Activities UI, take 5 (at least :) )

[Ivan Čukić]

Hi everyone,

There were a few threads on forum.kde.org about improving the
activities workflow. While some of the discussions were ... unfocused,
to say the least, the last thread [1] was fruitful.

Andrew created a few nice mock-ups of the new proposed ui:
- switcher: https://community.kde.org/images.community/3/33/Activity-manager-mockup.png
- settings dialogue:
https://community.kde.org/images.community/6/6a/Activity-settings1-mockup.png

The idea here is to give UI clues what activities are about while the
user is creating and configuring them.

The switcher itself does not require many changes (and is mostly
already implemented, but not yet merged).

The configuration is where all the magic happens. I'd say it taps into
some of the good parts of Plasma Active.

1. General activity settings (it is advised to have the second mockup
open while reading the rest of the mail)

- Activity creation dialogue is the same as the activity configuration dialogue;

- Activity has a name and a description. We used to have both some
time ago, but removed it since it was deemed unnecessary. Andrew says
it could be useful - for example, the user could write a reminder in
it or something else. I'm not convinced of its usefulness, but I don't
have strong objections to adding it again either;

- When creating the activity, the user can also choose the icon
(missing in the mockup) and the wallpaper that will be shown by
plasma. This, and the next section will provide some connection to the
user between activities and the workspace.

2. Resources tab (I'd like a better name for this, we became
accustomed to 'resource' due to RDF and nepomuk)

- The user can choose which files/dirs are important for the activity,
and the applications. (I would not go as far as the mockup to include
contacts and websites, at least not at this point). This provides the
idea that the activity is not only a virtual desktop with a different
name.

3. Privacy tab

- this one will not be here. At this point in time, I don't want to
provide detailed privacy settings for each activity. I would rather go
for a checkbox in the General tab saying 'Private - do not track usage
in this activity' - like the current KCM shows;

Apart from the above, the additional benefit is that we will have a
unified creation/configuration interface in KCM and the switcher.


What will be required for all of this?

- The template plugin for kamd to be finished, so that the
configuration dialogue could pass some information to plasma regarding
the containment instantiation;

- Plasma should be able to use the wallpaper specified by the
template. It should also create a folder-view showing
activities://current/ if the user has specified any files in the
'resources' tab;

- Kickoff and Kicker should have favourites based on activity linking;

- I guess some refactorings would need to be done - like creating a
wallpaper chooser component for QML and similar.

Naturally, I'm volunteering to work on all of this, the purpose of
this mail is mostly to gather opinions.


Cheerio,
Ivan


--
KDE, ivan.cukic at kde.org, http://cukic.co/
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