netbook reference, the polishing details

[Marco Martin]

On Friday 19 March 2010, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> hi all.... (and particulaly Marco :)
> 
> we pulled out P's old (first gen!) EEE PC and stuck a USB key with the
> Plasma Netbook Reference Platform build 18 (pnrp18? :) on it. the good
> news: it worked straight out of the box .. er .. usb drive and looks 100x
> sexier than what it shipped with. and i have to say that seeing it on a
> screen of that size makes the whole netbook interface make even more sense
> than it does when viewing it on my laptop. a LOT more, in fact :)
> 
> so kudos to everyone involved on this so far (marco for his stewardship,
> will and fregl for getting pnrp moving, the kubuntu folks for getting the
> tech preview and subsequent kubuntu spin out there early on for the first
> rounds of feedback and interest)

and to everyone that helped me in the process :D

> my first question, because i'm just that kind of guy, was: how can we
> improve this? given our mantra for 2010 of "fit, finish and polish" and
> watching P work with it the following jumped out at me and i'd like to
> hear your feedback:
> 
> * krunner's UI doesn't make sense in a netbook env and it's added weight is
> hard to justify. it should have a way to turn the search UI in it on/off,
> both with a command line switch and a dbus call. we can't simply ditch
> krunner though as it does things like the screen locking and startup
> notification.

so when the netbook ui starts send quit to krunner, hmm, this should be done 
all the times...
there should probably be a global configuration switch that would be hitted by 
the workspace config module.
and herewe go in one of my pet annoyances about how the things work now:
we need something prettier to manage this wanted difference of behaviour in 
applications when we are in netbook mode, right now we have:
-main plasma shell, start another one ;p
-kwin: maximize windows by default, don't show iconify button and another 
thing i would like, use a regular grid for the present windows effect, with a 
small screen with windows all of the same size makes way more sense
-and now don't start krunner

i'm seeing possibly other apps that would want a different space saving setup 
in this case?

i can continue changing their config files under their feet in the workspace 
kcm like now but kinda feels wrong(tm) to me :/


> * "add widgets" on SAL is an interesting idea and proves that it can be
> done ... but i'm wondering if it _should_ be done. Marco: what's the use
> case for that one? (and sorry if you'd explained it to me before and i've
> forgotten). it seems really clunky while watching P work on it and they
> seem to really be more the point and purpose of the pages

well, there is maybe not an "huge" use case, it's an horizontal form factor 
containment and can store small informative applets, like a clock there -
could- make sense, but yes we can decide to favour semplicity over a really 
rarely used feature (would kill quite a bit of code, yay!)

> * one of P's first questions when using SAL was "how do add new
> application?" if there wasn't an "Add Widgets" button there, could there
> be an "Add Applications" that launches KPackageKit?

this would indeed be nice , that occurs to me we should really add a case for 
package managers in KToolInvocation (that occurs to be the most customized bit 
around ;))

> * configuring the pages breaks the look and feel completely because it
> opens a "normal" dialog that fullscreens itself and so we go from pretty
> pretty pictures to the dull grey of a full screen qwidget. perhaps an
> experiment in embedding the dialog into the view (full screen still of
> course :) and setting a background translucency on it might at least
> improve things?

not totally sure, but te situation has to be improved anyways (it's me single 
biggest pain when i think about plasma-mobile where this problem would be 100 
times worse)
giving the dialog a default applet background would look quite nice perhaps.
the danger in that is that with transarency you have to make sure the palette 
is the plasma one, in dept for every sub widget or you could risk invisible 
widgets (the krunner config ui styed broken for months :p)
but yeah, something has to be tried(tm)


> * alt-tab'ing uses the default box switcher. clicking on the top right
> corner gives us the expose overview of windows (which has an
> odd/interesting way of arranging windows on such a small screen). i think
> it would make sense to harmonize those two modes and have alt-tab also use
> the expose switching so that the experience is more consistent

yes, would make sense, and another place we have to mess with kwin, yay ;)

> there are also an interesting assortment of minor annoyances, like how
> gwenview flickers something fierce when using the thumbnail bar to step
> through a full screen slideshow, or how the add widgets dialog sometimes
> appears as a window with window decorations but those are just "garden

talking about the add widgets dialog, @tokamak we talked about stuffing it in 
the toolbox: i've tought about it, and while it would look way prettier, it 
has the problem exaclt of being into a containment. since the panel is locked, 
it's possible to interact with the tabbar with the add widget ui open, so 
switch on the other pages: it makes sense so to have the add widget ui as a 
different window, shown regardless of what containment is currently active

> variety" issues and bugs that can be worked through normally. :) at least
> two of the bugs that were visually present in pnrp18 are already fixed in
> fact. go Marco! :)

:)

Cheers,
Marco Martin