In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: Krushing day concludes with focused bug fixing for the KDE 4.0 release. Work on various "runners" in Plasma, with general work on applets and the addition of binary and fuzzy clocks. Consraints support in the Step physics simulation package. Work on icons across KDE Games applications. Support for the Scalix groupware server in KDE-PIM. Entry editing improvements in KOrganizer. Improved Blu-Ray format support in K3b. Solid gets support for Video(4Linux) devices. Kopete uses Solid for network detection and support of audio/video devices. Various progress across KOffice.
Dot Categories:
Comments
My mouse don't have an ALT button.
A lot of other buttons, though.
So why not to bind some of those extra buttons to move window?
I think this is a job for Qt library, not KDE.
I got it started
-> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=119445642928312&w=2
Wow, thats great. :D
Forgive me for reposting basically the same comment from a week ago, but I posted the comment so late, I'm not sure if anyone saw it, and I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a dev's response/take on the issue.
There was an Oxygen website early, and thusly I assumed there was going to be a unified artistic vision from the early stages.
The glass border around the plasmoids looks great, but in turn, the window decorations around the actual Kwin windows look out of place. (I'd love to see a widget style that better complements the glass plasma theme!) The oxygen theme for widgets has lacked contrast, as has been reported repeatedly, but the splash of color that is thrown in is green, which is an odd departure from the traditional KDE blue. Then you get an odd black Krunner look which just stands out, and doesn't seem to mesh with anything else.
The other complaint I've often heard (and mirrored myself) is the white space, or empty space seen all over the place in Oxygen. Oddly, some areas of the KDE 4 desktop seem nice and tight, and aspect's of Nuno's mockups seem nice and tight (though there is plenty of white space used in the mockups in other areas as well). This is also inconsistent.
Individually some of these components look nice, but shouldn't the widgets, plasma borders, window borders, dialogs, and icons all have had a consistent design scheme?
Bugfixes and showstoppers take priority, but I seriously hope 4.1 features a more unified visual theme across KDE, and I'd love it to closely match Nuno's mock-ups.
Right now, I'm not just waiting for KDE 4.x to be perhaps a little more stable, I'm also waiting for new themes to arrive before I use it. I know it is a minor contrivance compared to the rich features, but I really enjoy the look of my desktop right now. I also enjoy having usable space, and right now the Oxygen look overall is pretty good in some areas, but it looks poorly thrown together on the whole, and the waste of space in some areas is enough to keep me from using it.
Please make detailed screenshots, showing exactly one issue at a time, and a detailed writeup why this is a problem/ugly/whatever. Merely stating that there is "empty space seen all over the place in Oxygen" is not very useful, because no-one knows what you're talking about.
Small, detailed problem reports with screenshots will get you informed comments at least, if you post it in the appropriate irc channel or mailing list.
I'm heading out the door to work, but will upload some screenshots a little later.
http://enderandrew.com/kde4/
I made these hastily in Paint on a Windows box.
http://enderandrew.com/kde4/consistent.png - This is a newer screenshot and it shows Oxygen looking more grey and less white, so it blends better with some of the black you see in the KDE4 desktop, and the Plasma glass frames. However, I'd like the two window decorations (the Plasma one and the KWin one) to look consistent with each other, as opposed to two very different frames.
http://enderandrew.com/kde4/wasted%20space.png - This should give you an idea of some wasted space.
http://enderandrew.com/kde4/minimal.png - Quick copy/paste hack in Paint that took 156 pixels down to something like 61 pixels in the top portion of the window, and showed how you could easily squeeze more icons in even less space. This may be a bit extreme, however my current Firefox window in Windows and KDE both run around 80 pixels for the window decoration, the menubar, and the toolbar all together, and I'm not going for extreme minimalist there either. I have a moderately sized window decoration. This 80 pixel size looks much nicer than the 150 pixel size in my opinion. At the very least, perhaps we can compromise and meet in the middle.
In all fairness, some of the size (a few pixels) is having text labels under the toolbar icons which can be turned on or off. But much of it is still empty space.
