In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Improved drag-and-drop of applets, and enhanced usability using the "Panel Controller" in Plasma. Grouping of notifications in the "Notify" Plasmoid, and continued progress in the "NetworkManager" applet. Animations in the "Pager" applet. SuperKaramba integration into Plasma is revived. More work on theming in Amarok 2.0, with the "Current Track" and "Wikipedia" applets re-enabled. A return to work on the Raptor menu. Initial steps toward a "satellite layer" plugin for Marble, with initial support for molecular editing in Kalzium. Copy-and-paste of vocabulary entries in Parley. "Singmaster" moves functionality in Kubrick. Support for searching the database by GPS position, and "fuzzy searches" (using a user-drawn sketch) based on the Haar algorithm (from imgSeek) added to Digikam. A "start page" is added to Gwenview. More functionality added to Beagle KIOSlave. A "quick reply" function is added to Mailody. Kontact gets a plugin for KJots. An import dialog added to assist in migrating from the KDE3 to the KDE4 version of KTorrent. Full support for the Windows platform in KTorrent trunk. Optimisations in the next-generation tile system of Krita. Work on loading ODF presentation notes in KPresenter. KNewStuff2 moves to Goya for handling and displaying items. Support for AIFF and RIFF audio file formats in TagLib. Initial import of Nonogram into playground/games. libkscan replaces libksane in kdegraphics. kdelirc moves from kdeutils to playground/utils. Phonon moves from kdelibs to kdesupport, "the never-freezing new home of Phonon". Read the rest of the Digest here.
Comments
[Initial steps toward a "satellite layer" plugin for Marble, with initial support for molecular editing in Kalzium.]
Hehe, so we can define electrons as satellites flying around the earth nucleus?
Anyway: Danny, how do you do your incredible rocking? Thanks for it :)
Through an intensive three week course.
Danny
My wife, a quantum chemist, just audibly groaned. You're about 75 years late on the planetary model. *Orbitals*, however, are pretty.
A cloud of satalites can be compared to a cloud of electrons...
No, electron's positions aren't as well defined as satellites at that scale.
The networkmanager applet was moved from kdereview to where?
Derek
Back to playground.
http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/base/plasma/applets/networkmanager/
About the NetworkManager, it is said that :
"When an interface with a higher priority comes back online the applet will disconnect from the current interface and attempt to connect to the higher priority interface"
--> I assume there is a notification to the user in order to confirm the reconnection (in case there is running downloads or something...) ?
That statement is actually incorrect now. NetworkManager 0.7 can handle multiple active interfaces and tries to keep all connections marked "connect automatically" up at the same time, and just changes the connection used for the default route. This means if you are using the wifi and then plug in, your download and IRC sessions won't break because NM just switches the default route to your ethernet interface and keeps the wifi up.
Changes like this will still be notified to the user.
Does the applet require nm 0.7? Im on Kubuntu Hardy which ships with nm 0.6.6 and i build kde from SVN. Firt he first time recently the applet built by default but i don't see how to use it.
But the many configuration options make it look really interesting and i look forward to it. Thanks for the nice work!
In this development stage it does depend on NM 0.7, mainly because I'm using openSUSE 11.0 and Chris Blauvelt is on F9, but I'm sure we'll find someone to implement the configuration parts for NM 0.6.x.
They enable and disable features based on which one you have on your system.
That's really nice to know. NM disconnecting me the moment I plugged the ethernet cable in always bugged me, but being able to transition gracefully now should be quite a nice QoL improvement.
That leaves the only problem with NM for me is it takes quite a while to connect to anything (which might just be an issue with the lower level infrastructure which NM really has no control over).
Why would the user need to be notified about this? They won't even know what the heck are you talking about, and it will constitute yet another useless annoying notification to ignore.
Please let's keep notifications to a real minimum. There is no need to notify the user of anything unless it's gone wrong.
I disagree.
When a user plugs in a wired cable I think he appreciates to see a little message that it from now on will use the wired network.
For instance, a lot of people are afraid to do their bank (money) stuff though wireless. So they will definitely appreciate the message that they are using wired from now on when they plug the cable in.
As long as it is a passive notification, perhaps even something you can switch off, I see no problem with these kinds of notifications.
What's a passive notification?
A passive notification would be, say, one of those passive popups that appear in the corner of the screen, don't steal keyboard focus, don't demand you press any buttons, and will automatically go away on its own (kinda like the in-app notifications amarok uses a lot of the time).
