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May 15 2010

Alternative widgets explorer [Plasma]

Preamble: I have no intention to start a dispute related to the new applet browser in Plasma. Some people like it, some don’t, some prefer the old one, some want something completely different…

As you don’t already know :), Marco did some great work which I’m not gonna talk about – he said he’ll make a screencast of it eventually. So I’ll just mention a side-effect of that made possible by a 1-minute patch by yours truly.

KRunner (and Lancelot, naturally) as widget explorers

From KDE SC 4.5, you’ll be able to fire up KRunner or Lancelot, search for some plasma widget and drag it to the desktop.

Well, that’s all :)

Edit: You can also create a shortcut like Meta+P to open krunner with only this /plasma/ runner enabled via Global Shortcuts (thanks vilder for info)

Category: KDE, Comments (20)

20 Comments

  1. Much better! (no time to rant about the default)

    Comment by BartOtten — 15 May 2010 @ 11:10 Reply to this comment

  2. Dobra ideja, samo se nadam da to neće usporiti krunner do te mere da startovanje kejta traje duže od 10 sekundi :)

    Comment by Nenad — 15 May 2010 @ 11:16 Reply to this comment

  3. Hey Ivan,

    thanks for the tip and the work behind, appreciated :) Lancelot is among the first things I set up when configuring a KDE session for the first time. I’m not much a fan of kickoff and the new plasma applet browser — great to here that Lancelot can now replace both.

    Dennis

    Comment by Dennis Nienhüser — 15 May 2010 @ 11:19 Reply to this comment

  4. thanks. its nice to be able to search, and list widgets vertically again.

    Comment by peter — 15 May 2010 @ 11:20 Reply to this comment

  5. Thats great news! way faster than the current widget explorer! very handy if i want to add quickly a notes plasmoid to the desktop

    Comment by Beat Wolf — 15 May 2010 @ 12:03 Reply to this comment

  6. That’s pure rock guys, keep it up!

    Comment by Diego — 15 May 2010 @ 12:26 Reply to this comment

  7. this is great! it should be configurable to choose between standard plasmoid browser and this one krunner integrated :)

    Comment by yoda — 15 May 2010 @ 12:43 Reply to this comment

  8. It’s very positive news.

    Comment by TZ — 15 May 2010 @ 13:43 Reply to this comment

  9. The way various things are interconnected in KDE is awesome! :)

    Comment by Vickers — 15 May 2010 @ 13:54 Reply to this comment

  10. @yoda: Well, there’s no point integrating it – just press alt+f2 and it’s there :)

    @Nenad: It is rather fast – the slow runners are the ones that do network transfers, disk searches…

    @others
    Glad you like it :)

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 15 May 2010 @ 14:20 Reply to this comment

  11. When I need to “do something” on my desktop it is an automatic reaction now to hit alt-F2, my concious thought process then sometimes has to kick-in and say “you’re using windows silly” OR “you can’t add widgets with KRunner silly”.

    This means one less case where my automatic reaction is rudely interrupted.

    Also this just seems better than the slightly awkward current widget explorer (I did wonder whether a full-screen grid-layout of widgets which would fade away when you started dragging a widget somewhere would be better).

    Comment by maninalift — 15 May 2010 @ 17:13 Reply to this comment

  12. Is this the plasma-windowed shell or do real widgets get added to the desktop? If so, does it work with the panel?

    In general, that’s really one more unnatural thing less. The more we can do with KRunner, the better.

    Comment by thorGT — 15 May 2010 @ 18:14 Reply to this comment

  13. @thorGT: p-w is used if you execute the result from krunner. If you drag and drop, you get exactly the same thing like when dragging from the normal applet browser – that is, it works with the panel. :)

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 15 May 2010 @ 18:30 Reply to this comment

  14. How will someone who has not read this article know that the respective item is meant to be dragged (rather than clicked)?

    Will there be some kind of visual distinction in the final version?

    What happens if the item is clicked, or executed with [ENTER]?

    Comment by uetsah — 15 May 2010 @ 18:40 Reply to this comment

  15. @uetsah: The standard activation is what I sad I’ll not mention – not to spoil Marco’s surprise :)

    It is like searching for applications/documents, you can click (or press enter) to open them, and you can drag them to add them to desktop/panel/open in some application etc.

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 15 May 2010 @ 18:43 Reply to this comment

  16. So all what is left for “fixing” is the locking system.

    Now no one can not use Plasma features and keep widgets locked. User is forced to have a desktop unlocked.

    Like you can not keep widgets locked and add shortcuts or icons to desktop.
    You can not even drag the notification from the pop-up window and get it separated somewhere else.

    There is lots of problems from the locking mechanism, like this adding a new widget.
    There is even a bug on system tray that you can open the “plasma widgets” from it options, but you can not enable/disable any without first unlocked plasma and then going to settings.

    As far I have no such great use for plasma when I can not use it as it was suppose to be used.

    Comment by Fri13 — 15 May 2010 @ 21:04 Reply to this comment

  17. The system tray settings now has a ‘unlock widgets’ button.

    But, yes, I do see your points regarding the lock mechanism…

    Comment by Ivan Čukić — 16 May 2010 @ 14:11 Reply to this comment

  18. My clock! Where did you get it?

    Comment by it-s — 16 May 2010 @ 18:47 Reply to this comment

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