KWin Dashboard effect

[Martin Gräßlin]

Hi plasma-devs,

I had the idea to improve the appearance of the plasma dashboard by using a 
KWin effect for it. Currently I have some proof-of-concept code, but there are 
still some issues ;-)

The effect changes the brightness and satuation of all windows on the same 
screen as the dashboard (causing some problems for multi-screen setups, but I 
have some ideas to solve them ;-) ). That's the same way as dim inactive or 
dim screen for administration mode works. So we can have a nice animation 
instead of "it's just there".

I changed the background of dashboard to be transparent, but nevertheless 
there is some black background. I have no idea where that comes from :-(

My idea for the effect does not only include the way the background is changed. 
I would like to have a smooth transition. I have not yet tried anything but I 
would like to paint the windows transparent and raise the dashboard from 
desktop to the top and when deactivating the other way around. I think that 
could be a nice animation. If someone has a better idea please provide it ;-)

But here is the next problem: the white flash when opening the dashboard. As 
long as there is this white flash an animation does not make any sense. So we 
have to get rid of it. What about never closing the dashboard widget? It is 
created during startup and just put behind the desktop. We could also use the 
existing effect to always hide it. Or just have it on top of the desktop and 
have the plasmoids live in there. That way we could also benefit in other 
effects. We already had requests to hide the plasmoids in e.g. coverswitch.

Ah and we can use the effect to block things like present windows and desktop 
grid. Alt+Tab is not that easy to block but it would be possible as well. We 
just have to try hard enough ;-)

Attached you find the current patch for dashboard and kwin. The kwin code is 
also available in my git branch 
(http://github.com/mgraesslin/kwin/tree/dashboard). The dashboard code is 
really just proof-of-concept ;-) Please give it a try and provide some 
feedback.

Regards
Martin




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