For all the talk of "cleaning" up the design in KDE4, I find this space contrary to the design goal. The most important part of my work space is my work. I want to see my data/content on the screen, and less of the interface.
I checked out the pictures and though I can see your point I'm not sure I agree. Putting everything closer seems like a logical thing to do, but that way everything looks much more "stressful". I don't like feeling stressed only because I want to find a file :) After all using the mouse wheel, which is pretty much standard, instead of the scrollbar makes going through lots of files an easy job ...
I think this is the wrong approach from a usability stand point. Why should I spend extra time to scroll due to dead space?
Vista was designed to look pretty, and usability studies are showing that users going to XP to Vista are less productive.
I think a good desktop can look nice without sacrificing usability.
My "minimal" example was admittedly perhaps a little extreme, but so is the 150+ pixel version.
I'd like to see some experimentation with tightening it up some.
KDE is all about configurability, right? So why not have a global "tightness" setting, which with a single control alters various whitespace-related settings: the amount of padding around the menubars, iconbars etc., as well as the thickness of window borders and the spacing between icons in konqueror, dolphin etc.
Maybe it's difficult to do, I'm not familiar enough with the code to say, but even if it had to wait till 4.1 ("ready for everyone") it would be a good way to keep everyone happy.
I'm not so sure about having a totally consistent theme between plasma and kwin - although they might seem a bit too different at the moment some kind of contrast between the themes is good, as there is a considerable conceptual difference between plasma desktop "windows" and real kwin windows. Personally I kind of prefer the plasma approach at the moment, and would like to see oxygen's window decorations move a bit in that direction, but still leave a bit of a difference.
I see your point. One of the reasons I like Kubuntu over Ubuntu is because Gnome widgets are often much larger. Menus are larger, especially.
On a 1024x768 screen you want to squeeze more data on the screen.
But what about the larger screens ppl have nowadays... Small widgets make everything look cluttered and full.
The point of the above is that the new theme, Oxygen, is simply more suited for modern, larger screens. Time moves on, default (!) themes have to change. If you have a small screen, you should use Plastique, the Qt style which is very plastik-like. Most ppl have a large screen now, so the default favors them.
Sorry...
Will KDE 4.0 even ship with other themes?
And again, we're talking about going from 80 pixels, to 150 pixels, and almost double the top of every window. That is pretty excessive.
yes, KDE 4.0 ships with at least 5 themes, including a plastik-like one (Plastique).
Hey T.J. Look what ol' winnie can do.
Tight as a xxxxxxx xxxx.
How do you make that shot?
With Snippy.
It's just Winamp on top of Firefox with Crystal lite theme.
For consistent... I'm not sure what's better here. Plasmoids are not the same thing as windows, and I'm not sure that they should look the same. Keeping them distinct has some value (and just the glass border would look odd with the grey window contents. Switching to black for all windows isn't really an option as a default).
Wasted space.. I agree that it could be a bit more compact (actually I think the current version is already more compact than your screenshot). Sure, you can crowd icons together to fit more in less space, but if that's the goal, you might as well set the toolbar to icons only mode, and make the icons small. This will give you maximum space (just like in KDE3). I find a good compromise is to set the icons to text beside icons. This reduces vertical space and still makes the icons easy to hit and understand. Like so:
http://leo.spalteholz.ca/dolphin.png
This is kde4 dolphin running under gnome (long story).
I almost always use a "detailed" view as well. Have the icon the left, like in that pic, and then nice detail info on what the file is.
As for the consistency, I didn't say the glass border on the plasmoids such be the window decoration, but rather that the vision of the desktop should be consistent. They should match, and seem like they go together.
In using compiz-fusion, I've seen window decorations in Emerald where you have a clear glass border with no visible buttons, and I don't think it works well for normal windows.
I just think the overall artistic design from plasmoid borders, Kwin, widgets, icons, menu, etc. should be consistent in the design. I assumed that the Oxygen team felt the same way.
Looking at the Krunner dialog, I see something that looks nice, but does it match anything else?
