The white arrow on the edge is the expander: click on it and hidden icons show up. If you have no hidden system tray icons then the expander isn't shown.
You can see a progress meter for a file copy in there as well. Application jobs stack up there, as do system notifications. They automatically hide within reasonable times, are fully themable, support user interaction (such as pause, stop, resume, open, etc. buttons) and, since they are Extenders, can be detached and put elsewhere. This isn't limited to file operations, however: any application job can use this and in fact gets support for this for free when using KJob from libkdecore. Yes, that means even apps without a GUI can show their job progress in the system tray area! Possible uses? How about print progress, or K3B's burning status, or..?
The last icon on the right is pretty interesting as well. It means "you have some application jobs on the go or some system notifications available". Clicking on it hides or shows the list of jobs and notifications. We're using a generic computer or laptop icon (depending on whether it's a laptop or not) but still, we ought to have some more specific art done up for this use case. So it's a useful bit there: you can click it to hide long-running jobs so they don't endlessly bug you on the screen, and click it to get them back easily. But that's not the really interesting part. That icon is doing two pretty neat things in particular:
First, it's saying "put me at the end of the list, because I'm a special kind of entry". This marks the start of us starting to make the system tray experience richer, and we will eventually extend this kind of expressiveness to all KDE 4 system tray using applications.
Second, it's not "really" a system tray icon. At least not in the freedesktop.org sense. The system tray Plasmoid doesn't care though. It just sees it as another entry to manage like all the rest. Well, it can do a slightly better job with it because it's a native QGraphicsWidget, but it doesn't really know that either. It's more of a nice side effect of not using XEmbed in this case, but a set of D-Bus protocols instead: one for jobs and one for notifications. And yes, we've talked on the XDG list about both these systems for adoption as freedesktop.org specifications; the notifications one is based on the galago spec minus some "curiosities".
Now imagine if all the system tray icons were done similarly: not with XEmbed but over D-Bus. We wouldn't have to rewrite any part of the new system tray Plasmoid for that to work, we'd just add another SystemTray::Protocol to it and away it would go, happy as a clam. That is, in fact, precisely what we intend to do after KDE 4.2 is out.
This shows one of the strengths of Plasma that is born out of the purposeful design rules the entire team keeps in mind when we work on things: we write things to not be rewritten again in the future. We don't write really complicated stuff (that's how we can achieve such rapid growth in the number of components while not simultaneously exploding with instability), we just write things that are reasonably flexible. This prevents the "just tack on another room to the side of house" syndrome. We could have done something pretty similar with the D-Bus transition with the KDE3 system tray, but it would have been adding something to it that it wasn't written in mind for from the start. That way leads to head-meets-table-at-rapid-speed events, and having had enough of those already in my life, I try to help make sure we avoid more of them in the future.
What's really impressive is that the rest of the team Gets It(tm). As with many things in Plasma, the system tray was truly a team effort. Rob worked on the jobs integration, Dmitry worked on the notifications integration, Jason worked on the core design for the Plasmoid and took care of the X11 magic, I did the show/hide of hidden icons and lot of polishing work and Marco touched it with his usual graceful polishing wand here and there. I'm probably missing someone, too, as usual. =P
It is one of the bigger widgets, though, in terms of code. The Plasmoid itself is a little over 3,700 LOC and two DataEngines (reusable by others, of course =) were written for it: applicationjobs (336 LOC) and notifications (200 LOC). The freedesktop.org protocol implementation accounts for 1,105 lines of the widget. That's nearly twice the amount of code for the other three protocols combined (jobs, notifications and Plasmoids) and far, far more than twice as complex. The UI parts are are also pretty complex, though, given what it has to do and what it's meant to do in the future and currently weighs in at a hefty 1,294 lines. The core classes representing the concepts of Tasks and Protocols is the other 700 or so lines.
And there, in a nutshell, is more than you ever wanted to know about the new system tray Plasmoid.
121 comments:
I think the arrow is to big.
"Clutter is a canvas, Plasma uses a canvas. other than that, the two projects have precisely zero in common"
That's correct clutter can be compared with QGraphicsView, Plasma is a derivative or consumer of it.
Just like other projects are using clutter.
I am an avid follower of KDE4 progress, and have been using kubuntu 8.10, opensuse 11.1 and the kde-svn on arch to get first hand the latest and greatest improvements in the KDE4 series. I am only a user, not a contributor to the KDE project, and so I greatly appreciate the hard work put in by you and many such as yourself in order to improve free software. However I would like to make a few comments and questions:
1. We seem to be in some sort of "low expectation zone" that we seem to be applauding a glowing autohidden panel, or a system tray that works as it should have in the first place, in software that has been around since Jan 2008. By this I mean that expectations have gone so low after the disaster that was KDE4.0, that features such as these, or even Nuno Pinheiro's wonderful blue shadows for windows, etc., which users should expect by default, are being applauded when they finally make it a year after launch.
2. Plasma was supposed to be a futuristic look at the desktop paradigm (This is my impression. Please correct me if I am wrong). Then why are we stuck with Windows 95 paradigms like the taskbar (panel) and start menu (kickoff/classic menu/lancelot)? I urge the KDE team to rethink this paradigm as well like they did with folder-view and icons on the desktop, especially since it looks like after Windows 7, both Windows and Mac will have more graphic task indicators than the conventional taskbar.
3. Finally, I am unclear about the statement, "This marks the start of us starting to make the system tray experience richer,.."
I thought Operating Systems, free and proprietary, have had file transfer indicators and print progress indicators in system trays for years if not months now. Please correct me if you meant something else more technical than I have made it to be.
just updated from svn couple of hours ago ..i like the new bluish panel ..nice touch
..i think the arrow is ok ..if you make it too small and it will be hard to click it ..
i noticed for a while now(been using svn for months) that an empty pop up shows with with text that reads "no notification and no jobs" when i click an empty area on the tray area and i have to click again to get rid of it ..
isnt this pop up useless now if the computer icon you talk about shows up when there is something worth saying?
Aditya, is not the tray icon, the glowing or the behavior spected since KDE 4.0, but the way they got there.
I don't really have hight expentations till KDE 4.3 and what I want is something stable and not pretty, I reinstalled ubuntu 5 days ago and o boy, I love it, It just get the work done, discrete animations, fast, stable and reliable, camera works, printing works, everything works a spected,it doesn't get in my way with graphics saying "Look how pretty im", I simple love it. I hope that for KDE 4.3 they focus in that kind of experience.
"..i think the arrow is ok ..if you make it too small and it will be hard to click it .."
How about make it a litle less bold?
@Aditya: "we seem to be applauding a glowing autohidden panel"
it was a fun little thing to do. do you know of another production system that has that feature?
"a system tray that works as it should have in the first place, in software that has been around since Jan 2008."
you've missed the point: this is an implementation that lets us get beyond the crap that is the current XEmbed based freedesktop.org systray spec in a reasonable fashion.
the same spec that sucks equally in kde3, gnome2 and any other system unfortunate enough to have to support it.
"expectations have gone so low after the disaster that was KDE4.0"
oh, bullshit. let's list all the things this has that kde3's sys tray does not have:
* integrated notifications
* integrated job tracking
* the ability to host applets
* the ability to include entire new protocols, such as that first step of an icon at the end there.
* the ability stack and separate at will jobs and notifications (Extenders, in Plasma parlance)
and the code quality is much higher as a bonus.
this has nothing to do with "low expectations" and everything to do with "we're finally breaking new ground, even on old and boring bits like the system tray".
"Plasma was supposed to be a futuristic look at the desktop paradigm (This is my impression. Please correct me if I am wrong). Then why are we stuck with Windows 95 paradigms like the taskbar"
the answer: people just like you.
people who demand features "just like i've always had" or else hang us out to dry mercilessly. of course, we make them happy and then i get to deal with your comment here which try and hang me out to dry mercilessly.
look, i put MY expectations and goals on hold so i could make something for the users who DEMANDED "kde3 parity now!".
so don't piss on me about that. go piss on them.
