July 31, 2007
Plasma Applet Browser Screen-cast
After a couple more tweaks to the P.A.B. I’ve made a screen-cast I’ve promised in the last post.
The main visible change since last post is that the items are smaller so that more applets are shown at once.
EDIT: There are some clarifications in the comments section that I am to lazy to digest and write here, so before asking questions, please read them.
hi!
Yeah! Can’t wait for kde4
I don’t know weather it is possible or planed: would be nice if you don’t “have to” drag’n'drop that blue bars on to your desktop but the real plasmoid itself out of the applet-browser.
Comment by knusperfrosch — July 31, 2007 @ 7:23 pm
It’s look good, but in other KDE applications (most of them) search bar lay on top of the window kopete, kmail, akregator for example
Groups is cool idea but may be it will be better if special (such as favorite ) groups will visually separated
Comment by DimaL — July 31, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
Hi,
Looks really neat. By now, it also seems bery welcomed seeing how the plasmoids are growing in number.
With that said, I still prefer the “Add Applet” in KDE3 (to add applets to Kicker). Even though I usually double click/drag and drop to add applets, I still miss the “Add to Panel” and “Close” button. But that’s just a small detail.
The favorite feature seems useful. However, I would prefer if the item didn’t get selected when you click that star icon - don’t know why, it just doesn’t feel right. Maybe it’s just me.
It wasn’t possible with Kicker or Superkaramba, but will it be possible to select and add multiple items? (shift/ctrl+click)
It would be really cool if the feature knusperfrosch mentions would be implanted, but neither do I know if it’s possible.
Great work, keep it up!
Comment by Lans — July 31, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
Hi,
This looks really good!
I don’t agree with knusperfrosch, I think the current way is more clear, that you drag the name (the listitem) and when you release the mouse button the applet will appear.
But I do agree with that there should also (complementing the drag and drop option) a button add plasmoid like lans said because not everyone will understand you can drag them.
Unlike lans I like the abbility to be able to click the stars but also here I think there also should be a button “Bookmark” or “Favorite” for it also because otherwise you can’t use the keyboard to make a favority (a button has alt text unlike the star).
These buttons should I think be on the bottom of the dialog, and I also agree with lans that the filter should be on the top.
Keep up the great work your doing!
Thankyou,
David
Comment by Anonymous — July 31, 2007 @ 7:58 pm
Great Wooork,
I also agree with knusperfrosch about the blue bars, that should be replaced by the real plasmoids.
kde4 rocks
Comment by Anonymous — July 31, 2007 @ 8:04 pm
It is planned, but I will not be the one doing it.
@dimal
Yes, I know. The layout will have some changes, but we’ll see…
At first I did separate them, but Aaron (the plasma god) did not like it. There probably will be something that visually separates them in the drop down.
@lans
The thing I forgot to mention is that the dialog is only to show the component for displaying/filtering the items. Whether there will be buttons, what buttons will there be, etc. is to be decided later.
As for the multi-selection, I will post the idea to the list because it seems cool!
Cheers All!
Comment by Ivan Čukić — July 31, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
nice, but why not make a voiceover instead of killing our eyes with microscopic fonts on youtube videos?
just kidding, keep up the great work!
Comment by Anonymous — July 31, 2007 @ 8:27 pm
As for voice-over… well one day… be patient
Comment by Ivan Čukić — July 31, 2007 @ 8:31 pm
“blue line” and animation looks good and understandable in my opinion.
How about arrow in corner of “blue line” that point in position of new plasmoid?
I think that drawing of full plasmoids when dragging is rather complex task it needs a composite manager enabled for make it right(I think so) … but there can be two modes first if compositing is enabled, and second for regular desktop with “blue line”
@Ivan Čukić
>There probably will be something that visually separates them in the drop down.
I mean this! Traditional line separator in drop down. But there is a problem in this solution (traditional problem) if user want a “real” category not a special one he/she must look for special, because there are on top of the list and after that scroll to needed place.
Comment by DimaL — July 31, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Great. Just great. Keep up the good work.
Comment by alterego — July 31, 2007 @ 8:39 pm
@ David
“Unlike lans I like the abbility to be able to click the stars…”
Noes! Misunderstanding, I’m sorry for not being clear.
I like the way you add/remove favorites (click star), but there is just a small detail that annoys me: the item becomes selected when you do that. I think you should be able to click the star without selecting the item (Or example, see the ratings star in Amarok. The track you rate doesn’t become selected)
@ Ivan Čukić
Thank you for your quick answer. I’m still used to see the filter bar at the top, but with the buttons back (well, they weren’t really gone, just not shown in the screencast
I won’t complain anymore.
