Plasma in kde 4.2: let's make it perfect for my mother and girlfriend. :-)

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Monday 17 November 2008, Giovanni Masucci wrote:
> gone. Kicker used to had these feature and gnome has too. This way it's
> hard for the user to add a program that is not listed in the kickoff menu.

what application that was not in the menu did your two test users try and add?

> Another thing (IMHO) to correct is the fact that with the classical menu
> you can only drag and drop into the panel (or into the desktop). Right
> click launches the program. This is not consistent with kickoff behaviour.

well, if you hobble the system by using old style components, there are going 
to be issues. if you want kickoff's ease of use .. use kickoff. i think you did 
a huge diservice to your test subject by making them use the menu style 
launcher when that's really not suited to new users nor the default 
configuraiton of plasma. it seems you figured "oh, she knows other systems, so 
let's make this exactly like them" and then tested that, which is really not 
how plasma ships nor is meant to be used.

> Next is an issue with folderview as a desktop activity:
> if you right click (on kickoff menu, since in classical right click is not
> working as we have seen) on a program and select "add to the desktop" you
> will not have a folderview icon, but a "plasmoid icon".

the Add To context menu etries in kickoff is a massive hack and implemented in 
a way that is completely against how Plasma actually works internally.

> I don't know if
> these plasmoid icons are still useful at all (from what I understood they
> should now be deprecated in favor of folderview icons).

you understood incorrectly.

> The fact is that
> they should not exist, at least on a folderview fullscreen activity.

the Containment should perhaps be given the opportunity to deal with it, yes. 
perhaps by a simulated drop event?

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Software

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