I think this is a prime canidate for a passive popup as when you plug in a cable it generally takes a minute before it's fully activated, and if you've already have say a wireless interface active and you're switching over to wired you probably have a reason, either to save power (disable the wifi), security, or speed. If I'm plugging in the ethernet so that I can download the latest ubuntu/opensuse/fedora/etc much faster than over my congested and aging wifi (which is perfectly fine for casual browsing from across the room from the router). I'd wanna have some sort of notification that I can have KTorrent start so that I don't go through all that effort and then KTorrent is still using the crappy slow wifi.
Just a little example scenario where having the notification would be good. If you think you'll never be in one of those situations you can generally disable the notification or change it to a sound or what have you (gotta love KDE's configurability!).
Fair point, I agree with you in this case (wifi -> wireless or the other way around) and as long as it isn't intrusive, for example showing up over a full screen movie, for example (something that Kopete does).
I reaffirm on what I said about notifying about any other random activity though. Very disruptive.
When configuring the panel there are two big buttons on the top right of the config widget. The one is used to add something and the one right next to it is about removing something. I think it's a little confusing that adding and removing is not about the same thing. The left button lets you add widgets while the right one lets you remove the whole panel. When you just have a quick glance you could press the "remove this panel" option when actually what you wanted is to remove some widget from your panel.
If I imagine some newbie removing the panel by accident he/she will probably be quite confused. Do you have to confirm removing the panel? From a usability POV I would probably ask for a confirmation and also realign the buttons somehow.
I'd also love an option to remove that cashew from my panel. I don't care about it so much on my desktop, but it's wasted space on my panel since I just configure it every other month or so.
"Do you have to confirm removing the panel?"
Yup - at least, you do with the latest SVN :)
Choose lock widgets in the top-right cashew menu: your panel cashew will disappear.
Lock Widgets is now also in the panel context menus and in the panel cashew.
this is a great improvement over the old notifications !
Just questions : wil it be possible to have different looks for the plasmoid's notifications ?. It's great if all applications can use the same system but maybe the user want to have a special style for all his IM popups, one for Amarok, an others for system notifications...
Moreover, it would be cool to have an history of previous notifications (especially usefull for popups with a time-out). Any plan for something like this ?
Cheers and many thanks to all people involved in this :)
goto bugs.kde.org
What you meant, of course, is how he should go and file these fine ideas on bugs.kde.org so they don't get lost, as he has some very valid points. Maybe you should point that out next time, just to ensure ppl don't think you meant this in a negative way ;-)
Why does all the Plasma stuff look so ugly and disproportionate? Is there any consistent design as with Oxygen or it is all just ad hoc graphical hacking?
I mean just take a look at the Raptor menu and the overlap of the two.
http://commit-digest.org/issues/2008-05-18/files/raptor_mockup.png
I don't know. Why is your comment so annoying and negative? Maybe the two things have a shared root cause? ;-P
Seriously though, go try 4.1. The art is a lot better than in 4.0 as the art team has started (though probably not 100%) to get caught up with things.
Note that the Raptor menu isn't even into alpha at this point. The last thing we do is make the things pretty; the dev flow goes like:
0. technical design
1. framework
2. features
3. visuals
with continuous stabilization efforts along the way. With many things in Plasma we are on #2 and/or #3 at this point.
If you'd like to make #3 happen sooner or quicker, please feel free to join in somehow. Heck, hire an artist and set them up with a machine that has trunk/ compiled on it nightly for them. That'd be awesome.
You are forgetting #-1. Ideas. I have seen a lot of mockups with cool ideas for KDE 4 and Plasma, before a single line of code was written or any kind of technical design was made. I have the idea that these are quite often confused with your point 3. :-)
Make all the releases consistent al made on the same libkde4
and not release so ans so on this version of the libkde4 and then on that version.
So release kde4.0.5 consistent on 1 and only 1 version of libkde4
i'm sorry, i have absolutely *no* idea what you're talking about?
I am not a KDE dev.
But everyone will have different opinions about looks.
I like that look. If you dont like something, then make your feedback more constructive than "look so ugly".
You are right about that. Of course you need to be constructive and positive.
But of course the hype also needs reflection. It is obvious now that certain things went wrong. We had a giant hype but the result is embarrasing for most users and technology is not ready.
I am not skilled in product design. But of course you feel when something is klunky.
So many discussions about Plasma and what was finally carried out looks improvised from a visual perspective. It is a bit like 3.1, shiny and new blinking but it just does not fit proportion wise.