Comment by Lans — July 31, 2007 @ 8:48 pm
>How about arrow in corner of “blue line” that point in position of new plasmoid?
Never mind. I saw screen cast one more time and understand that plasmoids puts in cursor position. I think that’s right solution.
Comment by DimaL — July 31, 2007 @ 8:54 pm
Well, there are not so many ’special’ categs - only three. So I do not think that it’ll be that difficult to see browse the normal ones.
@lans
Yeah, I know what you meant with the stars. I’ll look into it.
Good night. See you tomorrow
Comment by Ivan Čukić — July 31, 2007 @ 9:25 pm
unfortunately at work I can not see youtube can someone post this in another format?
Comment by Jmiahman — August 1, 2007 @ 1:34 am
Have you seen the Google Desktop Gadget Browser? It has a lot of eye-candy. Maybe you could get a few cool ideas out of it.
Here’s a screenshot:
http://picasaweb.google.com/m.yousuf.ahmad/Dump/photo
Comment by Yousuf — August 1, 2007 @ 4:41 am
Hi Ivan
Distros, organizations and other large deployers would love the ability to define their own ‘Recommended by’ category with icon, preferably without patching the code. Are the categories currently hard-coded or is this already possible?
cheers
Bille
Comment by Bille — August 1, 2007 @ 7:07 am
Wow then
is a tooltip containing a small screenshot of the aplet on your todo list ? that would be neat.
Comment by arno — August 1, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Great!!
Just a few comments/suggestions of what I think could help:
- Align the emblems. The stars are ok but the others could always be in the same column.
- Another solution is to always leave the emblems there, but if they are inactive, then make them saturated and half transparent. This would be possible if only a few emblems are possible.
- If an emblem is clickable, make the cursor become a hand or make the emblem glow, or both. Just to make it obvious.
- I also think the search field should go on the top.
Hey, I send you these comments because I like a lot what your doing. Really, goooood job.
Comment by Ricard Marxer — August 1, 2007 @ 9:04 am
Unfortunately, I don’t have a hosting that I could abuse to upload the video files. I have the video in ogg format ~ 8MB.
@Yousuf
Thanks for the screenshot. I agree that it’s fancy, but I don’t know if it would fit the KDE UIG.
@Bille
This is great idea… I’ll see what is the best way to have this done. (where and how to define the specials)
@arno
I’m constrained with the info that plasmoids provide. I can not instantiate every plasmoid just to get the screenshot. If the plasmoids would provide it, I would use it.
@Ricard Marxer
I have to say that I don’t agree with you for aligning or disabled-painting of the emblems because (imho) it would look overcrowded (later case) or empty (former case).
As for the glowing and other suggestions, it has been worked on at the moment. (yes, and moving the search bar too
Thanks for suggestions.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — August 1, 2007 @ 9:20 am
How about a checkbox that reads “Show applets from other users”. When you enable it, it also shows applets from GHNS, mixed with the ones you have in your computer. Maybe an icon, or something to show that it comes from the network. The categories would remain the same
You could show the ratings other users give to the applets as well.
Comment by Paul — August 1, 2007 @ 2:35 pm
Comment by Ivan Čukić — August 1, 2007 @ 3:12 pm
That’s very interesting.
Just some small comments :
- a default icon could be used fro applet not having/providing icons. If all applets must provide a category, then you could have 1 icon for each category.
- Instead of having a favorite conept, you should instead have rating and integrate this with nepomuk ( which means you could use Nepomuk to also look for applet ). As said by Lans, rating stars should be used like in Amarok, and rating an applet should not select it. We could have a second colon for the rating and so the user will be able to sort the applets by rating
- We should have a recommend category which will list the recommend applets. This should be easily customisable by users/sysadmin/distribution. This way distribution may provide their own applet and with this category allow users to easily notice them.
The recommended category should be selected by default. Firefox ( for extension ), and mosts applets providers ( google gadget, … ) have this kind of category.
Recommended != Favorites, and may not be also the applets with the highest rating.
- Instead of using a plain blue rectangle, you could used a semi-transparent rectangle using the default plasma border with a shadow effect at the bottom. Do you see what I mean ?
- The search bar should be at the top.
- the PAB should allow to add applets too, so a “add Plasma applet” button should be added at the bottom. By clicking on this button, the user could add manually a plasma applet or use GHNS service.
- the latter reminds me that for plasma applet, we should defined an archive format to ease plasma applet installation from third party site.
FACORAT Fabrice
Comment by Fabrice — August 2, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
I agree for the applet icons.
I think that it would be *huge* *overkill* to have nepomuk’s ratings on this. Applets are not something that you’ll be adding/removing every minute.
As for other comments, I think that I’ve already answered them.
Comment by Ivan Čukić — August 2, 2007 @ 2:21 pm