Note: The following covers features and material that will be available in 4.2, which will not be released until January 2009.
No X11 desktop shell can be considered complete unless it has "eyes", right? Behold, new eyes plasmoid in all its scalable SVG greatness!
Now that this is in kdeplasma-addons, our work here is obviously done. =P
On a more serious note, the Plasma team is making great progress these days. I particularly like the new Plasma style notifications that are part of the new system tray:
If you have more than one notification, they stack up on top of each other. As you can see they have cute curved edges, even without composite, and they are themable. We'll be adding the UI server jobs there as well. And yes, those are Extenders! =)
The new system tray supports icon hiding, embedded Plasmoids and more. Fun! The panel configuration bar is looking really slick, and when the panel configuration is shown right clicks "pass through" the Plasmoids themselves so you can get to the context menu for things like removal or configuration easily.
You'll also be able to install scripted Plasomids from the Internet properly in 4.2.0:
Unfortunately those two scripts are packaged incorrectly and thus do not actually work with the automagic installation. At least you get a cute error dialog now when that happens, and properly formed packages do install.
The first "developer corner" I'll be doing on the videocast will be on making Plasmoid packages. We'll work backwards from there to actually writing a simple Plasmoid from the ground up. =)
37 comments:
It'll be feature-complete when we have a Plasmoid of keyes - not before :p
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/KEyes?content=51493
Hi,
I'm a little afraid of asking this, as I know all the drama it caused in the past but, is it possible to get the "common" kde 3 desktop in kde 4.2?
I remember the wonderful screencast of the folderview as a container: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/06/ok-then-how-about-video-more.html
Just wanted to know if it is "properly" working now?
Thanks for every thing you're doing :)
Carlos
Could You write a little more about a new systray? How did You manage to get rid of rendering problems and all that garbage? Is it a temporary hack or this is effect of brand new systray specification? As I remember, there were such plans.
Anyway - good job! :)
@cpereira: Folder View as desktop is already available in trunk. Will be in 4.2.
Aaron, thanks for this update, I always enjoy reading your posts.
Since KDE 4.0, I've been poking at KDE every now and then, just a tiny bit to see how thing are going. But I haven't been able to fully switch, although I do find many aspects of the desktop unparalleled. Now, it seems more and more that KDE 4.2 will be where I take the plunge. Looking forward to it!
Hello Aaron,
the new notifications are awesome! But when you have "main" panel (I suppose it's that where is systray plasmoid located) on top edge of the screen, rounded corners are wrong placed - on top.. And I think it's a mistake.. ;)
(KDEmod 4.1.2 - backported some features from 4.2)
@Milan: "top edge of the screen, rounded corners are wrong placed - on top.. And I think it's a mistake.."
code that lets us define the direction is currently on review board and being cleaned up. we're 3 months from release (in a 6 month cycle) so there will be things that aren't 100% complete quite yet.
"backported some features from 4.2"
i really, really wish people would stop doing this.
WOW! I'm really blown away!
I'm impatiently waiting for first alpha to try out this sleek features :)
@ssj:
Seconded.
This is extremely kool stuff. The notification thing is something I really look forward to trying. And the eyes too, of course!
Which highlights the need to fix kde-apps.
In my opinion scripts should all be committed into a public SVN and then packaged automatically from tags.
hehe seigo, i know it will make you smile
http://www.vuntz.net/journal/2008/10/22/494-desktop-shell-from-the-user-experience-hackfest-general-overview
@Ian Monroe: imho, what we need is a packaging tool. something pointy-clicky and easy to use. that way people don't need to learn svn nor do they have to put them somewhere public to make things work.
there was a SoC project for this, but it hasn't gotten to 100% quite yet.
Aaron, how do you get those beautiful fonts? I do not get them on the a default KDE 4.1 or even the upcoming iterations of 4.2. The "Notification from kopete" looks sharp and crisp.
That's good news but tell us how do get those beautiful fonts plus the smaller icon sizes that make everything look professional. I hope you will not suggest that I download those MS fonts. Thanks...Cb..
@aseigo With Amarok scripts there was tons of times where an author would stop maintaining a script. There is no procedure for another community member or Amarok dev to fix a trivial bug or start maintaining the script.
It is a massive QC problem.
Details with how to put together a script tar ball is one of things that could go wrong. But it isn't the biggest problem we haven't; unmaintained stuff certainly is. If learning SVN prevents some contribution (which I honestly don't think it will; a user who can learn python etc can learn SVN), its still a net gain from the possible advantage of having a real community of script writers helping each other out.