Yeah I agree with you for the most part on look. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but the oxygen style is just not that appealing to me.. I liked the mockups, and I liked the early versions of the style, but lately something is just not feeling right. But I can't think of the reason specifically, so I wouldn't know where to start fixing. Although the window buttons are an obvious one to fix. They don't extend to the screen corners in maximized windows, making them extremely hard to hit.
I always use detailed.
I think maybe if people compile kde from scratch, the
settings should be to detailed-view (because, someone who compiles
from scratch, normally knows more than the "average" user
and thus is a lot more likely to get as much info as possible,
i.e. all details)
I totally agree - especially regarding the gaps between file-icons in dolphin. It's unbelievable how many space is wasted there - 70% of the current distance should be more than enough to guarantee a nice and "distinctive" look of every single icon.
As long as the spacing between the icons is configurable, everything's OK. (But this doesn't have to happen in KDE 4.0.0)
I agree.
AFAIK, it is already configurable.
That would be very good news. Do you have a hint where i can find this option?
> That would be very good news. Do you have a
> hint where i can find this option?
Settings -> Configure Dolphin... -> View Modes -> Icons:
- use "Grid Spacing" for the space between the items
- use "Number of lines" to specify the number of textlines which should be reserved for the item name
I just reduced the default setting of Dolphin from 2 lines to 1 line to decrease the vertical gap, but I'll discuss a proper default setting for KDE 4.0 with the Oxygen team to be sure...
BTW: I don't think Dolphin uses extremely much whitespace, e. g. please have a look at http://www.habibbijan.com/images/screenshots/osx_thumbnails.jpg for the spacing inside Finder.
Cheers,
Peter
The vertical spacing in that shot seem decent, but the horizontal spacing seems perhaps a bit much. In the KDE 4 screen shot, the vertical spacing was double the icon size, which is excessive.
Regardless decisions shouldn't be made based on what others do, but rather on what is the best design/best solution. Sometimes that means doing the same thing as everyone else, and sometimes it means deviating.
Thanks a lot for your effort!
>As long as the spacing between the icons is configurable, everything's OK.
>(But this doesn't have to happen in KDE 4.0.0)
Ever heard about "sane defauts"? "First impression is the most important"? I don't think that the dead space shown in those screenshots are sane, and not every one will think of waste time adjusting the space beween icons and so on.
Configurability is important, but is not suficient.
As for people saying that monitors sizes are growing, etc, I say to wait until they grow suficiently to change de *defaut* theme acordling. The theme don't need to be the same throught the whole 4.x life-cicle, or I'm wrong? Currently, most people in the world run in 1024x768 or lower resolutions.
Your screenshot looks way too crowded. I don't like it at all.
Quoting myself:
"Quick copy/paste hack in Paint that took 156 pixels down to something like 61 pixels in the top portion of the window, and showed how you could easily squeeze more icons in even less space. This may be a bit extreme, however my current Firefox window in Windows and KDE both run around 80 pixels for the window decoration, the menubar, and the toolbar all together, and I'm not going for extreme minimalist there either. I have a moderately sized window decoration. This 80 pixel size looks much nicer than the 150 pixel size in my opinion. At the very least, perhaps we can compromise and meet in the middle."
I made it very quickly, eliminating most of the space just to see what would happen. I admit it was a hasty/ugly hack, and may be a bit extreme. I suggested we might compromise, and the 80 pixels or so that I see in my current Linux desktop and my Win XP desktop look about right. 60 pixels may be too tight, but at the same time, 150+ pixels is too much wasted space.
Again, I said there is probably a good way to meet in the middle.
i think icon view is only preferable for folders with images (large thumbnail icons), and for other folders detailed view is a good choice (+filter bar like the one found in amarok's Collection tab)
Just a comment on minimal.png - you've moved the menu (the last item "Help" is visible) up to be in the same horizontal line as the window decorations ( the max,min,close buttons ).
