I have returned to the colourful world of UI (still refusing to say UX :) ) development.

The new pretty thing that is taking away my time is the activity switcher which got a rather big revamp for the next release of Plasma.

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Apart from the new UI, it got a few usability improvements, namely full keyboard navigation. You are able to filter, navigate and switch activities without touching your mouse.

Meta+Tab activity switching

Unfortunately, not all is great - the Meta+Tab shortcuts for switching activities are not going to be enabled for the first release, they will have to wait for the one after.

What will that look like?

As you can see in the screen-cast, the Meta+Tab will (unlike old Plasma) have a visual feedback - it will show the switcher until you release the Meta key. Similarly to how Alt+Tab for window switching works.

Per activity global shortcuts

The second thing that will need to wait is the port of the global shortcuts plugin by Makis Marimpis. I expect it to be present in the same release as Meta+Tab.