Plasma Containment default setting

[Martin Klapetek]

On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 11:09 AM, Aaron J. Seigo <aseigo at kde.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday, June 20, 2012 23:54:57 Martin Klapetek wrote:
> > I imagine this could then be used in Dolphin's context menu 'Actions' and
> > possibly in Gwenview too. Should there be such dbus-interface, I would
> add
> > those patches to Dolphin and Gwenview.
>
> the things i look at and weigh are:
>
> * will the feature work consistently (multiple screens, per-virtual desktop
> containments, etc..) and not just work for some configurations
>

Very important points, this is crucial to good user experience.


> * what is the cost to the codebase (how complex will the patches to plasma-
> desktop be .. and this does require patches there)
>

This however I have no idea about.


> * is this valuable enough to add another item to the context menu? context
> menus ought to be fairly focused otherwise they become a clutter of options
> that become more difficult to sort through. we support setting the
> wallpaper
> through drag and drop, so this is a consideration here.
>

Depends. The Dolphin's "Actions" context sub-menu on my machine currently
has

"Encrypt file"
"Preview file"
"Send as email attachment"
"Send file to IM contact"
"Create file project with K3B"

adding "Set this image as wallpaper" does not seem to bring too much
clutter imho. I think it might be more useful to average users than
"Encrypt file" (not suggesting to remove it).

As for d'n'd - it does not work with Gwenview when viewing images. Dragging
the image actually pans the image, so there's no way to drag it outside the
window. Easy "fix" is to switch to "Browse Mode" and drag it from there.
But the usual use case would probably be "User opens an image. He wants to
set it as a wallpaper. So he clicks a button and he has a new wallpaper."
Going through the "Browse mode" is not as convenient, especially if you
have to resize Gwenview so that you see the desktop and you have a place to
drop it to. It makes sense for it to be in a context menu; it's what
they're for after all (if they're not abused).

I think it might also come useful on other devices, where you don't have
dragging capabilities - currently Active on tablets, dragging an image
would(/should?) also pan the image, not drag it. Or the planned set top
boxes, no dragging at all. Here the context menu may come very handy.

given the above, i'd much rather see the DnD support that already exists and
> works used with dolphin and gwenview.
>

I think that part of that effort should be making this feature more
discoverable, especially for newcoming users from other OSs, where dragging
a file to the desktop means "make a copy on/move it to the desktop". So the
user has no idea he can set a wallpaper that way, unless told so by others.

--
Martin Klapetek | KDE Developer
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