4.3 and forward i will, however, be back to the original goals i had. as will the rest of the plasma team. we will continue to maintain the classic elements for those who want/enjoy/need them, but we will be going back to work on the many things we left behind in the process.
and if you look at both the framework in plasma itself and the features we've already manifested *anyways*, i think it's pretty obvious how clueless your comment really is.
go show me the other product canvas based system that can provide a classic desktop experience, supports zooming, supports multiple 3rd party widget APIs, is built around service based computing, uses SVG as we do, etc..
"Finally, I am unclear about the statement, "This marks the start of us starting to make the system tray experience richer,.."
I thought Operating Systems, free and proprietary, have had file transfer indicators and print progress indicators in system trays for years if not months now."
so you've taken a sentence from one paragraph and put it with some content from a completely different paragraph. holy reading comprehension failure, batman!
the "richer" sentence was in related to giving system tray icons on x11 the ability to have a greater conversation with the container (in this case the system tray plasmoid). this may shock you, but in the freedesktop.org world there is no way for a system tray icon to say "hey, i need attention right now!" or "i'm a really important icon" or anything similar.
after waiting in vain for others to comprehend the need for such things, we've simply gone ahead and started implementing them.
it has nothing to do with file transfer meters, though i'd also note that kde3 had no such system tray integration and gnome still doesn't have either the notification framework kde has (or even had back in kde2) nor the job ui server. so no, not every system has had this "for ever".
and last i looked at Windows, they didn't have this either.
the whole reason to share about the system tray plasmoid in this blog was to show that even when it comes to "little" things like the systray we put a hell of a lot of thought and effort into it and even in well-worn areas like system trays and notifications we still find ways to push out the boundaries.
@mhogomchungu: "isnt this pop up useless now if the computer icon you talk about shows up when there is something worth saying?"
yes, it is useless. =) it's related to the use of extenders and the PopupApplet (lots of automated magic happens there for Applets to make their life easier).
Rob and i were discussing this irc just today, in fact. we decided on a solution, and he said he was going to have a go at implementing it tomorrow.
Hi Aaron,
Does the "new" tray mechanism work over remote X connections? It's my understanding that D-Bus works only for the local session.
@Ramsees: the arrow is themable; and many of those things you mention liking about Ubuntu such as hardware just working are not something KDE (or GNOME for that matter) have total say in. a lot of that is up to kernel and the OSV.
kwin animations are simple, discreet and well done. and i think plasma in 4.2 gets there as well.
we do have good hardware support inasmuch as a desktop can, such as the device notifier and Places model integration.
but there's a limit to what we can do and how much the downstream gets to alter it and integrate that work into the larger picture.
if you want to be really fair about, instead of comparing KDE with Ubuntu, go grab upstream GNOME (or XFCE, or whatever), install it and compare that with KDE.
as it is, you're comparing apples and oranges in your comment.
Can u make us happy with a full screenshot of current kde 4.2 svn?
(sorry my english)
btw, what is it about happy, light hearted blog entries about cool little things we're working on that brings out the critical voices in force?
i get less flack when i'm less positive and more controversial in topic. so ... odd. and sad.
@segfault: i'll be doing some screencasts soon-ish. give us another couple weeks to smooth things out some more first, though =)
@Aditya
i think you missed the point of this entry ..the entry was about the traydock architecture and how that architecture can easily be extended to add new functionality and how existing apps can use it easily without knowing too much about about the traydock internals
the default kde4 desktop looks like traditional(kde3) desktop because thats what most people want ..the interesting bit about plasma is its pluggable architecture .. the architecture allows it to look like traditional desktop for those who want that and to something else for those who want their desktop to be interesting ..
the pluggability(if there is such a word) of plasma allows for stuff like plasmoids, extenders, activities and others to interact in an interesting way to give the futuristic desktop you hear about
kde4 is still young, you have to build the foundation first before start aiming for the sky .. this post, to the most part was about the foundation and how they can be used when people start looking to take off .. will you be around when kde 4.5 comes out?
I think stability, reliability and speed are work of GNOME, I spected the same of KDE 4, but well, you know the story, but I hope KDE 4.3 will bring that experience.
@slougi: what application do you run remotely that doesn't have access to the session bus would want a systray icon?
we can, of course, fall back to xembed in such cases if necessary .. but really they are the *rarity* and so pushing the severe limitations of them on all apps all the time is just insane.
note that using d-bus as the IPC mechanism works just fine for remotely hosted (e.g. thin client) desktops.
Aaron, can the system tray contained elements grow in size with the panel's height? Like instead of going two rows it stays at one big one.
Related to that, can the digital clock and other plasmoids remain at an fixed height, and stack automagically in rows?
I'm asking this because I'm worried about placement of plasmoids within the panel w/o having to fight with drag-n-drop, spacers and containers within containers to get what I want. Of course all configurable with one or tens clicks of a mouse.
@Ramsees: "stability, reliability and speed are work of GNOME"
and yet that wasn't really what you commented on. =)
i completely agree that the GNOME team have been doing a great job on working on things like stability and performance.
but if you do accurate comparisons, KDE3 was there long before and KDE4 is quite performant already.
the biggest "speed" issue we run into is that of horrible graphics drivers. that's slowly improving, and i actually talked about that exact issue in my previous message.
as for stability, the fact of the matter is that with a big port (Qt3->Qt4 in our case, along with Windows and Mac platforms added) and lots of new code it takes time to settle it all in.
and yes, it is very much part of our focus to increase stability (already happening quite noticeably in 4.2) and performance (ditto).
it isn't our sole focus, however, as we also have coherent strategies in play to push out the boundaries of what's possible with a FOSS based graphical environment.
"and yet that wasn't really what you commented on. =)"
Yes i did.
"fast, stable and reliable"
Sadly I never had that kind of luck with KDE3, konqui crash screens to often and i couln't really blame hardware because the problems were present in diferent machines with different distros.
"it isn't our sole focus, however, as we also have coherent strategies in play to push out the boundaries of what's possible with a FOSS based graphical environment"
If stability is not the sole focus that makes me sad. That would mean that KDE4 in general is not for me.
@Ramsees: "konqui crash screens to often and i couln't really blame hardware because the problems were present in diferent machines with different distros."
i'm sorry, what browser do you use with GNOME?
"If stability is not the sole focus that makes me sad. That would mean that KDE4 in general is not for me."
yes, we do not do myopia very well. we have this magical ability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time.
hat's why KHTML came from KDE, and Marble with OSM, and Akonadi, and Nepomuk integration into the destop, and ...
because in addition to stability and performance, most people also expect and want new and better features and so we work on more metric of the software at a time.
that is directly related to why KDE has the greatest real world market share amongst FOSS desktops.
but if that mix isn't for you, that's ok. you don't have to like it. there are other options out there.
i just think that the reasoning you're offering in your comments here is a bit sideways.
I find it kinda sad how when people complain that something copies windows 95 their suggested replacement is to copy something else. I am always pleased to see these posts, don't let the negativity bother you to much, 4.2 is already awesome and I look forward to the final release.
@Zeroum: "can the system tray contained elements grow in size with the panel's height?"
not the freedesktop.org ones. we have _no control_ over their size, just their positioning. one more reason to dislike them.
"Like instead of going two rows it stays at one big one."
yeah, so you can do like you do with the pager, taskbar or quicklauncher and say "just one row, please". that'll be possible with the new systems we're introducing.
"Related to that, can the digital clock and other plasmoids remain at an fixed height, and stack automagically in rows?"
that's up to the Containment. we just have the traditional PanelContainment which doesn't provide this kind of management, but it's just a plugin like any other.
i rather expect to see a variety of different approaches appear over the next few releases after 4.2 when it comes to "how to put crap together into a panel"
If people want to find something to criticize they will.
