Continued: milou/kickoff/whatever menu

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 17.04.2014 11:53, Marco Martin wrote:
> Hi all,
> I know the discussion was already pretty long :/ but we have to continue it.
>
> To recap the issue, is to not have too many ways to search stuff, to give a
> good unified design direction and to decrease what's called the "gulf of
> execution"
> i.e. deciding what's the type of thing i have to search, therefore where i
> have to click in order to search it, this slowes down the process.
>
> (to be clear, I think milou is awsome and my dream would be to have *only*
> that without any start menu nonsense, but we recently seen a certain operating
> system that tried to remove the start menu and we know how well it ended ;)
>
> So, i tried to see how kickoff would look if we try to integrate milou into
> it, the result is in the branch
> mart/balookickoff in he repo plasma-desktop, open to testing/feedback/etc
> (even if it doesn't get used in the end, is a good guinea pig)
>
> so here is how it looks:
> * the search field is always visible: the magic type to search was considered
> an inconsistency, unless it becomes a common pattern in KDE:
> http://wstaw.org/m/2014/04/17/plasma-desktopYr1734.png
>
> * i tried with just stuffing the milou search results in it, indeed looks a
> bit inconsistent:
> http://wstaw.org/m/2014/04/17/plasma-desktopif1734.png
>
> * so, let's try to use the kickoff delegates instead:
> http://wstaw.org/m/2014/04/17/plasma-desktopQZ1734.png
>
> * but wait, now very few results fit in the window.. let's try to zoom out:
> http://wstaw.org/m/2014/04/17/plasma-desktopNl1734.png
>
> so now, the status of master is that it shows small results as in the last
> screenshot, if there are many, if there are few, (less than 10 atm, may become
> more dynamic) it shows bigger delegates as in the second to last result.
> besides looking more consistent, it also shows a good feedback to "you
> narrowed the search" , you "zoomed in"
>
> comments? ;)

How about making Kickoff a little taller by default? There is no hard 
rule that launchers can only have a certain height, is there? Vishesh's 
argument against that was that he doesn't want the launcher to cover too 
much of the desktop so as not to lose one's current context when opining 
it, but since one has to shift focus when interacting with the launcher 
anyway, I don't think this makes too much of a difference.

Btw: I've talked to Vishesh about this at the KTp sprint. Another 
alternative we think might work is to have Kickoff reserved only to 
launching applications (so a "search" there would only filter on 
applications, nothing more) and an integrated Milou/Krunner in the panel 
for all your searching needs plus running commands (or alternatively, 
running commands could be in Kickoff instead since it's in fact 
launching applications as well).

My suggestion was that if the KRunner/Milou Plasmoid was not present, 
Alt-F2 would launch KRunner in a fixed position like in current Plasma, 
but if it was present, it would appear next to the Plasmoid. We have not 
yet evaluated whether this is technically possible, though.

Cheers,
Thomas