handy 
additional tools onto a work sheet. You can store away the sheet and place it 
on top of the tools on your desktop when needed without messing it up. And 
because in the virtual world we don't have to adhere to the third dimension 
you can just as easily slide a work sheet with its tools in between your 
desktop surface and your tools. A sheet can even contain a different and 
isolated log-in session.


Tool sheets
Between the taskbar and the plasma status buttons lies the tool sheet manager, 
or shed in short, and it manages collections of items from both sides. Each 
sheet has its own button which you can click.

By clicking on a tool sheet button you toggle between it and its windows, 
applets, plasmoids being: 
on top of the stack
on the bottom of the stack and above the desktop sheet
hidden

The sheet itself is fully transparent / invisible, all it does is contain the 
windows, applets, plasmoids.

Each tool sheet button tells you if it's hidden or not on the current desktop 
by being dimmed or not. As you mouse over a tool sheet button you'll soon 
notice a small extender appearing containing a preview of all the tools it 
contains and its optional name. When you move through the neck of the 
extender into the preview it will expand to fit the entire screen. With its 
almost non translucent background color you can clearly see which tools it 
contains.

When the contents of a tool sheet is visible (with or without the extender 
background) you can position the plasmoids around as they are like normal 
windows. By dragging them onto the (kicker, systray or menu-bar) extender you 
can turn them into a (live) status button. You can also drag them on top of 
another tool sheet button and like with normal drag and drop if you have not 
made your intention clear with modifier keys you get a menu with the 
following options and results as soon as you drop it:
move    Move tool to its new location
copy    Duplicate the tool and its contents and settings into a new and 
independent entity
link    Create a twin entity which always has the same contents but which may 
have different (appearance) settings 

As you drag an item onto another tool sheet button its extender appears and 
you can drag it along the neck into the preview which will expand and you can 
position the tool exactly where you want it, as soon as you drop it and have 
specified your choice the extender shrinks and disappears again.

When no tool sheet is placed on top of your windows you can drag a plasma 
status button from the (kicker) panel on top of the desktop a new sheet is 
created named as and containing only that plasmoid.
  
Plasma is like a parent always placing coasters and place-mats under your 
stuff, so when you want to clean up the mess you made you can just take it 
all away in one go. 

When you drag contents from windows onto the desktop a new (object) sheet is 
created which can contain files, text snippets and other draggable content 
from within windows, such items are never directly added to an active work 
sheet. If you want to drag content objects onto a tool sheet you have to drag 
them onto the tool sheet button on the panel. There is no real difference 
between a object sheet and a tool sheet once the sheet contains both an 
object and a (plasmoid) window. Because of their similarity tool sheet 
buttons and object sheet buttons are intermingled in the manager.

The advantage of an object sheet is that you can use it as a tray to collect 
objects and easily move or copy that content around. By dragging and dropping 
the button you can empty the 'tray' into a folder or into the trashcan. The 
empty object sheet disappears by itself for your convenience. 

You could drag objects like text and pictures from websites simply outside the 
browser window, switch to the desktop displaying your storage hierarchy, 
command the object sheet to appear on top and move the objects onto a window 
below and into the folders. To aid with this the contextual menu of an object 
sheet button has much the same sorting options available as a file browser 
window.

Linked plasmoids
As different desktops allow for different window arrangements you may want the 
plasmoid in a different location or different shape. Therefor you can link a 
plasmoid onto another work sheet. Allowing you to use and adjust the same 
information in different contexts.

By dragging a work sheet button along the panel you normally move it, but by 
applying [CTRL]+[Shift] you can link all its plasmoids, allowing you to 
adjust there position for different desktop layouts.

This may seem odd if you are thinking of plasmoids which stream the current 
weather. And you would be right, you could simply have multiple instances of 
that plasmoid as they all stream from the same website. But what if you are 
using a graphing calculator plasmoid? Yes, then you could type in the numbers 
on the desktop displaying a research website and read the enlarged graph from 
the same but different looking calculator on another desktop containing your 
report with a single 'switch desktops' click. Over and over again.

Sure not many users will ever need a feature like this, but this is where Old 
Europe (tm) usualy had to start the Linux defensive by saying 'with a simple 
script...' but plasma users are like the New Europe and say: nah nah nah you 
other Operating Systems, we can just do it so bring it on.

Changing desktops into work sheets
If the windows on your desktop contain useful information (for example from a 
java or ajax based website) you may want to turn them into a tool sheet so 
you can easily access them on other desktops. At appropriate locations you 
will find these options in the contextual menu. Individual windows can be 
turned into a sheet be calling up the contextual menu with your mouse on top 
of its name bar.

Inner border
KDE has a magnetic border, when you place a window near the edge of the screen 
it will automatically snap to perfectly align to the side. KDE 4 introduces 
an inner border centered on the screen which not only snaps windows at their 
borders but also along significant divide lines inside windows. When you are 
dragging a window onto an inner-border-snap-position, a translucent rectangle 
appears in the center of the screen, you can now let go of the window to make 
it align. The inner border helps you organize your windows and plasmoids so 
you can easily use them together in unforeseen ways without constantly having 
to rearrange window positions.

Example:
You place a document window inside the inner border and click a work sheet 
button containing a calculator, you enter the calculations and click the work 
sheet button again to give you full view of your document. The calculator 
disappears behind the document window except for its display which sticks out 
the top of the inner border. So with your tools and windows arranged around 
the inner border you'll get more predictable positions and are less likely in 
need to rearrange them. This advantage may not be obvious to the maximizing 
(former) Microsoft Window users but as displays get bigger and maximized 
windows start to look silly you may stumble across its advantage eventually.

Pop-up extenders
It seems extenders described here should work like pop-ups on mouse over. 
Users should be able to easily discover and access these pop-up extenders. 
And clicks are already used to initiate the function of the button. There are 
some tricks which could be used to not annoy easily distracted and irritated 
users. 

For example the extender could have a very slow fade in on initial mouse-over 
(you see it coming but you don't really see it yet, a subtle reminder that 
you can access the panel in a special way to keep the popups from popping up 
when you know which button you want to click and don't want any more 
feedback). The slow fade in:
1 gets accelerated when the users stops the mouse.
2 gets canceled when the mouse continues to move across the panel and makes a 
small right to left scrape across the bottom of the screen. (*)

Advanced users know they can configure each partition (type) to behave as 
wanted: 
1 require small right to left or downward scrape to cancel pop-up extender.
2 require small left to right or upward scrape to pop-up the extender.

(*) this small scrape will not make the (bottom) panel slide (down) off the 
screen. For this you need a longer scrape and you'll get feedback on that as 
the panel starts to recede, if you stop before the panel has fully receded, 
the computer knows you did not want to hide the panel.


Phew, lots of different concepts, I hope it can all be grasped by description 
as I can't program myself. Luckily the plasma project asked for idea's so 
that's alright. BTW. Shuffle in Dutch is Couperen. (bureaubladen en 
werkbladen klinken ook leuk).