Review Request: Add a system tray option to always show all items

[Volker Härtel]

> On Feb. 26, 2011, 1:31 p.m., Marco Martin wrote:
> > hmm i'm not sure about it, i don't see an huge use case of showing icons that are meant to be passive (so not telling anything useful at the moment)
> > 
> > however the patch is well done (i appreciate disabling the combo boxes when the always show all option is checked)
> > so hmm, yeah, i'm a bit on the fence on this one but if there aren't other objections i think it can go in
> 
> Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
>     i object on the basis that you don't see a use case for it.
>     
>     let's not get into the (bad) habbit of adding UI just because we "can't think of a reason not to". :)
> 
> Jonathan Marten wrote:
>     Obviously I can only speak for myself here, but my use case for having such an option is that I find things appearing and disappearing from the system tray (or other places) of their own accord extremely distracting.  Especially since this affects other things as well - with a full taskbar a new item in the system tray can change its width resulting in a rearrangement of the rows and tasks that I thought were in a particular place ending up somewhere else.  My memory expects things to stay where they were put, or at least where they were when I last looked - hence my preference for keeping all system tray items visible, on KDE or any other desktop.
>     
>     The desired operation can be achieved in other was, of course.  But this option can be implemented with no substantial code changes, very little visual intrusion and no effect at all on those users who choose not to use it.
> 
> Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
>     the impact on those who choose not to use it is yet more config UI. the impact on the developers is yet more features to maintain in this already rather complex plasmoid.
>     
>     the benefit as i can see it is that it makes it quicker on first set-up (don't have to set each item on the tray to be always visible), and prevents re-configuration when new items are added. what it really seems to be doing is working around the fact that the tray has a ridiculous number of entries in many set ups due to applications generally abusing that area to throw random icons at the user. i don't feel, however, that the inconvenience of configuring the tray for those who wish to have all icons always visible in the tray (which doesn't seem to be a majority) is not imho worth the added UI and code.
>     
>     btw, two things with the patch as-is: it doesn't resolve new items coming and going which has the same effect, albeit with less frequency; it also resets all the values of the individual items to "always show" in the config UI which probably is incorrect (toggling the radio on then off means having to reset all the entries manually).

I like the idea very much. for me the reason is a bit different: since the plasmoid extends the invisible icons to the top (instead to the left), I really can't stand that extension anymore, so I always have to go through all entries and select "always show". This happens more often than you think.

But as Aaron noticed this patch should not set individual icons, but handle this new option when icons are shown/hidden.


- Volker


-----------------------------------------------------------
This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/100743/#review1667
-----------------------------------------------------------


On Feb. 25, 2011, 4:33 p.m., Jonathan Marten wrote:
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> This is an automatically generated e-mail. To reply, visit:
> http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/100743/
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> 
> (Updated Feb. 25, 2011, 4:33 p.m.)
> 
> 
> Review request for Plasma.
> 
> 
> Summary
> -------
> 
> If the user wishes to have all system tray items visible at all times, there is no single setting to allow this.  The only option is to go to System Tray Settings - Entries and set all of the "Visibility" combo boxes to "Always Visible", and repeat this whenever a new item appears.
> 
> All versions of a popular closed source operating system have this option for the system tray.
> 
> This change adds a check box "Always show all system tray items" below the list on the Entries page.  Checking this sets all items (current and any new ones that may appear in future) to be always visible and disables the "Visibility" column.  It is still possible to access the "Keyboard Shortcut" column.
> 
> The default is for this option not to be set, so the system tray operation is the same as before.
> 
> 
> Diffs
> -----
> 
>   plasma/generic/applets/systemtray/ui/applet.h b0e9a55 
>   plasma/generic/applets/systemtray/ui/applet.cpp bd2d8ff 
>   plasma/generic/applets/systemtray/ui/autohide.ui 3b6efff 
>   plasma/generic/applets/systemtray/ui/taskarea.h 091763c 
>   plasma/generic/applets/systemtray/ui/taskarea.cpp cfa503b 
> 
> Diff: http://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/100743/diff
> 
> 
> Testing
> -------
> 
> Built kde-workspace with these changes, checked operation of system tray and settings dialogue with this option checked and not checked.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jonathan
> 
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/attachments/20110718/14fc0792/attachment.htm