Fortunately, if people want to find something to applaud they will, too, and I for one am happy to know that we'll be using this feature to report rendering progress in Kdenlive. This is invaluable to our users to be able to easily see multiple renders progress in a way integrated into the desktop. Can't do that on windows. :)
slougi said "Does the "new" tray mechanism work over remote X connections? It's my understanding that D-Bus works only for the local session."
last time i checked, this didnt work ..i logged in to my test account on the same machine through ssh(with ssh -X) and tried the new traydock with kopete and i got the "traditional" notification ..i started kopete on the same account i was logged in and i got the new plasma-like notification
"i'm sorry, what browser do you use with GNOME?"
I didn't mean konqui the browser, but konqui ths mascot, you know, the litle dragon that appears when something crash in KDE.
"yes, we do not do myopia very well. we have this magical ability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time."
Reminds me the Linus Torvals talks about security, but you know, if you can attack both thing at the same time (innovation and stability) then I would be seeing something from another dimention, no one can get both at the same time, but is just my opinion.
"hat's why KHTML came from KDE, and Marble with OSM, and Akonadi, and Nepomuk integration into the destop, and ..."
KHTML haven't yet reached the level of stability and reliability it deserves and that's an old project, marble is just a hyped project imho, and nepomuk is still to slow.
"because in addition to stability and performance, most people also expect and want new and better features and so we work on more metric of the software at a time."
Where do you get your sources? Im sure the mayority prefer a stable and working solution that something new they should be learning, for example, I haven't see many innovations in GNOME since 2.20, but the fact that is stable and reliable makes it to my taste the best right now. hence the ubuntu sucess in my opinion.
"that is directly related to why KDE has the greatest real world market share amongst FOSS desktops."
Im not counting marked share, just what works better for me.
"but if that mix isn't for you, that's ok. you don't have to like it. there are other options out there."
Hurray for Linux choices.
"i just think that the reasoning you're offering in your comments here is a bit sideways."
I see my reasonings well thank you.
Hey. I enjoy reading all your light hearted posts about the groovy little things you guys come up with.
Keep on rockin'
isn't it copying notification beter like this :
Source :
Media : file1.iso
Position : file://blabla/bla
Size : 125Mb
Destination:
Media : file2.iso
Position : file://blabla/bla22
Which makes new Media name and old one more readable and also makes current address and target address smaller
While reading the blog I expected comments praising the wonderful efforts that were put in to shape up the new system tray, and boy - I was wrong :(
Remember KDE 4 was rewritten from scratch and it has come a long way since then.
Please guys, make sure you do justice by applauding their work first, just look at the code, and you will know how extensible and clean they are. Did you folks really read the entire blog ?
Anyways, I really love the new system tray - the UI server and jobs integration is really cool!!
"just look at the code, and you will know how extensible and clean they are."
I did that, and oh boy, they do love casting (dynamic and static), and when you see a lot of that it means something wasn't planned well in the beginning or some scenarios weren't noted.
But my prise go to Qt Software enginers, they have done a great job.
@Ramsees: "KHTML haven't yet reached the level of stability and reliability it deserves and that's an old project,"
the thriving branch is actually called webkit, and you'll find it in MacOS, the iPhone, Adobe Air and Qt to name 4 products. we use it in Plasma as well.
"marble is just a hyped project imho,"
you never look up directions google maps? ok, maybe not. most people do.
marble is a performance, portable, open app that integrates with an open data source (OSM) and which is being used already for geotagging in apps like Digikam (remember, marble is more than an app, it's also a widget-in-a-library). that makes it slightly more than a product of hype.
"and nepomuk is still to slow."
it's also the youngest of the three examples i threw out there. and probably the most ambitious.
not that there would be any pleasing you here.
"Where do you get your sources? Im sure the mayority prefer a stable and working solution that something new they should be learning,"
expectations and reality often don't match up. optical illusions are the classic example of such a thing, superstitions being another.
in this case, if you read Stormy's recent blog entries she's been talking a lot about GNOME's role in this world (and doing a really nice job of that, i might add =). she noted that GNOME has around 14,000,000 systems as their install base.
KDE has one installation in Brazil that services 50 million students with half a million computers. KDE sells on the EEE PC as well as in many regional markets (some 700k/year in Brazil through retail markets, not counting bought-as-Linux-and-installed-Windows-on-it-at-home purchaces) as well as being the desktop for Red Flag which is the leading distro in China which has significant sales in Asia ... and on and on.
so i base my sources on what Stormy is saying versus what i know we have in the market right now.
"Im not counting marked share, just what works better for me."
and that's great =)
@Ömer Fadıl USTA: yes, I agree. we haven't gotten to polishing the presentation of those windows yet. they do a number of undesirable things at the moment. they'll get attention before 4.2.0 ships though =)
@Ramsees: "when you see a lot of that it means something wasn't planned well in the beginning or some scenarios weren't noted."
ok, lay it out then. give me a concrete example of something you've seen and let's talk code design.
but don't bring your vague "oh, it's crap code" bullshit here unless you're ready to back it up with some actual fact and code.
i've shown you my code, and i'm not even asking for you to show yours, just for you to explain your critique with detail.
i think it'll be fun.
"the thriving branch is actually called webkit, and you'll find it in MacOS, the iPhone, Adobe Air and Qt to name 4 products. we use it in Plasma as well."
And webkit is not KHTML is a derivative wich had the luck to be in the target of apple, I think you are twisting reality there.
"you never look up directions google maps? ok, maybe not. most people do. ....."
Yes I do, and right now there are tons of them, not really the panacea any more.
"expectations and reality often don't match up. optical illusions are the classic example of such a thing, superstitions being another."
Let me ask one more time, Where do you get your sources?
"KDE has one installation in Brazil that services 50 million students with half a million computers..."
Congratulations, nut what is really the use of that?
"ok, lay it out then. give me a concrete example of something you've seen and let's talk code design.
but don't bring your vague "oh, it's crap code" bullshit here unless you're ready to back it up with some actual fact and code.
i've shown you my code, and i'm not even asking for you to show yours, just for you to explain your critique with detail.
i think it'll be fun."
Me thinks you need to do a lot of reading because with that conclusion you really don't give me hope.
@Ramsees
You seem to be very focused on the stability issue. I'm not sure Aaron or anyone else from KDE has every attempted to communicate that stability was not important. However, if you are really after stable, you could always go for an AIX system or something equally archaic to get your cde desktop. Personally I find it to be a pretty painful experience, but if that's what you're after I'm pretty sure no new features are getting in these days.
@Aaron
Wow! KDE 4.2 reports are really blowing my mind these days. Everything looks fantastic. It's too bad that people feel the need to complain at everything and everyone on the internet. Keep on a rocking.
@Ramsees: "But my prise go to Qt Software enginers, they have done a great job."
final point of irony: have you seen how much casting happens in Qt? oh nos!
"You seem to be very focused on the stability issue. I'm not sure Aaron or anyone else from KDE has every attempted to communicate that stability was not important."
I'll remember that words the next time people get critict with Windows Vista, after all, stability is not importar, please some memo Debian developers.
"final point of irony: have you seen how much casting happens in Qt? oh nos!"
Yes I had, and it makes a lot more sense that the code found lets say in plasma.
Since the Qt focus is to much general, in some way could excuse them for some crappy desitions, but your plasma work has some kind of focus of what's is gonna be, Qt by the other hand, they don't know how it will be used and they can just "guess".
@Ramsees:
"And webkit is not KHTML is a derivative wich had the luck to be in the target of apple, I think you are twisting reality there."
without KHTML there never would be WebKit (they still swap patches between the two codebases, etc) and, as i noted, we use WebKit extensively in Plasma via Qt's included Webkit library. there is no twisting of reality: it's a direct lineage that has marched itself directly back into KDE, and picked up MacOS, Gtk and others along the way.
