Marco unveils the innovative new panel settings UI, complete with a screen cast. Artwork, layouting details, corner cases and discoverability enhancements will be worked on for 4.1, but here it is:
My other fave-of-theday is Akonadi's new logo: it is hot, hot and more hot:
The two colour and small size versions even rock!
15 comments:
My opinion: the logo lacks contrast and it looks a bit Vista-ish. I don't like the Vista style, otherwise I'd be fine with imitating it. Mac OS (which I don't like all at much, or use) seems to have better styling throughout so I'd be fine with borrowing from there.
The two-color version is fine with me, though. I would prefer that one as the icon.
I'm assuming here that an Akonadi icon will appear in the K menu or system settings at some point. Otherwise it wouldn't matter much.
What's caused the plasma obsession with "configuration must be 1-click away"?
I know KDE is configurable and all that, but surely I'm only ever going to configure my panel once? Surely it would be better to have the ability to put my trash can in the corner of the screen there.
alsuren: well, it's not like plasma has a menubar always onscreen with a settings menu that we can put entries into. there has to be *some* way to get at settings. the panel settings used to be available only by rightclick, which doesn't work for people who don't have rightclick (touchscreens for example). tools really have to be somewhere visible for new users at the very least, and not something they can accidentally lose.
@alsuren
I'm not sure about this either.. On the one hand, the new UI looks pretty cool, and certainly easier than entering pixel values.. But on the other hand it really isn't the sort of thing you'd be doing more than once per reinstall, so I don't really understand the need for a new UI. New code and new bugs, as well as a new cashew..
Touch screens are important, but so far it's just an imaginary target. I wonder if anyone has actually checked if the new UI is better than the old one in that respect.
Guess I'll check it out with my desktop touchscreen when the new build lands in Debian.
Isn't that logo a copy of Apple's Core-technologies?
Look at http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/16 ...
"Isn't that logo a copy of Apple's Core-technologies?"
A copy? No. Thematically similar? Yes. Ish.
@chani: "he panel settings used to be available only by rightclick, which doesn't work for people who don't have rightclick "
not only that but when the containment is completely taken up by applets that intercept right clicks you have to hunt for a "blank space". this was a common problem in kicker.i often walked people through the "find a blank space" procedure in kde2/3 =/
@Leo & andreas: "But on the other hand it really isn't the sort of thing you'd be doing more than once per reinstall,"
you never add widgets, move widgets, move the panel or change any other panel settings ... ever? =)
"I don't really understand the need for a new UI."
so because it isn't used every single day, it should remain difficult to use? =)
"New code and new bugs, as well as a new cashew.."
heaven forbid new code. ;) seriously though, harmonizing all the controls into one directly manipulation interface is a huge step forward.
"Touch screens are important, but so far it's just an imaginary target. I wonder if anyone has actually checked if the new UI is better than the old one in that respect."
we have a summer of code project for this, actually.
and while touch screen is important, this also solves problems even with a mouse (see above). not to mention it consoldates multiple pages of configuration dialogs from kicker into one place and will let us provide a nice replacement for the applet handles from kicker as well.
>@Leo & andreas: "But on the other
>hand it really isn't the sort of
>thing you'd be doing more than once
>per reinstall,"
>you never add widgets, move widgets,
>move the panel or change any other
>panel settings ... ever? =)
I think this is the kind of thing that makes to collect statistics. I would say that (in my last 2 or 3 installations of KDE3) I think my panel has looked pretty similar to http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~dl325/scratch/panel.png
I think every time I try a new distro, I might pick up a few things from their defaults to incorporate into my setup, but after the first week, nothing changes.
If we could somehow keep our settings under version control, and monitor how they were changing, and then have a popup window after a month of using KDE, saying "would you like to share your settings with the KDE project" then we could get some useful information back on which of our default settings are shit.
@alsuren let see and vote for some rocking default config here :op :
http://bugs.kde.or/show_bug.cgi?id=160782
Aaron, the work you have made with the other kde plasma team members is very great !
I'm afraid however that multi panel experience will be very limited without panel auto-hiding. This is one of the end feature that make sens all you have done for the panel in plasma :o). Gook luck for the last rush before the freeze !
Cheers
Loic
Why does the 'cashew' on the panel need to permanently be shown/take-up-space (on each panel?) when that feature will only be used for a few minutes maybe once on account setup or infrequently at best? Surely it would be just as discoverable through a 'Design your Desktop' button/cashew prominently displayed in the main-menu. That could then turn the whole DE into 'design-mode' where any and all aspects of the desktop could be moved, guided, justified, poked and prodded to ones hearts content. This separates all that qdesigner type bells and whistles out of the way and ready for messing about with during lunchbreaks. That way no cashews or extraneous context-menus are needed, this satisfies both the touchscreeners and interface minimalists.
@anon: what main-menu? :P if you're referring to the k-menu, well, that can be removed/replaced too. or someone could have several of them. we want something that'll always be accessible.
perhaps the panel cashews should be hidden when plasma is locked, though, because you shouldn't be able to use any of its functionality then anyways... the only reason to keep it around then would be to have an unlock button in it, which it doesn't currently have...
@chani
well of course I would use the cashew button on my keyboard, surely you aren't one of those luddites with a windows button instead? :)
well, one of the main points of plasma is the high availability of content and we are trying to make adding of a plasmoid an operation as common as starting an app, regardless if it's on the desktop, on a panel or on something that dtill doesn't exist, so hope that messing with the panel layout will become an operation way more usual than is now
Sexy logo!!
Well, here are my 2 cents (hoping it's a good contribution):
About the cashew, I believe that it could be hidden (and taking no space), as it was not there, except if the cursor is hovering the panel. Hovering the panel, the cashew appears, now taking it's space inside the panel and being able to be used as it is now.
About the the changing panel settings themselves, I have badly did it to mine, even less after kubuntu took my suggestion to bring quick lanucher by default. Since, I just customized quick launcher's buttons. So, if the cashew acts as I suggested, we badly remember it, and it's still there, easy to be accessed.
But, ok, adding and moving plasmoids is something the user would do sometimes, specially when he finds out about a new plasmoid and wanna try it out. It's a good thing to have around 'cause it's about the desktop use (adding features to the desktop through a plasmoid). By the other hand, resizing the panel is more like *only* when he wants to adjust the desktop for his use, what, once done, almost every time will still there (way more when it's automatically resized when adding/removing plasmoids).
So, beside the cashew suggestion, I also suggest the cashew to give us 2 (or 3) options: Add widgets and Customize the panel (and, maybe, Remove this panel). Customize the panel would breing this new UI for the adjustments. This way, we can still have all options ease to reach, not always seen and taking less space.
What do you think?
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