As far as I know, that's not able to be done, as the window frame and window decorations are handled by the window manager - the application provides the window content, including the menubar ( that's my understanding, anyway )
Still - that's an interesting idea if it could be achieved - there always seems to be a large unused horizontal space to the right of the menu bar. Problem then is, where do you put the window title, since the menubar and window decorations are merged?
Its maybe that the window theme and the widget theme are now so closely aligned ( same colour ) that it gives the appearance that there's much more space used at the window top, because you don't get the distinction between the window title/frame and the window content anymore?
That is how I'd like to see it, almost a reverse of what Mac/Apple does. On a Mac, the file/edit/whatever menu is always at the top of the screen, and you don't have that menu bar in your window. It frees up some real estate not to draw a menu bar for each window.
In IE7/Vista/Office 2007, the design is to hide the menu bar to make room, but this drives me nuts. I use the menu bar all the time, and I want it visible.
If I was going to consolidate to make room, I'd eliminate the "title" of the window, and move the menu bar to the same line as the window decoration buttons, as I did in that mock-up. It would no doubt involve some code in KWin to make happen, but it isn't impossible. In your panel/task bar/whatever, you can see your collection of open windows, and you have your titles there. When the window is open and in the fore-front, you can see what is going on in that window.
With even niftier Alt+Tab tricks we're getting from Compiz (and hopefully KWin/Plasma in the future) it is much easier to see screen shots of the windows, and the "title" of the window becomes less and less relevant.
I think it would be a bold design move to clean up the window, make more screen real estate, etc.
KDE aloud users to select a mac menubar style.
It sucks, yes, it's a very bad usability concept from my point of view, and I shouldn't ever be default, but it's there if you want it.
Windows title are themselves not useful, but the space they use are indeed useful for move windows, as a visual feedback of where the window starts and end, and as very easy to find point to locate windows. It have its reason.
PS: Cheers to KDE 4 team.
heeeee your minimal it totaly undoable, you have the menu on the title area of the window.
Oxygen wont be able to fix all apps that is mostly the developer in charge of each aplcation job.
> The oxygen theme for widgets has lacked contrast,
> as has been reported repeatedly
Yes, that is still a very real problem. The style is actually usable in its current incarnation (depending on the quality and contrast of your display), but still not comfortable to work with in some situations because controls (particularly smaller ones such as radio buttons and check boxes) have to be hunted for.
> The other complaint I've often heard (and mirrored myself)
> is the white space, or empty space seen all over the place in Oxygen
That I think falls down to personal preference. I prefer applications to have a healthy amount of unused space. As far as I can tell, dialogs and windows don't take up any more space in the Oxygen style, but because many of the excess lines, dots and other clutter has been removed there appears to be more space.
As for contrast, give is a little more gradient effects. I love the custom gradients in Domino. I can't say enough good things for Domino in KDE 3.
As for empty space, the screenshots showed there is more unused space. 80 pixels is what I'm seeing on average in a KDE 3 or Windows desktop, and Oxygen/KDE 4 is almost double that.
> I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a dev's response/take on the issue
as semi-involved, I'll bite ;)
> I assumed there was going to be a unified artistic vision from the early stages.
yep, the problem with that is, artistic vision isn't visible in WIP development snapshots ;)
> the window decorations around the actual Kwin windows look out of place.
that's largely because the rounded borders aren't antialiased, which we haven't found a solution to. Not relying on COMPOSITE would be a bonus...
other than that, the unfinished whitish colorscheme detracts from the "solid piece of metal" window look we're going for (as visible in nuno's mockups).
> I'd love to see a widget style that better complements the glass plasma theme!
maybe, maybe ;) but it wouldn't be default. The design concept behind the black plasma theme is that all plasmoids lie on the same disorganized flat plane. unlike a widgetstyle/windeco.
> The oxygen theme for widgets has lacked contrast
once we've chosen a nice non-white default colorscheme this will be history.
> the splash of color that is thrown in is green, which is an odd departure from the traditional KDE blue
the splash of color in KDE 4.0 will depend on the dominant color in the (still undecided...) default wallpaper. maybe green, or blue, or khaki. we don't know.
