the next step on the desktop

[Marco Martin]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 2:22 AM, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:
> 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.

the biggest thing that have to be worked on, is making applications
activity aware, it's the only way to convince people that activities
are -not- virtual desktops ;)

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

yep, I would still like to push desktop beyond the desktop, resistence
against is so amazing that i find it harder and harder.
we need a concentrated effort between all areas for this i think, not
just plasma ;)

> 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 do think s&l looks great in the dashboard, however i have some
issues of it being in the desktop, will explain later ;)

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

to me the biggest dumb thing is ~/Desktop itself, not much having
icons on desktop (in the form of folderview applets)
having n folderviews topic-specific goes very well with the concept of
activities.
the biggest hurdle is always the fact of having them in a
background-ish desktop.

> my proposal is this:
>
> * by default, Search and Launch on the desktop

There are several issues with s&l:
* it's not really done for big screens, there is a sad line of icons
sitting in the middle of the desktop
* it's not really done for containing applets, would almost mean
dropping desktop widgets:
  - right now it contains widgets in a little panel like strip with
horizontal form factor. now overly pretty.
  - making it contain free layout applets like the desktop would look
quite dirty since applets would cover the launcher icons randomly
* being always mostly covered by windows limits the usefulness, as i
said great in dashboard (this is quite true for widgets as well, but
being smaller the problem is less strong)
* it empasizes the concept of starting apps, (or "start menu" if you
want) a lot, that's really something i would like to get away with

what about having it (or something similar) that appears as a big
sidebar of the screen when clicking on the K icon?

> * an icon in this S&L that takes you to your desktop folder .. in a file
> manager.

could be, i would still rather find a way to encoourage use of
folderview as activity relevant file containers tough

> * a new panel layout (TBD: let's work on this together!)

a long due thing is moving app systray items in the taskbar and even
hiding all xembed icons by default (but, a voluntary is needed to have
this done)

> * improve the tasks widget to have some of the nice features of widgets like
> "smooth tasks" with the mouse over highlights

yeah, either the tooltip has to be improved a lot or the tasks widget
using its own, like the widgets explorer

> * an "activities" widget (i'll hapilly write it) that sits next to the app
> launcher and when clicked brings up the actvities manager

there is one on kde-look. however i remeber that you had a valid
argument against it: it would slowly become basically a replica of the
activity manager with most-but-not-all of its features.

> * an activities switcher as a kwin effect (!)

there is always the problem it would lie a bit if applications become
aware of activities

> * have all activities avaiable in kactivitmanagerd, even if they are "stopped"
> in plasma-desktop

+1

> toughts?

I think what this reflect, but still not really addresses is the limit
of usefulness of the desktop window as is managed nowdays.

both widgets or the s&l have a quite limited usage if they are in
background, so wanting to change what's inside it seems more a way to
go around it (that's one of the reasons in netbook and mobile the
desktop is not a desktop window, but it wouldn't work in
plasma-desktop)...
also the dashboard is nice, but it's a modal thing, that makes you be
either in "plasma mode" or not.
i don't have an answer for this, but i feel that should be found a way
with a slightly different window management to
* emphasize the dashboard usage
* have some way to make it not so modal (making clicks pass in empty
areas with a window mask? an half-screen dashboard?)

Cheers,
Marco Martin