KDE-CVS-Digest for February 27, 2004

In this week's KDE CVS-Digest: KolourPaint adds transparent selections.
Some preliminary work on a new control center.
KMail adds IMAP folder expiry.
KDevelop adds Opie code templates.
Plus bugfixes in Quanta and
Kopete.

Dot Categories: 

Comments

by anon (not verified)

"Benoit Walter committed a change to kdenonbeta/kcontrol3

Some preliminary work on a new control center, with focus on usability.

Here are the features, heavily inspired by the huge number of messages I
read on the usability mailing-list:
- Task oriented interface
- More useful search system (as seen in JuK, react on each keypress event)
- More visible help (+context help)
- Still using the current organisation (categories)
- Much improved navigation system
- No sub-windows"

by Anonymous (not verified)
by Anno (not verified)

Shweet. Looks way better than the current one.

by gerd (not verified)

desktop and KDE component should not be the same icon. Use a KDE gears icon for "KDE Component".

by panzi (not verified)

nice. (only watched the shots)
but wouldn't it be better to hide the keyword option per default? for n00bs it's confusing (or isn't it?). maybe in place of ".. or enter a query" a button wich unhides the text field.
hmmm, and a button which toggles between the config page and the choose category page, without loosing the currently changed but not applyed settings. but when you choose a new config page then you should be prompted like the current kcontrol dose.

by B. Walter (not verified)

I have already made some changes which should address those problems (eventhough the search entry is not hidden). So the screenshots are already outdated :-) Anyway, the work is far from being complete so please try the CVS version if you want to send feedback.

by Eike Hein (not verified)

Alright, this simply *rocks*. This looks like a KControl my mother could actually use. Great, great usability judging from the first screenshots. I love how it emphasizes *discoverability*. Rock on.

by Pupeno (not verified)

Hey hey!, the new KControl is looking very good... congratulations!
I'll die waiting for it till 3.3 (because it'll be released with 3.3, right ?)

by B. Walter (not verified)

No decision has been taken yet. As it would be a pity to change the control center at each release, we should first make sure that this solution is good enough, make more usability tests, etc... Otherwise, it will be worth waiting a little bit more and have the best control center in KDE 4.0. Let's see...

by Pupeno (not verified)

Oh, that's unfortunate.
We could take a very good use of an improved KControl in Ark Linux (http://www.arklinux.org) where I'm trying to push KControl as a general control panel application and make all the configuration dialogs a KCM (which is proving to be hard as well), but the current KControl is not very nice for that generic control pannel task, just becuase of how it is organized (I mean, KControl, not the KCMs).
Do you think, in the case it will be hold to KDE 4.0, that it would be posible to make separate releases of that KControl ? or something like that ? (hey!, it seems like I'm postulation ourself for testing it in a working enviroment ;)
Thanks.

by je4d (not verified)

i've read some posts by aseigo on kde-usability against changing the kcontrol tree layout in minor releases - so i think there would be quite some objection to replacing kcontrol compeletely for 3.3..

That said, this kcontrol replacment looks very nice, and i hope to see it in kde4 (:

by Jeff Brubaker (not verified)

What is the "System Administration" option? Is this going to attempt to configure non-kde Applications like Apache...?

by Ed Moyse (not verified)

Hooray!!!!

by André Somers (not verified)

That sucks! I want my CTRL-T = Terminal window back! I use that *all* the time!

by norman (not verified)

Click settings, configure shortcuts on the menubar, and change it back to your prefered setting.

The reason why it was changed is because the majority of users want tabs, not terminals

by Source (not verified)

This majority of users argument sucks! Nowadays some people seem to think that it is enough to justify anything, and worst than that, they don't even try to use it in a way that makes sense... WTF does the majority of users needing tabs has to do with this? Even if most people needed Terminals IMO it would still be a good change. We keep shortcuts for both cases and the one for tabs is consistent with other browsers.

by Alex (not verified)

I'm always used to Ctrl+T in Mozilla FIrebird, Mozilla 1.6 etc. I never sue my terminal as often as I use tabs, that's why I always make the terminal Ctrl+Z and tabs Ctrl+T.

GOOD JOB KDE TEAM!

by Source (not verified)

Guess what! I use Ctrl+T in Mozilla firebird, I probably don't create new tabs as often as I sue terminals and I always make tabs Ctrl+T!

GOOD JOB KDE TEAM!

by Alex (not verified)

KDE should tailor its desktop to the majority of users, but remain flexible so that the minority will still have a functional and fun desktop.

I don't know anyonw who uses terminals more often than tabs. Hence due to tabs being used more often and Ctrl+T being more intuitive for tabs and being the standard shortcut in most browsers, it was changed.

All the people who need the terminal so much should just use Konqueror's terminal emulator, adapt to the new shortcut, or change the defaults themselves, it isn't so hard.

by Source (not verified)

Incredible, did you read my message?

We should try to please the majority of users. I never said we shouldn't if you think I did, read again.

Also I agree with you, you agree with me, and this has nothing to do with more people using terminals then tabs. Even if they didn't this would have been the right choice.