To give you some ideas I attach the file again.
Raptor mock
I am not skilled in product design.
Neither am I so I just donate to KDE e.V. instead. Do you?
There are many ways to contribute.
Everyone of us has certain projects where he does not contribute or is not skilled. This is normal. Good design probably requires different skills than most of us can provide.
The sectarian positivity is contrasted by the fact that a former flag ship is losing ground. positivity did a lot of harm, it creates a bubble of expectations that burst sooner or later.
Will KDE4 be desktop ready with KDE 4.2? I doubt so.
Actually, as OpenSUSE 11 shows, KDE4.0 is already desktop ready.
define a metric for "desktop ready" and let's see.
OK:
My personal metric is when I am able to do everything that I can do with KDE 3. I am willing to do things in different ways as long as the results are the same. A secondary measure is whether the configuration is as usable as KDE 3.
Commercial and Government users will probably apply a higher standard. They will not want to have to do things in a different way because that requires retraining and that costs money. And there is another secondary measure: is it simple to setup a lot of desktops to be exactly the same.
"My personal metric is when I am able to do everything that I can do with KDE 3."
Does that include KDE 3.0? Besides, are you saying that anything that has even a bit less functionality than KDE3 is not "desktop-ready"? What if the new system is missing some functionality, but has some other functionality that is not present in the older system?
"Commercial and Government users will probably apply a higher standard. They will not want to have to do things in a different way because that requires retraining and that costs money."
Ah, the mythical "companies don't like change"-argument. Well, yues, they don't like change. But they will do it if it benefits them. Had they kept on using old systems, instead of moving to new system because of the included expense of training etc., they would still be running Windows 3.11. So obviously they DO move to new technologies. Somehow they managed to move between different versions of Windows and between different OS'es as well (like, from Solaris/IRIX to Linux).
Companies do move to new products and systems. They just plan those changes carefully in advance, but they do them nevertheless.
For this reasons you hardly find ports of applications to KDE 4.
They wanted to change everything at once and get a KDE 4 that blows you away. But KDE does not follow the APPLE development model. And so many new products fail, think of Vista. We reached a level of complexitiy where design becomes very difficult in so many software projects.
> Will KDE4 be desktop ready with KDE 4.2? I doubt so.
Are you *serious*? Have you even used it? By 4.2 most of the rest of the apps should be ported, and we'll all have our magic ponys.
I have to say that 4.1 is pretty damn good, though. There's a few things that didn't make it in by feature freeze, but all in all, I use it daily and don't have any problems. If you do, then please file a bug report or even better, a patch.
And if you're concerned about usability, join the usability people.
KDE usability is great. Usability should not be a reason to remove functionality. The main problem is always "reliability". KDE 4 will be much more solid here than KDe 3.x once its maturated. Problem: Egg-Hen. For maturation you need not only a superiour software design but real world testing. No one will port software if no ones is using the platform and its still instable, you don't know where its heading.
I was using the SVN versions, so I cannot complain about stability.
right.. so you keep attaching the same file to make your point.
except that the file you attach is a mockup for a code project that is happening outside of the main plasma project (which is fine) and which is in its absolute infancy.
so you're taking some other work that is infant and comparing it to the core work that is maturing.
do you see the problem here? if not, maybe, as a friend likes to remind me from time to time, "if you're looking for a conflict, you're sure to find one."
"Opinions are like arseholes.... Everyone has got one"
And they can be full of sh*t ! :o)
Try the different styles. There is quite a difference available.
Derek
I have to say the arrow drop shadows and other non-symmetrical layout does make it look ad-hoc, but then again it is not a general release look.
I agree that if people can't handle brutal honesty towards GUI design then what the hell are you doing working in this arena?
We don't exactly have lots of artists. Are you honestly proposing that we should kick out any artists that don't like 'brutal honesty' ?
Personally I'd rather people were just a bit more polite and that we kick the users that are 'brutally honest'. I'd rather lose users than developers/artists any day.
Obviously there is no arguing about matters of taste.
Perhaps your comment would sound a bit better if you started it with 'I think' since some people don't seem to understand that you are simply expressing your opinion.
So, you think that Plasma stuff looks ugly and disproportionate. Can you be a bit more specific? Do you have specific suggestions to improve it?
I would not say that it is ugly. I think that Plasma stuff looks a bit plain and utilitarian. To me these are not negative qualities. OTOH, there is something about it that looks a bit awkward. But, I don't know what I would change to fix that except that some things need to be better positioned and proportioned.