"you never look up directions google maps? ok, maybe not. most people do. ....."
"Yes I do, and right now there are tons of them, not really the panacea any more."
so show me the mature FOSS mapping app that integrates with OSM and which is embeddable with minimal dependencies (Marble only requires Qt) that isn't marble.
because that's what we're talking about here, isn't it? which FOSS projects produce what kins of signficant results.
"Let me ask one more time, Where do you get your sources?"
for the Brazil deployment: http://piacentini.livejournal.com/7871.html
similarly i have reports on various deployments and sales channels from around the world. unfortunately not all of those are public, but i can offer numerous examples (i've already offered a few) that quickly put us into the multiple 10s of millions of systems deployed.
"Congratulations, nut what is really the use of that?"
you asked what i base my market share numbers on, i'm giving you some concrete examples.
"Me thinks you need to do a lot of reading because with that conclusion you really don't give me hope."
but Ramsees, i'm not here to give you hope.
i'm here to offer fact and reason.
if you'd respond in kind, this would all go a lot faster and we could actually get down to confirming or debunking your assertions, e.g. about code quality.
now, you can either start replying with fact, reason and cogency or find somewhere else to post comments.
@ Aaron
"It was a fun little thing to do"
Don't disagree one bit. And if not for you and other developers like you, I don't think I could dream of haveing something this sophisticated piece of software without having to go through a corporation. Having said that, your comments(and other comments, about the Autohidden Panel on Powerade and Systray on Steroids if you will) don't seem to be as pathbreaking as say (hopefully) a semantic desktop plasmoid with nepomuk, or a folderview plasmoid.
Again, I am not a Linux fanatic who has been with the OS for several years. I am a recent convert from OS X and Vista. Converted primarily due to the promise that the KDE4 series was showing. So please forgive any unreasonably high expectations due to that.
"you've missed the point"
I am not entirely sure. PlanetKDE.org has been my keyhole to peep into KDE development, and that is how I got to this post. I do understand that this might be a technical milestone, but as I mentioned earlier, I am not a contributor to KDE nor a programmer. I am just looking at the externals, and judging by those.
Aaron: Hey look at this radical new folderview paradigm
Aditya: Cool. I have to check it out
Aaron: Hey look at this new way to get stuff into system tray
Aditya: Meh. System trays have have looked similar before and have had popups before.
In other words, I made clear earlier, it was just about the "outside" I was talking about, not the "inside"
"the answer: people just like you."
"so don't piss on me about that. go piss on them."
Not so sure again. I have followed the lengthy back and forth between sjvn and you about forking or the back and forth between the GNOME guys and you about phonon. My feeling was that now that the distros that want to stay with KDE3.5 have made that choice and those distros that want KDE4 have switched and backport features like crazy to satisfy users, you and your team would have a free hand at pursuing the greatness that KDE4 was originally intended to achieve.
"4.3 and forward i will, however, be back to the original goals i had. as will the rest of the plasma team. we will continue to maintain the classic elements for those who want/enjoy/need them, but we will be going back to work on the many things we left behind in the process."
Huzzah! to that ;-) Can't wait
"support zooming"
Can't wait for that one either. Another radical concept for which I wait with bated breath. Not very encouraging right now ,since openSUSE 11.1 b5 that I am currently on has completely removed the cashew at the top with no possibility to zoom out.
"what is it about happy, light hearted blog entries..... "
Well, in my case it was a culmination of several months of waiting for something as radical as folderview. Maybe this one is, in terms of internal architecture. As I previously stated, I am not qualified to speak about that and so talk only about the externals.
@mhogomchungu
"kde4 is still young, you have to build the foundation first before start aiming for the sky"
Yes. Very true. And hence my patient wait for almost a year before posting for the first time on this forum. Is there a specific time-frame when it will "not be so young"? :)
I guess what I am saying is that I am not unaware of the fact that this is a radical rewrite of the underlying code. I am just ambiguous about what are "features" and what are "stuff that should be there anyway"
@xian
"it's too bad that people feel the need to complain at everything and everyone on the Internet."
At least in my case, I have made clear I love the work KDE devs are doing. However, since it was first announced last year I have been looking for the radical features to show up. Looks like somewhere along the line, the noise made by many about "KDE3.5 feature parity" has derailed the radical feature roll-out in favor of features that attempt to pacify those guys. I feel mine is a constructive criticism.
This new systray rocks! That's really a thing that was missing.
@aseigo
"You can see a progress meter for a file copy in there as well"
Would it be difficult to use the progress meter from your widet style to keep things consistent? having multiple progress meters is sort of breaking the idea of KDE4 moving to a "standardized" experience. just a suggestion, keep up the good work aseigo! :)
"without KHTML there never would be WebKit"
That's not my point, my point was about stability and webkit and KHTML are different, webkit is more stable than KHTML, you said KHTML and I replied to KHTML not webkit. That's where you twisted the facts. I repeat, KHTML is not WebKit, but you already know that.
"because that's what we're talking about here, isn't it? which FOSS projects produce what kins of signficant results."
Tons of them, what I said it was that marble was overhyped, that's all, nothing of my or many more interets, if it works well good for it. but since everything is now in the web a desktop application or library that show maps and get the information from the internet is not "what people is specting to change their life" you know.
"for the Brazil deployment: http://piacentini.livejournal.com/7871.html"
And are those 50 million users asking for something new or something reliable? please read the comments again because it looks you just missed the discussion.
"but Ramsees, i'm not here to give you hope.
i'm here to offer fact and reason. "
that's the eternal discution between developers and architects, at the end, architects always win and come with an "I told you so".
Plasma is getting full of hacks and works arounds, and I really hope you guys take the time to clean that mess, is just and advice take it or leave it.
"if you'd respond in kind, this would all go a lot faster and we could actually get down to confirming or debunking your assertions, e.g. about code quality."
When what the last time you took a book of making good code? reliable, extensible or got any course about it? because it looks like you haven't but what could I spect from a project like KDE full of hobiest wich some of them are not really professionals?
When Trolltech gave an eye to phonom, what was the first they did? let me answer that for you: they refactored the code. you see? because they know it didn't had the quality it deserved, you know. Where they wrong?
"now, you can either start replying with fact, reason and cogency or find somewhere else to post comments."
You lose your head to fast when you can't keep with a disscution.
I invite you to calm down first and replay after that.
@Jake Sallee: "Would it be difficult to use the progress meter from your widet style to keep things consistent"
no, it wouldn't. we use a simple SVG file for that. with the new Oxygen progress bar so gorgeous, i'd love to see that replace the none-so-gorgeous progress SVG we have. that one is an old bit of artwork that really shouldn't've probably lived this long as it is =)
@aseigo
one more thing. i pointed out in my previous post the difference between a progress meter in a window a progress meter above systray. this brings up another big point:
i think that my plasmoids and panel look much much better than my actual applications.
why do applications have a different widget style and windows decoration than plasmoids?
plasmoids, in my opinion, look much much better than applications. i think the oxygen window dec and widget style is not up to par with the look of other operating systems.
yet,the plasmoids look great. i would suggest merging these two. having a different plasmoid theme, which includes "the panel", and a different "window theme" is leaving someone in the dark (the open windows stuck with an ugly window dec and widget style) while plasma gets the bling bling everything else dyingly needs.
@Ramsees: "my point was about stability and webkit and KHTML are different"
Ramsees, it was originally *my* point that i was making, namely that that technology sprung from KDE and in part because we don't just focus on stability.
your take came afterwards and rather skipped the rails.
"And are those 50 million users asking for something new or something reliable?"
yes.
which is to say: they want both. you're painting a patently false dichotomy.
"please read the comments again because it looks you just missed the discussion."
no, the discussion was "how do i know that KDE has the larger market share" and i answered with that as part of the answer and then you went off on another tangent.
