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

Björn Ruberg bjoern at ruberg-wegener.de
Sat Sep 11 12:26:50 CEST 2010 


> On 2010-08-23 09:00:48, Marco Martin 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?
> 
> Markus Slopianka wrote:
>     If this patch works with the other one that implements launcher support, a Mac OS X-like Dock (AFAIK it's similar in Win7) can be implemented without the need to get 3rd party widgets.
>     With a Dock-like setup I wouldn't want text other than tooltips.
> 
> Beat Wolf wrote:
>     i would actually agree on adding it from the feedback i get when i show kde to people used to windows. it's one of the first things they ask for.
> 
> Aaron Seigo wrote:
>     the number of such features that have appeared over the years is immense, and always people ask for those features ... as long as they are new in Windows. there is no point in chasing taillights just to chase taillights. if the idea is a good one, let's do it; if it isn't, let's not.
> 
> Beat Wolf wrote:
>     sure. i was just mentioning it because i for myself think its a good idea and other people want it, so from my point of view if the patch has a good quality, and it's actually using a feature that is there anyway, why not have it.
>     But i see the other point of views too and all have their merit i think.
> 
> Todd wrote:
>     I think that the question is not so much a question of why we shouldn't have titles in the task manager, the question is why we need them.  With grouping and the ability in 4.5 to change between grouped windows by clicking on their thumbnail, at least for me titles are just wasted space.  I understand that for people without compositing they are needed, and some people may still prefer them, but personally they don't contribute anything, and they are huge relative to just the icons.
>     
>     I agree that the the current configuration interface for the task manager is getting a bit crowded.  However, there is a way to add the feature without increasing the complexity of the dialog.  Currently there are three grouping options: "Do not group", "Manually", and "By Program Name".  There is also an checkox "Only when taskbar is full".  The problem is that this option is only meaningful in "By Program Name" mode, and in fact the checkbox is disabled when the other two modes.  So I would suggest getting rid of the checkbox and adding a fourth option in the dropdown "When taskbar is full", or something along those lines. 
>     
>     Also, since plasma supports multiple categories in the configuration dialog, it may be worthwhile splitting the current options into categories.
> 
> Marco Martin wrote:
>     > With grouping and the ability in 4.5 to change between grouped windows by clicking on their thumbnail, at least for me titles are just wasted space.
>     
>     well, i think in this case is really fake "wasted space" because i would agree if the text would let to have less icons in the taskbar.
>     but since when there is not enough room the text gets disabled automatically, this is a no issue.
>     without that i really don't see use cases except making it look like windows
> 
> Todd wrote:
>     It isn't fake wasted space, there is still a bunch of text on there that fills up the area while contributing nothing to me.  I don't think it looks good.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with making it look like windows, I couldn't care less what windows does.  It has to do with not making it look cluttered and inelegant.  
>     
>     The text also contributes to the resizing of the panel, making the panel much larger than it has to be.  I could, of course, force the panel to be small, but that works against me when I do have a lot of open windows, since it drastically limits the number of windows I can work with easily.  
>     
>     Further, when the text is removed the tasks still expand to fill the available space, which looks really bad in my opinion.  It makes sense when you want to show the text is hidden, but not when you don't want to deal with the text at all.
> 
> Aaron Seigo wrote:
>     "contributing nothing to me"
>     
>     * a larger target (Fitt's "Law")
>     * disambiguation from other similar items
>     
>     that may not matter to you, and i fully grant that. it matters to others, and we (the maintainers of this item) do not see enough value in option to turn the items into icons-only to include it in the tasks plasmoid directly.
>     
>     i have, however, already described a way that you (and whomever else) can accomplish your goals. we aren't exclusive, plasma has been designed to allow differences of opinion, differences of goals. others have taken advantage of this with stasks, fancytasks, etc. you can do the same without having to convince anyone or ask anyone's permission. so instead of continuing this conversation which is going to lead nowhere other than to find out what we already know (namely: we disagree on this matter), let's get back to hacking. as soon as your window listing plasmoid is ready (you can develop it in playground until then), we can move it into kdereview and then move it on into the appropriate module. cheers ...

Answering on a mail of Aaron over plasma-devel...

> 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.

No, I could not. If I would do that by still having labels, the taskbar gets 
awfully crowded very soon. That is not only looking silly - it pushes me 
cleaning up my applications regularly just because I can't stand this crowded 
taskbar. And that happens even with grouping activated too.

> > 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. :)

Well, for me the labels don't help either. If I'm forced to actually read the 
labels to find my app, I'm actually not much faster then I'm when I try them 
all out. And I'm not a slow reader. Maybe we are just different in how fast we 
can get the content of such a label. For me, that happens so slow that they 
are not helping me with my workflow.

> > 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.

No - it's not only astethic, it's ergonomic! I can find my apps much faster 
when they are centered in an area about five to ten centimeters. With icon-
only they are. I can move my eyes and the mouse in one area of the screen and 
be sure to find my app. But with labels it's much more complicated. On a big 
screen I would have to move eyes up until three times until I have scanned all 
apps. And don't tell me, that I may make the taskbar smaller. Having ten apps 
smashed together on too little space having the label shortened to five tokens 
- that looks simply wrong. The problem is much more there on small screens 
with 1024 pixels of width. There you have perhaps 700 pixels for the taskbar - 
and it get's full with just four applications opened.

I had a use case where I wished an "icon-only" mode even more. I had the panel 
vertically for several month (it's good for widescreens). But I had much 
trouble with the labels. If I configured the width I wanted the panel to have, 
the labels beside the icons were broken in three (!) lines. That looked 
awfull. I had to make the panel much wider than I wanted just for having it 
reduced to one or two lines - and that stole much valuable screen space. 
Making the panel that small that there are only icons displayed is no option 
either - I had other widgets in the panel that needed some width.

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

Just to make sure again: This is not dock - and I don't want a dock. I just 
want this damn labels away. 
I am supporting Todd in this - for me the labels are mostly noise - wasted 
screen space.( I don't use Windows by the way) It may very well be that you 
are not feeling like this but I think the vote-count and people discussing 
here show that some people do. For them this "Show icon only" option is of 
value.

But as I read Aarons last post as "last word" I will fork the tasks applet, add the option, place it on playground and advertise it to all those people that want to have this feature.


- Björn


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On 2010-08-22 13:52:33, Björn Ruberg wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> http://svn.reviewboard.kde.org/r/5078/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated 2010-08-22 13:52:33)
> 
> 
> Review request for Plasma.
> 
> 
> Summary
> -------
> 
> This patch adds the option to put the taskbar in an icon-only mode - similar as in Windows 7 . This is an much requested feature in bugzilla.
> It is fairly simple and just using features already existing in the code, adding an m_showIconOnly member to the layout and the abstractitem plus the adaption of the config ui.
> 
> 
> This addresses bug 159480.
>     https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=159480
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/tasksConfig.ui 1166313 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/tasks.cpp 1166313 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/taskitemlayout.h 1166313 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/taskitemlayout.cpp 1166313 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/abstracttaskitem.h 1166313 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/abstracttaskitem.cpp 1166313 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/taskgroupitem.h 1166313 
>   /trunk/KDE/kdebase/workspace/plasma/desktop/applets/tasks/taskgroupitem.cpp 1166313 
> 
> Diff: http://svn.reviewboard.kde.org/r/5078/diff
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> Moved panel around and made sure it works. Looks actually pretty good this icon-only mode!
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Björn
> 
>

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