the next step on the desktop

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Wednesday, February 2, 2011, alex.tolar wrote:
> Hello everybody,
> I'm Alex, I follow with passion your development and particularly this
> thread. I have a modest Panel proposal to present, 

does it involve eating babies? (http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html ;)

> simple and agreeable,
> and, I think, quick to implement.

oh never assuming things are quick to implement until you try :)

> (1) Put an "Intelli-Size" button next to "Screen edge" and "Height" buttons
> on the panel menu: - when pressed, the panel will expand and reduce its
> width intelligently, as much as needed by itself; - really omogeneous
> interface to tweak the panel shape and position. - That will drop the
> actual manual resizing interface to set maximum/minimum panel size, which
> is: - unfriendly, non-intuitive, tricky to play with;
>   - the actual width resizing system is totally different than the "Height"
> one; - not really clever. Frequent circumstancial events would claim more
> (or less!) space; - the workspace will be more uncluttered, and uniform to
> the "Activities" menu. - Will drop the "Maximize Panel" button on "More
> settings" menu of the panel: - it's showed even if the panel is maximized!
> 
> (2) Improve "Screen edge" button functionality on the panel menu:
>   - it will anchor an "Autoresized Panel" to center and corners of screen
> edges, when it's dragged. - there will be no more need of a "Panel
> Alignment" section on "More settings" menu: - there is no need for
> alignment for a maximized panel!
>   - more user interface, user experience, simplicity, very.. tactile.

people who have various custom panel layouts will utterly, utterly hate this 
and i have no desire to deal with the horrible flaming that will result if we 
were to do this. we could _add_ a "autoresize" button to make the panel fit 
the contents nicely, though.

i'm happy to entertain other ways of setting the size and location of the 
panel, but restricting it is not something i want to do in plasma-desktop. 
sorry :(

> (3) Place an "Activities" button on the panel menu.

there is one when you go into Add Widgets; we could add one here as well. i'd 
like to see one on the default panel itself though so that it isn't multiple 
clicks but just one.


> --- About taskmanager:
> 
> (1) use only icons (this already happens when taskbar is full):
>   - icon size on the panel should be shortcut size (>launcher size,
> =Kickoff) 

i'm not interested in making it a clone of windows7 :)

others are, though, and have written some very nice 3rd party plasmoids. i'd 
be happy to see one or more of these maintained as part of kdeplasma-addons 
even.

> - huge possibility to definitely get rid of program tray icons
> on the System Tray!

totally orthogonal, but planned, yes.
 
> (2) improve kwin thumbnails:

> (better if implemented also for 2d popups)

won't happen; there are proper ways of achieving high quality results, and we 
decided long ago in plasma not to resort to poor (and usually very slow) 
techniques in the non-compositing case when there is a good way to do with 
composition.

>   - chance to close program

i'm uncomfortable putting a destruction behaviour there.

>   - chance to show tabs as separated windows

do you mean kwin tabs? or tabs inside a window, such as tabs inside a 
webbrowser window?

> --- About Kickstart
> 
> (1) abandon "Favorites" tab (use the task launchers instead)

not everyone likes their panel space used for that

>   - right click on a program icon must only show "Add to Panel" (and
> "Uninstall")

Add to Panel is utterly broken in design, second only to the Add to Desktop; 
they are rather horrible hacks put there to make migration more comfortable

> --- more ideas...
> 
> (2) integrate krunner as engine of search field (like Lancelot)

it already is.

> (3) "Recently used" should use qZetigeist and show documents separated by
> fancy style days..

imho, not until it's integrated with nepomuk.

> (4) various tweaks like:
>  -  two columns for program navigation (like nautilus, Lancelot)

patches welcome; seems no one is interested in working on it :)

>  -  not show removable media, there's already a great applet on the system
> tray.. 

it shows Places; this is consistent.

> -  "Leave" tab: can't it be a button, two buttons?

not with the # of entries we have there, no.

> (*) instead of tweaking Kickstart, why not dropping it and improve
> Lancelot?

it's something we'll be considering, yes...

> --- about Tool Box
> I really believe that an always visible "Panel Tool Box" should replace it.

violates the principle of contextuality. why should configuration of the 
desktop containment be triggered from a panel? and why should it move suddenly 
if i don't have a panel? and what happens on a multi-screen system? PVD? 

-- 
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
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part.
Url : http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/attachments/20110202/e23c4b32/attachment.sig