"Plasma is getting full of hacks and works arounds"
examples, Ramsees, examples. you keep saying these vague things and all i'm asking for are examples. if you can't provide them, then you really need to put a sock in it.
personally, i'd *love* to discuss whatever code or arch level issues you see. how about it?
"When what the last time you took a book of making good code?"
i suppose the last time i did some reading in a book on the topic was two or three nights ago. why?
"but what could I spect from a project like KDE full of hobiest wich some of them are not really professionals?"
ah, the slander comes out now. beauty.
KDE does have a lot of contributors who aren't writing code as their day job at this point in time. KDE also has a lot of contributrs who do, including a good number whose day job it is to work on KDE.
your FUD is starting to smell.
"When Trolltech gave an eye to phonom, what was the first they did? let me answer that for you: they refactored the code."
Yes, with the KDE people as well. It's called "investing in the technology" and is no different that what we do in KDE on a regular basis.
The same thing happened with Solid, with Nepomuk, with Plasma ... Nepomuk happened through research funding, Solid and Plasma through the community. Amarok is an example of an app that has done the same.
it's how software evolves in the general case, and isn't the canary-in-the-coalmine you try to make it out to be.
btw, you know how many people at Trolltech were and are KDE developers? it's a bit hard to love them and deride the at the same time.
"you see? because they know it didn't had the quality it deserved, you know. Where they wrong?"
it was high enough quality to invest in in the first place. as a first draft of a complex piece of software, it certainly needed refining and tuning.
have you ever written a first draft of something that extensive and have it turn out perfect?
within Qt Software, we turn APIs around and around internally and often do several refactorings.
again, it's how software development is done.
by your metrics, what the guys at Immendia are doing for Gtk is also heresy?
"You lose your head to fast when you can't keep with a disscution."
I get frustrated easily when I've had a long day (like today) and then try and deal with intellectual dreck (like your comments).
I've asked how many times now for concrete examples to back up your positions (I've provided them for mine) and you just continue to spew. Yeah, that's gets my goat. Congratulations.
Hey Aaron,
great work. Don't let yourself get upset by people who have to complain about everything. I was one of the people who were very disappointed with KDE 4.0 because it seemed "neither here nor there" (neither finished new paradigmes nor finished old paradigmes) but looking at the speed and quality the development goes right now I can see that the things you couldn't see without looking at the code, namely a clever, stable and flexible architecture must have been already there. I think it is good to first try to recreate the KDE3 experience as much as possible before introducing new paradigms because this way everybody can still have it "the old way" and you won't have to deal with so many complaints. You and your team are doing a great job! Thank you!
Hi Aaron, with all this greatness, why does the battery-applet icon not sit in the shiny new tray?
great work! and I love how themeable plasma is. but I have one concern over the new system tray abilities in that it seems to blur the lines between a system tray icon and a plasmoid
One thing that would be great is autohide of icons, meaning that icons that didn't change in a long time hide automatically and are shown again when they change (this is available in XP, for example). Maybe this is already implemented. If not you could give it a thought.
Hi Aaron, would it be possible to have an animated icon for the progress thingie. It animates whone notifications are added or they have an important state change (like "finished"). In the animated department, i like the one where there are small stripes in a circle, like a sun, and those stripes are "running around". Horrible description, but I hope you know what I mean.
btw. I thing you're overreacting a bit to Aditya's comment.
O, other idea's for icons.
A lamp, that turns on when there is something going on.
An icon representing " progress"
An icon representing "work"
The chonometer icon in oxygen
The apport icon
The conversation icon
For the arrow, i like the thing they use in WinXP, a round thingie with an arrow inside it.
@Yves: "why does the battery-applet icon not sit in the shiny new tray"
well, we do have support for housing plasmoids in the system tray, but the protocol for it isn't perfect yet: Sebastian Kugler started working on it and it *basically* works but we have a couple snags left to work out. Sebastian is currently working hard on both the power management support as well as the network manager plasmoid with Will Stephenson so i don't want to distract him just yet ;)
when the protocol is completed and we can offer the user a nice way to add and remove plasmoid entries, then it will be moving there.
in fact, we've been doing just that with the Plasma MID shell, but we can get away with a lot more "this is just the way it is" there than we can on the desktop.
so it's probably another 4.3 thing at this point.
@Tobias: thanks for encouragement; as for autohiding icons that's something we'll get to as we continue to introduce more expressiveness to the icons.
the current systray icons can't tell us anything at all, but when we bring in the new protocol (which sadly won't happen until 4.3; 4.2 systray time was spent on the new widget and integrating jobs and notifications) we will be able to do exactly what you suggest.
it's something i've wanted for years and yes, seeing it in windows and not in kde has been a sore point for me =)
@mmmike: i think the trick will be clearly define *what* that area is meant for, and what it isn't. something to put into the design/ directory for 4.3 indeed. but i agree that if we aren't careful, we'd just end up with a new kind of mess in there.
@Fred van Zwieten: "would it be possible to have an animated icon for the progress thingie"
absolutely; we can do all kinds of neat things with that kind of systray icon including nice animations. i don't know if we'll get to much in the way of animation polish for 4.2.0, though. i'll certainly keep it in mind for 4.3 though.
@Fred van Zwieten: more great ideas =)
as for the arrow, it's SVG themable .. but the art team hasn't had a chance to work on this iteration of the systray. they've done one round on it (seen in the backgroud svg, for instance) but we need another round to polish it up.
i have no idea what they'll come up with for the arrow, but i'm sure it'll be nice =)
Hey Aaron,
one question about the systray. How do plasmoids "know" they can be embedded into the systray and when they can't? Or is it a more generalized approach?
Is the nice blue taskbar the new default?
@Einar: "How do plasmoids "know" they can be embedded into the systray and when they can't?"
well, it's not so much when they can/can't. they just see themselves as being in a tiny panel =)
or, in Plasma jargon, they are in a Horizontal FormFactor with available height of 22.
@JT: "Is the nice blue taskbar the new default?"
yes. well there's a blue one when composite is off (i had it off when i took that shot as i was doing some video stuff as well that doesn't play well with composite.. *sigh*)
there's a translucent version of the same panel that is used when you do have composite on so that your wallpaper or whatever can shine through it and give it a complimentary hue. a solution to the "carpets should match the drapes" problem that comes with using a panel with colour.
(yeah, plasma's themes adjust on the fly to colour depth and composite availability.. wee!)
First, the new tray looks great. Like some of the others, I think that a few tweaks to the UI could improve it but that should be very easy to adjust.
Thanks for the hard work!
About the new protocol you've implemented here - do you think it is going to gain steam on fdo now that you are using it, or will it be one of those things that gets completely reimplemented by them that will need to be replaced in a few years?
Finally, regarding Ramsees:
When you repeatedly get insulted as being stupid and not getting it just for asking for a single example of all the bad code he's been talking about, it's time to start ignoring the trolls.
Continuing that "discussion" isn't going to achieve anything except frustrating you more, which I imagine is probably the reason Ramsees is doing this. I think both of you have made your points quite clearly and the readers can decide who is being reasonable.
Just a small question: Why isn't the battery indicator part of the system tray?
@Matthew: "About the new protocol you've implemented here - do you think it is going to gain steam on fdo now that you are using it,"
for 4.2 we've only been able to work on the client side, so there is no finalized protocol at this point.
we'll be introducing the new system to KDE4 apps in 4.3 and i want to simultaneously send to the xdg list for consideration by the freedesktop.org community.
@mark: Because it's an plasmoid, but as you see some post above, support for plasmoids in the systray is there, but needs to be refined a bit.