Plus users who can't use SVN can still contribute, they just can't upload to GHNS. Which seems fair enough.
Of course, this is 90% vaporware. :) (The 10%: there are already scripts which can make tarballs out of SVN tags for GHNS)
Plasma Rocks, but Konqueror still sucks. Dolphin doesn't suck as hard as Konqueror when it comes to file managment, but Konqueror in KDE 3 was near to an ideal file manager, and it was a decent web browser. I can't say that about the KDE 4 one.
Aseigo,
and what about animated background? Is it planned for kde 4.2? I need an animated background to work better :-)
Great job! The notification looks great.
I'm looking forward to the videocast.
@blueget:
> Plasma Rocks, but Konqueror still
> sucks. Dolphin doesn't suck as hard
> as Konqueror when it comes to file
> managment, but Konqueror in KDE 3
> was near to an ideal file manager,
> and it was a decent web browser.
> I can't say that about the KDE 4 one.
It is really difficult for us developers to fix your issues if the only input we get is "Konqueror still sucks" and "Dolphin doesn't suck as hard". It would be helpful if you submit your concrete suggestions at bugs.kde.org or use kfm-devel@kde.org for discussions. Thanks!
I was about to ask "what about grouping in the task bar?" Then I checked bugs.kde.org and found my answer: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152700#c8
I also saw someone working on moving tasks around, though I didn't see that being implemented yet. Good news about the grouping, anyway, I really miss that (having 5-10 gvim windows open can be a real pain on the eyes in the current taskbar ;) ).
Great job on plasma, Aaron and all the other folks! :)
My Kopete notifications appear in 4.1 on the top/center of the screen. At first I thought this was a bug (maybe it is) but I really learned to *love* it because they are very unobstrusive there. If I work full screen with a text editor, the bottom is usually the place where I type and where I resize windows (by dragging the window border) - but this is what is hidden by notifications in KDE 3.5. So even if kicker is on the bottom, I think it is a good idea for notifications to pop up at the top center.
Aron,
Like many others, I've been following the KDE4 development with great enthusiasm. Keep the good work flowing. Here is my question:
In light of nvidia problems, (and recent improvements, if any) and the lack of good ati drivers, I think it will be helpful to have a page which lists the developers' system configurations. Expecially the graphics card. That way, we the lame users, know on what type of hardware KDE4.x runs smoothly. Making this a wiki page, users can add their own configs along with their degree of success/failure.
This will be a sort of truth table of various system hardwares (in)capable of running KDE4.x.
Please please please tell me that the Plasma notifications are logged and can be recovered!
That's the number 1 usability problem with error/alert dialogs from the past 30 years of user interface. Something as simple as allowing to recover the past notifications for review even after the user has closed the panels, would suppose an important difference.
Plasma and KDE 4.x will not be feature complete until the accessibility issues such as this one are taken care of:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165402
It is a shame to see so much effort being put into eye candy and no effort being put into accessibility. I suppose that no one wants to work on the code that won't make him famous.
@dotancohen: I already answered your comment on the KDE forums. A keyboard LED applet has just gone into kdereview.
@SSJ, hans:
Trust me, I've been keeping a very close eye on the Python bindings for Plasma so I can port KEyes the moment Plasma is KEyes-ready. :D
I understand Simon Edwards already did his magic in trunk, so it shouldn't be long now.
@Peter Penz: You know what I mean: All the good features from KDE 3 are missing, like decent splitting, various view modes (fsview, for instance), the media:/ kio-slave (and others), the sidebar functions, various context menus and so on.
For Web browsing, Konqueror in KDE 4 is not usable because it freezes and crashes often, and much websites that worked in KDE 3.5 don't work anymore.
Dolphin has got at least the sidebar and some advancements like the +/- buttons for selecting files and the breadcrumb navigation.
Sorry for my rant before, but I'm really dissapointed with Konqueror, which was a masterpiece of power-user-software in KDE 3.5 and is the reason for me (and much other users) to stick to KDE 3.5 or switch over to other Desktop environments.
hi aroon, i'd like to know if u plan to backport the new systray to kde 4.1, at least the better "appearence".. thanks, bye!
dotancohen: "It is a shame to see so much effort being put into eye candy and no effort being put into accessibility. I suppose that no one wants to work on the code that won't make him famous."
Why do you think that efforts devoted to item A are automatically away from item B? So, according to you, effort has been dedicated to "eye candy", while accessibility has been left languishing. Well, what makes you think that the eye candy-creators know anything about accessibility? Should those people twiddle their thumbs, until accessibility-issues are resolved?
