Review Request: Add "Show Icon only" option to the tasks applet

[Aaron J. Seigo]

(please keep future discussions on reviewboard, so we aren't chasing half the 
thread here via email and half on reviewboard... :)

On Monday, August 23, 2010, Björn Ruberg wrote:
> > this very patch appeared here for several times already.
> > and as usual, the question is: what real value gives over auto hiding the
> > text when there is not enough space?
> 
> It makes grouping - what increases the amount of clicks you need to get to
> your application by one - unnecessary. 

or you could turn grouping off.

> You can usually see what
> applications are running because you have to look at some icons only
> instead of having to look at the whole panel width.

which some will be happy with, but certainly doesn't help me with my four 
kontact windows, three konsole windows and two firefox windows. :)

> The later often needs
> eye movements (depends on your screen). It's much more appealing to have
> just an icon instead of a task- item with a much shortened window title in
> it.

yes, it's mostly aesthetic. which isn't a bad thing in-and-of-itself. but in 
this case it means requiring another option in the default user interface, and 
this dialog is already fairly full. i'd rather reserve future additions to it 
for actually useful things.

for more dock-like behaviour, i completely agree with Martin G.: use a 
different widget.

i'd personally even be happy with a different style of tasks widget in 
kdeplasma-addons that did funky things like "icons only" or other fun things, 
as long as it was reasonably well done from a user's POV (so: not a random 
collection of dozens of configuration items, no half-baked presentation in the 
widget itself). it would require thinking about the design of the thing: what 
would make it unique, interesting, compelling to use?

kasbar was a good example of such a "outside the regular box" applet back in 
kicker's day. i'd much rather see more separate widgets tuned to different 
kinds of workflows than us try to cram every possible feature into just one 
widget, turning it into a usability and maintenance nightmare than nobody is 
ever 100% happy with.

-- 
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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