Aaron and the plasma team: keep up the good work! The new systray is really great (I even love the way it's "highlighted" respect the rest of the panel... visually relly nice!) and the new power control plasmoid is even nicer!! So I just wait for the networkmanager plasmoid (I expect it to be as good as the powercontrol one) and KDE 4.2 will be a richer (the richest) experience in the Linux desktop!
i wonder if is it possible to add the support for OSD
i have an eeepc and it will be beautiful if using the FN buttons (for example, to turn off wifi or raise volume) this taskbar will show me these things
Ramsees sure does like to complain a lot... With that amount of complaining I would guess that he would be better off running some other desktop instead. After all, according to him, KDE is not "professional", so maybe he should run some professional desktop then, and quit his whining about KDE? Why should he complain about something he's not even using?
Aaron: I would like to thank you for all the hard work you and rest of the team has poured in to Plasma and KDE in general. I know that 4.2 is going to rock, and I know that 4.3 is going to be even better.
And I for one really appreciate these little peeks in to the new functionality in Plasma.
That looks very nice ).
> Now imagine if all the system tray icons were done similarly: not with XEmbed but over D-Bus.
Does that mean that icons in the tray will be resizable and will respect panel height? And that the menus of all apps (qt,gtk) will be alike?
Hey Aaron, KDE 4.2 is becoming really really nice :D
Do a screencast of it soon please! xD
KDE 4 is the better!
Hi Aaron,
Ignore the Ramsees, i think he's Miguel de Icaza in disguise. :o) There is nothing like constructive criticism and thats nothing like constructive criticism.
KDE4 is coming along wonderfully
Minor Usability(?) Idea:
I think that some of the words used to describe actions etc are too formal/techie biased e.g. Source/Destination - how about From/To instead?
Also should things like "file://" be hidden from the user as its information more orientated to a techie than a user. The title could then display "Copying files" or "Copying Directory"
Ian
Keep up the great work and don't let the negative trolls get you down.
Thanks for your great work on that.
A few ideas/questions:
The Job view for file transfers should show the Size of the files and the transfer speed, as it does the normal old style job window.
- It would be really great if one could pick a job (it is an extender already, yes?) and move it to the panel, where it will become an icon on its own with some way of showing the progress of that single job directly in the panel.
- It would be great to set some roules for that or let the applications define things like (long job, important job and the like, to get smart ways of showing a popup or not showing a popup and things like that).
Jobs should get added a Desktop/Activity property. So one can select to only show jobs of the current desktop/activity.
Oh, well I think a lot of nice things could be done on the job/notification presentation with this new plasma system.
Although I am a little afraid that showing those there at the buttom right by default, they get in front of the screen in an very important part of the screen.
Great work aaron as allways.
@ people saying this is not exyting enough..... Dudes do you have any idea how fsked up the systemtry is??? Do you know how many walls does this "small" improvmensts tumble? Some times you have to use your imagination to see the path, we were on A now we are on B maybe tomorow we will be able to move on to C...
The tecnical limitations on the system tray were so huge, (not couse of kde btw), that any small improvment is wosome.
I should know this... I have benn fighting with the freking sytemtray from day -365.
PS @the shadows are not that exiting
well they are,, fristly never senn shadows like that in any desktop... + they give us a fantastic fix to a huge old problem we had.. they will be very flexible in the future...
OOO last coment most of us dont get paid to work on this stuf we realese soon we release often. just so that more people get to look at stuf join the train fix the bugs make new features etc etc etc
Hi Aaron,
Congratulations on a cool new feature, and surviving (hopefully) the poor response and feedback above. IMO Open source projects tend to suffer from an attitude problem; that is, they're much too nice to their user base.
Here we have a situation with several different groups of users wanting different things. If this was a commercial opertion then the direction of development would be fixed, and largely inflexible (probably based on some sort of cost / benefit analysis). Don't get me wrong - I think it's great that you are able to provide the features that people want, even if it is at the expense of complaints like the ones above. However, it's very easy to lose direction by constantly pleasing the loudest whiners.
I look forward to your efforts after 4.3 has been released.
Cheers,
The default theme of the panel was nicer. But I don't like the panel color. I like the all-black panel for its consistency, as the all-white panel of apple mac os x. Thanks.
Regarding panel color, remember there is an option to choose a different theme only for the panel alone and use oxygen or your fav theme for rest of them.
(The option is in System Settings->Advanced->Desktop Theme Details)
I love the flexible configuring ability provided by KDE! And yet its visually so pleasing :)
KDE4 rocks! Thank you all guys responsible for this amazing KDE4.
@Aditya "Can't wait for that one either. Another radical concept for which I wait with bated breath. Not very encouraging right now ,since openSUSE 11.1 b5 that I am currently on has completely removed the cashew at the top with no possibility to zoom out."
yeah, pretty unfortunate choice from them, but you can enable it back in the desktop settings switching the desktop activity type
Gopala Krishna, thanks for your answer. However I think it would be better if the default panel color is black.
black panel and blue twilight. it's beautiful if the default panel color is changed to black.
It makes me sad that Aaron has to waste so much energy dealing with the rock-dwellers who enjoy nothing more than crapping over someone elses efforts.
Aaron, - you're doing exceptionally well. As much as it pains me to say it, - sometimes just disabling the comments feature would save you the time and energy that could otherwise be spent making KDE rock even more than it does now, which is a lot.
Don't lose the faith! Amazing things are afoot.. :)
The Arrow looks nice and it is good to have a systray what can be hidden. (Isn't the icon area a systray and the panel where windows boxes goes a system tray or are those two same thing? If so, I am mistaken them ;-))
Aaron, you wrote in one subject in your blog about the icons in systray what should not be there, like Amarok etc. Like the systray should be a place where the real information is needed to show and it was not desig to keep applications minimisized. Or other this kind I remember now, correct if I am wrong?
The arrow brings me a so Windows XP kind panel... It is working way but it has one thing what makes it good and bad.
1) It hides icons (bad = you could need some icons to be viewed / good = it saves space)
2) it shows icons (bad = you want to save space / good = you see all the important icons all the time what are shown)
What if that systray gets redesign to be like "box". A drawer. It has Arrow UP and when you click it, you get a list of things what are on systray? Problem is that you can never see single icon by default, without clickin a drawer open. So user miss the animation information of the systray etc.
So it would work like a clock applet. You see basic information right there (nothing special etc happening) and when you click it, you get bigger box where is all icons, alongside of them a text of information or description of them etc.
But we should start think new kind systray, if it is after all, even possible?
I once got in Mandriva a "Information" widget/plasmoid(?) what was big Information sign, a blue reticle and white ! sign on it. And I liked to have it there like the mass storage widget. And I got the idea of this "drawer box" of system tray of that. You would have two important widget, a information widget, what is this what shows you when you are copying files, burning CD and received a emails to your inbox. And then you would have samekind for systray, for things what needs it like nepomuk, klipper and kmix.
This is bretty "long shot" but just a idea. Even Apple has still used the old systray and Microsoft too on Windows. So in that way, it is not so bad to us keep old way too. But the new idea could be nice.
Now it is not so nice to wait over christmas that KDE 4.2 gets out... mayby I get a SVN version of it on Christmas holidays ;-)
"examples, Ramsees, examples."
Didn't I mention the abuse of castings?
I also remember some kind of events(or signals) filters, witch looks cool, but it wasn't the best approach imho.
/me will keep looking.
And you know what, this is getting tiresome, so lets just leave it in "Good work with the systray" at the moment.
And about the 50 millions asking "new things", that's phrase ala Steve Jobs, but that's another story.
Btw, is not that the taskbar is blue, is transparent and the wallpaper is blue, but I can't confirm it right now.
@Ramsees: ¿Qué pasa amigo?
Common, what's up with you? Don't you think, the war is over for ages? If you don't like KDE just don't use it. Wouldn't it be better to have more respect regarding the huge work these great KDE (and other Open Source) guys do everyday? They spend much time (partly without sleeping - it seems) in improving things or finding new ways to make things easier. I think speaking ill of everything is a bad way...