Is this that complicated to follow?

by Steffen (not verified)

I'm sure a lot of people have been waiting for this! :)

by Arend jr. (not verified)

Well, I use Ctrl+T for new tab as well. But I've not really been waiting for it, it's quite easy to adjust it yourself ;)

by Carlo (not verified)

Nice. :)

by Max Howell (not verified)

I agree with this change mostly, since it will be more familiar to most OSS users. However I think perhaps it is unwise to release the change with 3.3, if there will be a 3.3 release. People will allow changes to common shortcut keys in common applications for major version changes (some will be quite annoyed with that too), but it is far more acceptable to make this change with the jump to KDE 4.0.

If there is a KDE 3.3 then perhaps it should be released with this shortcut still set to CTRL+SHIFT+Key_N. For the sake of not making users dislike the idea of upgrading .x releases. People who can't wait that long can easily change the shortcut.

Apologies that I didn't bring this up before the change, but kde-usability has become too high-traffic for me to keep up with.

by kx (not verified)

Shouldn't www.freedesktop.org form a specification for different profiles for keyboard shortcuts ? We'll have different profiles for people coming from windows, apple, or unix. Both GNOME and KDE will have their separate profiles as well. But every application, whether in GNOME or KDE will follow the profile choosen by the user.

by Source (not verified)

Define coming from Unix kind of shortcuts...
But yeah a standard for at least an important subset of shortcuts would be quite nice, I guess.

by Simon Perreault (not verified)

> If there is a KDE 3.3 then perhaps it should be released with this shortcut still set to CTRL+SHIFT+Key_N. For the sake of not making users dislike the idea of upgrading .x releases. People who can't wait that long can easily change the shortcut.

ctrl+shift+n still is the default shortcut. ctrl+t is the alternative shortcut.

by anon (not verified)

yay!

by Mario (not verified)

It would be great if you could embend a browser component and external aplications in the new Kcontrol so web only configuration applications (like webmin and swat from samba) and distribution only applications (like mandrake control center, yast and synaptic) could be seen inside kcontrol.

I remember that there used to be a couple of projects that allready did that but if Im not mistaken they were for kde2.

Just a wish

by Nicolas Blanco (not verified)

I agree with you.

However, there is already an excellent plug-in for kcontrol and konqueror if you want to easily set up a samba server : ksambaplugin (cf http://ksambakdeplugin.sourceforge.net/).
I didn't test it very much but it does seem to have all SWAT features.

by Shulai (not verified)

The shots are ugly. I hate those guys that think good usability means cloning Windows.
A better categorization is welcome, Some stuff currently is misplaced or at least hard to find (Pointer themes comes to mind, it is under "Peripherals/Mouse", and it should be under "Look&Feel".
Cleaner layout for each category, ok. Huge tabs that didn't fit in 800x600 screens, and a lot of tabs in the same category are bad design choices (MS does worse, though, with its multiline tab configs).
I'll be happy if every item is properly documented in help and has a good tooltip, help is currently lacking in a lot of places.
But the basic layout of KControl IMHO is RIGHT!!!

by anon (not verified)

> But the basic layout of KControl IMHO is RIGHT!!!

Only if you want large unweirdly trees.

> The shots are ugly

Have you tried it? It's quite intuative.

by Felix (not verified)

I am happy if kde helps beginners, but I also like the current kcontrol.
If you know it, a tree is great, because you have everything in one place.

Will there be an option for changing the view mode ? So more advanced people can get their old kcontrol back ?

by Niels (not verified)

Yep, I agree: Trees are better.

by Alex (not verified)

When will KDE market itself better!??

I wanted to e-mail my friend some official KDE 3.2 screenshots, and guess what, tehre aren't any.

It's been almost a month and the latest KDE screenshots are from 3.1.

http://kde.org/screenshots/

Marketing is half as important as code IMO!

by Boudewijn Rempt (not verified)

Looks to me as if you've got a job to do then. Of course, first you have to realize that all-caps subjects and rows of questions marks (or exclamation marks) are not quite done, but after that you can settle down to do you bit of work.

by Alex (not verified)

I could do them, sure, are there any guidelines?

by pieter (not verified)

Yes, I think remembering to read that there where
guidlines. What I remember the most was that the
theme needed to be the then default theme (now
keramik).

You could use google to find the document, if there
is any, with guidelines.

by Anonymous (not verified)

Why official? Send your owns or pick from http://wiki.kdenews.org/tiki-index.php?page=Screenshots

by etoibmys (not verified)

A large area is wasted on Information and "What is?" which will not be used alot of the time. Why not buttons like in kdevelop? I know I am just a stupid AI.

Once in a section (e.g Fonts), new users might wonder how the Neo would you get back to the list.

Otherwise it looks functional.

by etoibmys (not verified)

What is? Should be a popup like all other apps, unless of course there is too much What is? information, in which case it should be shortened.

by etoibmys (not verified)

The keyword search should not be shown as default.

by Richard Moore (not verified)

I totally disagree. This is the easiest way to find things and should definitely be shown by default.

Rich.