New devicenotifier moved to kdereview

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On October 4, 2009, Jacopo De Simoi wrote:
> On Sunday 04 October 2009 20:57:11 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > On October 4, 2009, Jacopo De Simoi wrote:
> > >  now, we believe that it is ready for merging into trunk. Of course we
> > > need your feedback first, so grab it, try it out and tell us what you
> > > think!
> >
> > with options out of the way :) some thoughts on the plasmoid itself:
> >
> > * it still says "Devices recently plugged in:" when there are no devices
> > listed. that's always seemed a bit odd. it should probably be replaced
> > with an applicable label and the divider line removed in that case
> 
> The divider line was put there to avoid the bad "cropped" feeling of the
>  scrollwidget when scrolled down; this is actually being addressed in the
>  scrollwidget itself, with the nice shadows that now appear when the
>  scrollbar is visible, so I believe that it can go back to having it
>  getting along with the categories. Still I don't know if it makes sense to
>  have one also for the first category.

i wasn't actually concerned about the divider itself, but about the text which 
says "Devices recently plugged in:". when there are no recent devices, it's 
rather odd since there are no devices. perhaps the text should change to 
something like "No devices to show"?
 
> > * when an item is expanded, should the background remain painted? it
> > might make it more evident that the item is "open", and it would also
> > allow a way to solve the next point, too. (and if the background remains,
> > perhaps the capacity bar should too?)
> 
> The background could  in principle stay, for the capacity bar there is an
>  issue: there is no way to make a refresh signal "free space changed";
>  that's why we show it only on hover (and for the same reason it is like
>  that for kfileplacesitem);

ah, ok.. unfortunate but sensible (and now i remember the conversation about 
this a while back on kde-core-devel or kfm-devel as well :). perhaps the 
action icon (Eject) could remain at least? 

and "N actions for this device" is probably redundant and doesn't need to be 
shown at all on mouse over when it is expanded?

> > * each DeviceItem gets its own ItemBackground in case it has multiple
> > actions. it would be nice if they could share the one ItemBackground
> > between them as only one at a time can be shown anyways so anything more
> > seems like a waste; it would also allow the hover effect to track with
> > the mouse more effectively when there are multiple DeviceItems in the
> > list.
> 
> I don't think I understand this; if we had one itemBackground shared by all
>  items we would see the selection bar move from a device to another one. Do
>  I understand correctly?

yes; depending on how this ultimately looks it may be desirable to immediately 
jump the ItemBackground from an action item to the next DeviceItem when moving 
from and action to the next device.

i think, however, that it will feel most natural if the ItemBackground just 
moves between items no matter what they are.

consider two items, both with multiple actions and both of which have been 
clicked to expand .. moving from the second action in the first device to the 
first action in the second device would feel quite "natural" and smooth if the 
ItemBackground moved between them.

ah, another item: there is no keyboard navigation :) up/down arrows and 
return/enter should work ...

some other things that have come up as i've been using it today:

* the popup icon only changes when the user will be notified of a device. 
would it make sense to show an icon change even if the device is going to be 
ignored? that way there would at least be feedback that the applet was aware 
there was a change and chose not to do anything about it?

* i really like how the unmounting waiting is shown; i did notice that the 
icon overlay on a storage volume for mounted matches the action icon to mount 
a device; but when you click on unmount, the overlay is a box with a line 
through it. this seems asymmetrical. should the overlay on the storage volume 
icon be the "unmount" icon?

* there's a Plasma::IconWidget in DeviceNotifier; it never seems to actually 
be used. should it actually be the same as the icon in the NotifierDialog?

* i had marked my external HD as hidden. when i plugged it in, it didn't show 
(obviously :). since i had done this a few hours ago it took me a while to 
remember WHY that hard disk wasn't being shown.

would it make sense to show some sort of feedback when a hidden item is 
plugged in? the popup wouldn't need to show up and a full DeviceItem wouldn't 
need to be constructed or anything, but perhaps a little "A hidden device was 
plugged in" entry that could be clicked on to show the device if you wanted 
that disappears automatically after N seconds?

my concern, having already happened to me after less than a day of usage, is 
that we'll get users falling into the same trap (not remembering what they've 
marked as hidden) and figuring it's some sort of bug or that that device isn't 
getting plugged in properly.


in any case, i'm really enjoying using this revamp of the widget. there's some 
polishing still left to do, but it's coming long really nicely

-- 
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 Development Frameworks
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