the next step on the desktop

[Aaron J. Seigo]

hi...

back when we started the path towards plasma i said that we needed to slowly 
evolve the desktop beyond the desktop folder with icons littered on the 
desktop.

now we have activities, kick-ass containments like search and launch and 
grouping desktop.

it is time to go to that next step and move people away from the old ways.

i was at a friend's house last night where a bunch of people gathered to hang 
out, chat, play games, etc. there was a desktop system there running plasma 
desktop with the search and launch containment and a gorgeous translucent 
panel couresty of kwin.

i saw it and hardly recognized it: it looked new, amazing, the next thing. it 
looked amazing.

so, here's my suggestion for 4.7:

let's try something big and new. let's make that Big Move and step away from 
~/Desktop.

my proposal is this:

* by default, Search and Launch on the desktop
* an icon in this S&L that takes you to your desktop folder .. in a file 
manager.
* a new panel layout (TBD: let's work on this together!)
* improve the tasks widget to have some of the nice features of widgets like 
"smooth tasks" with the mouse over highlights
* an "activities" widget (i'll hapilly write it) that sits next to the app 
launcher and when clicked brings up the actvities manager
* an activities switcher as a kwin effect (!)
* have all activities avaiable in kactivitmanagerd, even if they are "stopped" 
in plasma-desktop

thoughts?

-- 
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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