I'm using ubuntu (beside other distros), too. My favorite Desktop is KDE but I'm not interested in searching for things I don't like on the GNOME-Desktop - just to bring somebody over to my point of view...
@plasma systray 4.2: Wow, I love the new style and features!
I'm looking forward to see more eyecandy things like that (yes, also my eyes loom large) and I'm happy to see the new wind KDE4 brings...
Great work, thanks!
@Ramsees: oh, I think I was a few seconds too late ;-)
Ramsees: "I also remember some kind of events(or signals) filters, witch looks cool, but it wasn't the best approach imho."
Thang $DEITY that the world has an uber-programmer such as you to show us how things should be done! Even though they are vague things like "I kinda remember something like...."
"And you know what, this is getting tiresome"
No, it got tiresome long, long ago.
Usability issue I see:
There is no way to tell which one of the icons is the one that shows/hide the notification other than clicking on them.
My humble suggestion would be to make the extenders look like a word balloon with the arrow pointing to the icon that relate to it.
Ramsees said: Btw, is not that the taskbar is blue, is transparent and the wallpaper is blue, but I can't confirm it right now.
i updated from svn yesterday(nov 19) at around 7 pm ET and the panel is blue ..i know this because my wallpaper is white and i can see the solid blue as i am not runing composited desktop and from aseigo's response earlier, it is transparently bluish on a composited desktop
I see, the big new is not the current state of system tray but more all the potential it has gain!
This is what I think as being the magic of KDE4 (plasma):
the potencial to adapt it to many desktop paradigms around, and at the same time enabling the quick development of new fresh ones.
Keep revolutionizing the desktop for higher productivity and better entertainment ;)
@aaron, I think perhaps what Einar mean was "how does an application knoe that it can embed a plasmoid as for its systray widget".
Crazy... look at all this arguement over the little systray.
I have actually recently been thinking how strange it is that I get so much pleasure out of the very nice new implementation of the systray. It seems others can get equally cross about it.
I also heartily approve of your war against the current Xorg systray standard.
I like Paul's word-balloon idea too.
@Pinheiro:
what is up with Raptor? It looks like a great project with no movement. something different, and i read many people are unhappy with the current kickoff, classic, and lancelot menus (like myself). many would love to see raptor come alive. great work.
@aseigo:
hopefully you got some sleep after the lame spewing on this thread. great work man, many of us appreciate all your hard work so that us network engineers can use a great operating system for actual work with great tools included.
after reading most of the comments, it's pretty clear some people have no idea the amount of momentum KDE4 has right now. I've seen more features, more polish, and drastic changes between 4.0 and the 4.1.3 version i'm using than i did with kde 3.0 to 3.5. it's pretty remarkable.
Kudos for the great feature.
I'm also looking forward to the new systray protocol, but as a occasional user of ssh -X It would be nice if a fallback was considered for these cases.
Hello Aaron, nice job :) There seems to be an annoying visual problem with the system tray when the panel is very thin. At least on my system (ubuntu 8.10 with latest kde nightly build). Here is a screenshot :
[IMG]http://i35.tinypic.com/i4hgf6.png[/IMG]
Seems like the icons don't scale alongside the containment ?
Yes aseigo you are really doing great work. I really do think the extenders need some love. The alignment of the text the progress bar and some stuff need polishing,but all said Really Good job gives me loads of Joy.
Aaron,
I have been following the extender and kuiserver integration developments since just before gsoc and I must say that this is one of the most exciting things happening to KDE within the classic desktop paradigm. I am really excited about it. To some it may just be a screenshot of the system tray, but I think it is actually a significant part of what users will become to love about 4.2. Keep up the great work!
mutlu
@Pinheiro
Do you read what is written in the comments?
My comment is that as a "new feature" this doesnt seem exciting enough. I have already stated what I found exciting (something radical like folderview)
An age old problem such as this, IMO would be solved by a radical rethink of paradigms, and not by using a new framework to rewrite the system tray architecture that has existed forever. And I don't mean this exact system tray has existed forever, but the fact that system trays have existed for ever.
"Some times you have to use your imagination to see the path, we were on A now we are on B maybe tomorow we will be able to move on to C..."
Am I unable to see that you are at A, are moving to B and will move to C?
Definitely not. I use KDE 4.2 from trunk. I am seeing where it is going. I have used it for the past year. I am only frustrated that what started out as a line of radical philosophies and paradigms like Folderview, ZUI etc, is now getting bogged down in "autohidden panels" and "systrays with file transfer popups"
"PS @the shadows are not that exiting"
Again, do you read what is written?
No one is saying the shadows are not exciting enough. I love that artwork that you painstakingly churn out release after release. Nevertheless, I feel that most of the "new features" that are debuting lately seem to be small evolution of already existing features in other OSs like an improved "Present Windows" plugin.
My question, and I will repeat again, is, "Where are the more radical features?"
"most of us dont get paid to work on this stuf we realese"
I have mentioned that several times above, and I will say it again. You guys dont get paid to do this, but still you do. I applaud that and but for your work, we wouldnt be here with this great system. However, in an open source project, since the process is visible to so many people among the general public, isnt it only fair that the whole spectrum of opinions will be heard in response?
@mart
Well, yes. It could always turn it on. I guess I was talking about the feature taking a back-seat in current releases. Probably because there is nothing radical going on in that area. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the devs will surprise me with some radical new ZUI implementations in 4.2 final. But from blog postings, it looks like they are hard at work on super-systrays and mega-auto-hidden-panels.
@Jack Salee
I second that. Where is Raptor? Can we get rid of taskbars, panels and systrays already?
Since Aaron's blog seems to attract all kind of off topic comments, here we go:
I also agree with Paul, although I don't like the balloon approach. I prefer the original mockup of extenders: http://plasma.kde.org/dms/1/21_209_kicker4transparentfloatingexpa.gif
The extender in the mockup looks like it's "grown" out the clock, and you clearly see when you deattach it. And it's clean and beautiful.
The current extender looks a little bit cluttered at the moment imo (especially the shiny grab area), hope it gets a facelift in 4.2 like the new gorgeous panel.
I love these new features that replaces the annoying popup dialogs in KDE3.
"Didn't I mention the abuse of castings?
I also remember some kind of events(or signals) filters, witch looks cool, but it wasn't the best approach imho."
Haha, what WONDERFUL CONCRETE examples!
"Yeah you know, like there were these like totally you know like casts you know whoooa!! That was like totally BAD MAN! And there was something else about something uh I don't remember and can't be bothered like right know because I'm such a smartass you know but like it was like totally non-1337 maan!
Ramsees, you sir get the idiot of the day award.
Eagerly awaiting 4.2. Keep up the good work.
@Ramsees: Are you truly ignorant enough for not been able to see that your position lacks arguments? Or are you just trying to piss Aaron?
I don't know if you speak spanish Aaron, if you do, I recommend you to read the following blog entry I wrote, specially the last quote XD:
http://escritosdeaugustoparaleeragusto.blogspot.com/2008/11/el-ignorante-el-ignorado-y-el-que-no.html
It will help you ignoring the ignorants :P
First of all, let me just say that I think what you and the Plasma team have done is nothing short of amazing and I'm looking forward to what you guys come up with once the "let's make a traditional desktop with KDE 4" crowd moves on. I was there trying KDE 4.0.0 (:-O) and to me, in spite of the obvious problems it had, it felt like the desktop of the future. 4.1.x felt like a few steps backward (from a UI perspective) but I totally understand why you guys went that way. I'm really looking forward to the 4.3 branch when you guys can get "back to the future", so to speak. :-)
Now, having said that, I have to say I really, really hate that arrow in the systray. When I saw it I immediately thought of XP with its perpetually sliding arrow in the systray (disclaimer: I am a computer consultant and have to deal with Microsoft software on a fairly regular basis). One of the first things I do when setting up a client machine is to turn that "feature" off since it's distracting and totally unnecessary. And please, for the love of all that is holy, NO BALLOONS! I hate that "feature" even more than the sliding arrow! Why must we (the FOSS community at large) copy the worst features of the competition? Why not innovate and make them copy us (like MS is doing with Windows 7 :-)? I've personally witnessed MS copy stuff that I saw in KDE first, like network transparency in Konqueror (which was just too awesome not to copy it ;-).