I would rather see them create kick-ass eye-candy, while accessibility-folks fix the accessibility-issues. The two are not mutually exclusive. Project like KDE can work on several thing simultaneously.
@Dotan: "I suppose that no one wants to work on the code that won't make him famous."
you know, it'd be really nice to converse with you without the ad hominem attacks. it's unnecessary and extremely frustrating.
we are working on a11y issues. a keyboard status widget just went into kdereview the other day, and we are aware of many issues including keyboard nav of panels (a 4.3 goal at this point), something that kde3 never even had.
we work on a lot of things that are far from glamorous.
@piivi: we have no intentions of backporting things to 4.1, no.
@axel: we have wallpaper plugins, so it's possible now. hopefully we'll have the e17 based ones ready for 4.2.
@balinares: heheh.. can't wait to see it ;) and yes, the python bindings are in kdebase now.
@blueget: "decent splitting,"
i still have splitting here in konqueror.
"various view modes (fsview, for instance)"
those were third party plugins; they need to be ported to kde4, nothing to do with konq.
"the media:/ kio-slave"
this was unfortunately broken by design (leads to URLs many applications couldn't deal with). so we now have the places model. a places sidebar for konq would be nice, and shouldn't be too hard as we already have a re-usable PlacesView (which is used in many places already)
"(and others)"
which others?
"the sidebar functions"
which ones? i still have sidebars in konq.
"various context menus"
which are all back in 4.2; they never really went away, they just hadn't been re-integrated with the new model/view based views.
things are being worked on an improvements are being made, including on "little" things like performance.
@blueget
> You know what I mean
He wouldn't have asked otherwise I guess ...
> decent splitting
How is this any different in KDE4?
> various view modes (fsview, for instance)
Many view modes are 3rd-party plugins, so complain to the respective authors. Other than that, at least the KDE 4.1.2 packages for KUbuntu Hardy have a konqueror-plugin-fsview-kde4...
> the media:/ kio-slave (and others)
This one is gone I guess... of course you are free to port it ;)
> the sidebar functions, various context menus
I don't know, they don't look a lot different to me, than in KDE3 ... again some sidebar plugins and context menu entries are 3rd party software ...
> and so on.
Really?
> For Web browsing, Konqueror in KDE 4 is not usable because it freezes and crashes often, and much websites that worked in KDE 3.5 don't work anymore.
I really can't confirm that. Rendering is a lot better than in my KDE3 installation, never had any freezes (at least not konqueror) and it crashes rarely. I use KDE4 on my main machine for several weeks now, and it's definitly usable. (Which does not mean that it might not happen, but it's not general behaviour either)
> Dolphin has got at least the sidebar and some advancements like the +/- buttons for selecting files and the breadcrumb navigation.
Huh? It has the sidebar and breadcrumbs more or less since the beginning?!
> Sorry for my rant before, but I'm really dissapointed with Konqueror ...
Have you actually tried anything more recent than a KDE 4.0 preview (if at all)?? And I don't talk about recent SVN, KDE4.1.2 would be enough. So either you have something useful to say or be quiet, but please stop spreading FUD and insulting developers!
And btw., where is the relation to the blog post?!
Michael
I was delighted to see the Plasma notification system. Looks wonderful.
I agree with Turingtest though: is there any way to log all passive notifications? This would be a dramatic boon to the user interface, and in fact, I don't think any OS that implements those has done something similar yet.
A simple program such as a "Notification Log Viewer" would allow you to view all notifications by timeline, or filter them by program, or text search. It would theoretically be simple to do.
KDE 4.2 will be fantastic.
Dude, may you continue to rock the free world with such awesomeness. Don't let the naysayers get you down, - you've always been on the right path, - whether the rest of us saw the vision or not, - and as we draw towards 4.2, things are all kinds of incredible! From the bottom of my heart, thankyou for making KDE even better than we thought it could be, and bringing it into the 21st Century!
@jud: I'm not sure but doesn't the notification system already provide for logging notifications to a log file. I think it's in the System Settings Notifications module (not at my KDE machine right now).
OK, it seems that much of the things I complained about are Mandriva's fault (the lack of a sidebar in Konqueror for example), but the file management experience in KDE 3's Konqueror is still much, much better imo.
Aaron, it is great to see that you and your fellow plasma developers now have the confidence to offer binary compatibility for plasma from 4.2 on. I am sure this will motivate more developers to work on plasmoids, knowing that they won't have to go through issues like Ivan had to.
You are doing an amazing job!
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