Semi-modal sidebar paradigm

[Àlex Fiestas]

On Monday 04 November 2013 16:40:09 Marco Martin wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> since i was getting the activity switcher and widget explorer at least a bit
> in shape in plasma2, i was experimenting with an idea we were toying a bit
> around at the last tokamak.
> Identifying all pieces of ui in the workspace that are completely modeal,
> like splash, lockscreen/user switching.. and give them all a consistent
> look and feel.
> 
> also identify things that are semi-modal, that are "workspacey" but don't
> take the whole attention.
> that they could be, add widgets, switch activity, alt+tab, krunner, maybe
> kickoff (something else?)
> 
> one idea was to have a sidebar that takes the whole screen height but as
> less width as possible.
> 
> for better being able to comment, i did some prototypes, already in plasma2:
> http://im9.eu/picture/tg1706
> http://im9.eu/picture/jj1706
> 
> (contents of the sidebars quickly ported from plasma1, so they can/should be
> made way prettier that that)
> 
> on KWin, i quickly hacked this as a new tabbox plugin (well, plus an hack
> for left alignment, that should probably go in the qml api, todo if/when
> porting to kwin5)
> http://im9.eu/picture/nv1706
> 
> The blur effect is also different to have more readability, absolutely
> needed if we continue to have big areas with a plasma background (looks
> less transparent but more phisically similar to frosted glass that is not
> only backlit but has some incident light as well) but that's for another
> thread ;)
> 
> comments/ideas/opinions?
Imho this is the kind of thing that requires further investigation, deploy it 
on real users computers and see how they feel about it etc.

Personally I have been playing with vertical panels with content for a long 
time and I have mixed feelings.

As an example the vertical plasmoid picker doesn't feel good to me while the 
notification centre in osx feels good. I also played with the KTp contact list 
and  with a shortcut it worked quite well (and felt nice).

With smaller panels such one with app's (icons only) or the ktp plasmoids I 
haven't had that feeling.

Cheers.