Looking around and thinking ahead

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Thursday, December 12, 2013 15:41:05 Eike Hein wrote:
> On Thursday 12 December 2013 15:29:00 Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> > as an aside: this really makes zero sense to have. it requires plasmoid A
> > to work with plasmoid B in a way that makes lots of assumptions.
> 
> "Add to Desktop" and "Add to Panel" are present in Kickoff as well,
> and hence are present there because they're expected to be there in
> a replacement.

yes, it’s also broken in kickoff. i noted that when it was first contributed as 
well.

> Discussion in #plasma between Marco, me and others was about ideas
> like a data engine for launchers that various things could source
> from; SLC didn't come up. 

a generic service for this would probably go a long way to improving the 
situation. let’s look at the use case:

* there is an application in place A
* i would like it to appear in place B to provide quicker access to it

places A / B can be:

* application menu
* search results (type ‘A’ only, e.g. in krunner)
* dock
* tasks widget
* desktop icon area
* icon strip (as in netbook containment)

complicating this is that one can have multiple tasks widgets or docks, you 
might be running the netbook containment (or not), etc. there’s a lot of 
dynamic pieces there.

so i’d propose that one principle needs to be:

* place ‘B’ needs to advertise itself as being a possible location

an implementation will end up in two parts:

a) how the components talk to each other (places A & B)
b) how the user interacts with the system to initiate that communication

drag and drop makes it pretty simple -> pick it up here, put it down there. 
the problem is that “there” is not easy to perceive. many people, it turns 
out, do not figure out that they can drop an application icon in places they 
can. they also often don’t think to drag them from places.

the “drag from” gap can be resolved with runtime help (as is becoming more and 
more popular in mobile apps) ... “drop to” probably requires some on-screen 
hinting so it’s evident where you can drag something to.

the “does it accept this mimetype” feature of the drag and drop system gets us 
at least part-way there perhaps.

besides drag and drop, there is the right click menu. it seems more people 
(though apparently still not enough) have learned that this is where you can 
look for such things even in the app menu. it doesn’t work with krunner 
(nearly no one i’ve tested krunner with has tried it.. it’s just too “unusual” 
to RMB on search results? dunno) ... but perhaps the “from” is at least more 
obvious. the “to” is more difficult. if there is more than one task widget ... 
or activity .. where do i send it to? how can that be made clear in a menu 
listing? how do we refer to “the shortcut strip on the desktop layer” in the 
netbook interface in a way that most people will quickly identify it and not 
confront them with jargon?

i don’t have answers to this, i just know that all the means we currently offer 
are letting down a large % of our users.

that’s why i suggested we back up, start from goals and move forward from 
there. doing an amazing job reimplementing things we know don’t work well by 
design doesn’t move us very far forward.


anyways, pursuant to our conversation on irc, this is my last communication 
and involvement with plasma for a good while. do whatever the rest of your 
feel makes sense.

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo