[Panel-devel] Let's talk Extenders

[Amaury Chamayou]

On Wednesday 27 July 2005 17:56, Matt Broadstone wrote:
> Hi people,
> I'm not sure if everyone has been keeping up with kde-artists in terms
> of the design concepts (god knows I sure haven't heh) but the concept
> for extenders has been thrown around around over there for some time
> now. Anyway, I'm now working on the implementation of the extender
> concept, but the design and look of these things really needs to be
> nailed down. So, having said that, please submit your thoughts,
> concept art, code suggestions, etc. and lets make some decisions!

There was an extensive discussion about it in this thread (originally about 
the sytray) :
http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/topic,202.0

The final stuff looked like that (see page 3 and 4) :

Big Panel extender : 
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/3342/systraymockupextender85th.png

Vertical One :
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/49/systraymockupvertical25no.png

Floating stuff (some focused, some other not (cf highlight)) :
http://img324.imageshack.us/img324/976/systraymockupvertical38ts.png

(Floating plasmoid are torn off extenders)

More floating stuff :
http://img325.imageshack.us/img325/1781/systraymockupvertical42ew.png

There was a thread 
http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/topic,220.0
about a search widget too that let us think about three states for the 
extender :
-Floating (see above), and :
http://img261.imageshack.us/img261/4797/searchfloat42wk.png

-Extender/Menu :
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/9915/search38uw.png

-Docked :
http://img346.imageshack.us/img346/2519/searchdock66qq.png

Finally the extender concept was reused to convey notifications for the 
background task system here :
http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/topic,235.15

See here :
http://img129.imageshack.us/img129/28/taskmockupbacknotif41ls.png

and here (Menu) :
http://img288.imageshack.us/img288/7848/taskmockupback53ew.png

As you can see we have shaken quite a few ideas around this concept and the 
result looks rather interesting. The two main points conceptually are :

-Everything can be torn off to become a plasmoid integrated in the desktop or 
docked in a bar/kicker/panel stuff/whatever you name it (or even a big meta 
app to make a task, more on this later, it's not ready yet...). Think of your 
desktop as a mosaic and plasmoids are little color square.

You make the big picture yours using all these squares (yeah I sound like a 
litterature teacher on crack, sorry ;) ).

-Three main states :
	-Sunken in the desktop, like SuperKaramba applets. As integrated as possible, 
they are "part" of the background. They still behave as normal windows. Maybe 
we could make these "stackable" or something too.
	-Docked in a bar, that is half-expanded (see search widget). Availble for 
intensive use, but reduced functionality (when you don't need the whole app), 
they only live in an extension of the bar. The handle is there to tear them 
off or move them around..
	-Menu/Extender, you have to click first to have the thing appear. Occasional 
use but more advanced (a really big stuff can pop up, full of options etc).

As far as notifications are concerned, very short ones can stay extremely 
simple (see background task), but more advanced one (see kopete or 
korganiser) can be torn off to be put on the desktop as a reminder or morph 
into a chat window or something.

The whole idea still needs more developement but I believe it's getting there. 
I'll be very availble for the next few day so feel free to ask in irc, by 
mail or even through jabber (bemomo at jabber.org) if you want to see any 
improvements in these mockups or some more drawings on your own concepts.

Amaury Chamayou