> Then you get an odd black Krunner look which just stands out
it's a middle ground between the flat plasmoids and the solid windows.
I say wait until you see it in action ;)
>> the splash of color that is thrown in is green, which is an odd departure from the traditional KDE blue
>the splash of color in KDE 4.0 will depend on the dominant color in the (still undecided...) default wallpaper. maybe green, or blue, or khaki. we don't know.
Hopefully it'll be easy for users to change the colour ;)
> that's largely because the rounded borders aren't antialiased, which we haven't found a solution to.
Does this mean KWin still won't handle argb visuals? Why doesn't Lubos use them? Probably every other window manager is using them now :(. To hell with all effects, I want argb visuals!
Thanks for your response.
I'm not using KDE 4 yet. I was all excited to go running with beta releases (I love beta software, and don't mind somewhat unstable software, but the current Oxygen theme is part of the reason I haven't made the jump yet) but I haven't seen any real KDE 4 screenshots that have used Nuno's mockups for tabs.
The screenshots I've seen seem to have very simple tabs, where the active and inactive tabs lack contrast. There seems to be a very simple tab divider, and a pretty plain look.
Nuno's mockups also seem to have a very nice white to gray gradient that does give a somewhat steel look. I'm not a fan of the Apple OS X Steel look that is so popular. It is too textured, and too fake looking in my eyes.
Is there any chance we might get tabs that look something like this:
http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/version%203%20tabs%20and%20versi...
Or option 1 here:
http://www.nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/new%20style%20tabs.png
Great contrast, original look, etc. Can't say these concepts steal too much from Mac or Windows. I think it would be a very fresh KDE-original design.
I also really like how Nuno mixed in the traditional "Crystal" look in the progress bars and scroll bars in his mock-ups. Vista has similiar looking progress bars, and they are pretty sharp. If the windows and plasma apps are somewhat flat in their appearance, his green "crystal" accents provide a very sexy sense of depth and color that really spice up an otherwise clean desktop.
It seems this is perhaps the biggest discrepancy I'm seeing between the mock-ups and actual screen shots, this bit of green crystal flair here and there.
KDE 3 might have overused that blue crystal look everywhere, and KDE 4/Oxygen looks a little too sterile. Maybe meet in the middle? (Again like those great mock-ups!)
> Then you get an odd black Krunner look which just stands out, and doesn't
> seem to mesh with anything else.
that's because the krunner UI has not be completed. =)
You mean you guys haven't finished the complete refactoring of KDE yet? Shouldn't that take like two weeks, tops? :P
Thanks not only for the work, but the way the team responds back to the community, has the developer blogs, etc. It is really nice to know the community has a voice, and a means to directly interact with the developers.
You just don't have that with Macs or with Windows. I love the concept of open source software, and the community it breeds. I wish I had the coding skills to help out.
I know there has been a bunch of dissent about how unstable Plasma is at this point, but after reading your blog on how excited you are about the possibilities of Plasma, I'm certainly trying to be more open-minded about the whole thing.
I think rewrites are a very good thing. I think from time to time, you need to rethink your whole design, and start anew. I'm still curious if Plasma will ever deliver the revolution in desktop usage that was hyped, but either way, after all the bumps, I am beginning to think it will be worth all the hassle.
So as soon as a 4.1 stable comes out, when are you guys going to map out the next major refactoring? I think you start anew with a blank project slate and just rewrite KDE 5 completely from scratch ditching all the work that went into the 4 rewrites. We'll expect 5.0 out in late 2008.
You seemed so serious right up until that last paragraph...
That's what you call a twist ending in English, right? Either way it made me smile; I needed that, thanks. :)
> The other complaint I've often heard (and mirrored myself)
> is the white space, or empty space seen all over the place in Oxygen
I fully agree. Way too much space wasted, just for (debatable) aesthetic reasons, but severely harming basic usability.
Dear designers, please: "form follows function", not vice versa!
I'm not sure many developers (or really anyone) read the digests this late. I'd echo that sentiment in a few days when the new digest comes out, and people are more likely to see it.