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

[Giovanni Masucci]

Il lunedì 17 novembre 2008 20:34:46 Aaron J. Seigo ha scritto:
> 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?
Vplanner (scuba dive planning program), it's basically a tar.gz that you untar 
and launch. You can launch it directly from your home. I think basically this 
regards binaries you have in your home (some people that don't have a root 
password could install programs in their home directory, a lot of proprietary 
programs just behave like vplanner). 
>
> > 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.
mmm...well, I use kickoff. I just wanted to say that, right now the only way 
people have to add an icon to the desktop/panel, when using old menu, is drag 
and drop. I think that adding an icon to  the desktop/panel could be the same, 
regardless using kickoff or old menu. But it's just my opinion.
> 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.
>
mmm...well it was a test. We didn't use the configuration we wanted to use, we 
compared the default one with the nostalgic one that is for sure not our 
favorite, but still some people might want to use it.We tried to different use 
cases. If a user coming from win/kde3/gnome would come to me asking  "what 
plasma config should I use?", i'd say the default one. But here we were 
testing different use cases.,. That's why we have been testing a pre-beta 
version of kde: to help to give a polished experience to everybody using kde 
4, regardless if they want a desktop similar to xp or a new generation one. I 
tought this was one the points of  4.2, since a lot of users that tried 4.1 
sayied they wanted their old desktop back. Well, it seems I misunderstood. 
I'll just test the default configuration from now on.
And to be clear...everybody of us prefers kickoff. =)
> > 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.
:( ok, sorry. Misunderstood again...it seems I am not quite a smart guy after 
all... I'll search the internet for some explanation about this. 
>> 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?