Finally, let me just say that you and the whole KDE team rock! Many, many kudos to you guys!
@Vide: "I just wait for the networkmanager plasmoid"
while it will be available for 4.2 desktops, it won't actually be a part of the 4.2 packages but offered as an add on. this was due to simple scheduling issues.
Will from OpenSuse is working with upstream on the widget, however, and it will become part of the 4.3 packages.
your distro should package the networkmanager plasmoid for 4.2, however.
@ChALkeR: "Does that mean that icons in the tray will be resizable and will respect panel height?"
once we roll out the new protocol in 4.3, yes.
"And that the menus of all apps (qt,gtk) will be alike?"
yes and no. we'll still allow apps to provide their own menus, both to avoid having to port all the applications and to keep it flexible while simple.
standardizing menus (and painting them with the desktop's toolkit) is on the radar, however. it will take a bit longer to accomplish, however.
@barsteward: "I think that some of the words used to describe actions etc are too formal/techie biased"
yes, we have a lot of usability work left to do on the layout and wording in the job notes.
@DanielW: "The Job view for file transfers should show the Size of the files and the transfer speed"
yes, we'll be adding more information to the default view.
"It would be really great if one could pick a job (it is an extender already, yes?) and move it to the panel, where it will become an icon on its own with some way of showing the progress of that single job directly in the panel."
you can already move them to the desktop; they don't work well in a panel ... yet. but they will =) whether than happens for 4.2 or 4.3 remains to be seen, but when it does you'll have your wish. all the really hard work (extenders, the job d-bus stuff, KJob, etc.) is all done
"It would be great to set some roules for that or let the applications define things like"
we've talked about such things, but we want to get the basics in first and then build from there. i'm always hesitant of doing tooooo much design too early, but we will be adding features as we progress.
"Jobs should get added a Desktop/Activity property."
hm. isn't the point of the jobs to keep an eye on what's going on? desktop shouldn't matter?
"Although I am a little afraid that showing those there at the buttom right by default, they get in front of the screen in an very important part of the screen."
you can, of course, move the system tray to wherever you prefer it. but running with it in the default location with these notifications for a while now ... it actually does work down there pretty nicely.
much more so, in fact, than the passive popups which all too often end up at the top of the screen obscuring window titles and menubars.
@Nick Lefkaditis: "There seems to be an annoying visual problem with the system tray when the panel is very thin."
there is nothing we can realistically do about this until we move to a non-XEmbed based system. which means this won't be fixable in practice until we get KDE4 apps using a new system (e.g. in 4.3).
it is already an improvement over 4.0 and 4.1 where if you amde your panel too small the icons would actually "pop out" of the panel onto the desktop! or in kde 3.5 which simply didn't let you have such small panels because of such issues.
It would be nice to have a way of distinguishing the computer icon from the rest of the system tray icon. It seems to have the special purpose of dealing with the system tray notifications. Perhaps blending it into the panel would make sense, and only showing it when there are active notifications.
@aseigo
Just out of curiosity, why isn't there more communication, or even an agreement/contract, between the plasmoid and the containment? For instance, the plasmoid could say, "I refuse to be smaller than x." If the panel is too small when the plasmoid is being added, it can be refused with a helpful error message. If the user is trying to make the panel too small, the panel can notify the user, "This panel cannot be any smaller because of plasmoids a, b, and c. Remove them from this panel if you would like to make it any smaller."
Nice, last icon could be also visualy connected with these extenders, when they are visible. Hiding/showing extenders could be then animated into/from this icon. Then it would be pretty obvious, what this icon do.
@Leonardo: "the plasmoid could say, "I refuse to be smaller than x." "
primarily the Containment directs the Plasmoid; this avoids Plasmoid developers from taking shortcuts and only allowing usage in certain scenarios, which would obviously break the Plasma concepts.
however, Plasmoids can set a minimum size, preferred sizes and a few other such hints that give them at least some control over things.
this is why the system tray doesn't "pop out" of the panel anymore. but even better would be if the system tray icons could scale down to, say, 16x16 if that's really what you wanted.
@aseigo
I hadn't thought of that. And while I understand that plasmoids need to play by the rules so they are portable and will fit new paradigms, could you possibly think of a way to prevent situations this:
http://i35.tinypic.com/29zemo5.jpg
The icons (hard to see--tinypic shrunk my image--but on the left is Kick-off, next to it is Show Dashboard; Lock Screen and Shut Down on the right) scale, and while not attractive, are still usable. However, the battery widget doesn't scale proportionately (it just shrinks vertically rather than horizontally). Even worse, the Task Manager has text overflowing due to the system-wide minimum text size (or, at least I assume that's the culprit), and the Digital Clock can't even display the time anymore (on an aside: could it possibly show the date next to the time when height is that restricted?). It seems there should be a way to prevent the user from doing this to themselves.
To all the critics.
Can't you appreciate all the hard work that the KDE team has done? Yes KDE 4 is far from perfect but they are currently working on building the future of the desktop. If you really want to help improve KDE why don't you volounteer or donate some money instead of trolling Aron's blog. Im not saying that you shouldnt complain. User feedback is always good. But the complains you are giving are not helping at all.
I reiterate the OSD question posted by Dass. Something similar to what Amarok does when raising the volume, or changing songs, but plasma themeable.
I also want to leave my sincere Thank You for all the work you guys are doing.
I'm a Software Engineer student so I follow your posts and share your enthusiasm =)
Cheers
Nice..
Next time you should write some of your arguments in the article, to keep trolls out of the discussions.
I read your great answers, and learned more interesting things about the backbone of this..
Keep up the work and thanks for this post.. ignore the loud trolls
KDE4 in general and 4.2 in particular are shaping up to be something amazing.
However, something that's bugged me since I first tried 4.0 that I have yet to figure out a solution for: how does one control where items are placed in the panel?
For example, why does the system tray plasmoid centre itself if the only items in the panel are the K menu and the systray? Why can't I get the K menu to be on the left, with the systray on the right, with blank space in between?
To see what I mean, do the following:
1. remove pager applet from the default panel
2. remove the task manager from the default panel
3. watch as systray tries to take over the rest of the panel, and the little icons that were nicely in one corner are now in the middle of the screen
Is there any way to fix this? Would pics help show what I mean?
@Leonardo: I kind of agree with you. My idea is that plasmoids should define a minimum size and an icon and when they get too small just the icon should be displayed and the plasmoid should show as an overlay when the icon is clicked. Instead of the icon it might also be possible to let it define a "small state" like a calendar plasmoid showing a clock when too small. I explained it a little more in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=173771
@Tobias: Plasma::PopupApplet; it behaves just like you describe =)
@Freddie: You can use the panelspacer plasmoid: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Panel+Spacer?content=89304
@Shamus: I respect your opinion, but I like the new arrow of in the systray very much. I think it's a very usefull feature and pretty easy to work with!
Look for example at my actual Systray icons using KDE 4.1.3! (sorry for the strange visual things my nvidia card causes)
If you use many applications at the same time, like I do, then it's hard to keep the overview of everything. Furthermore there is obviously a problem of space...
Apart from that, it isn't a must to use hidden systray icons - so if there is nothing to hide, no expander will be shown. By the way, in KDE 3.5 there was a similar feature... ;-)
@Aaron: thank you for your beautiful work!
@Gerardo: Wow! O_o Now that's a real problem. It seems like the systray is no longer a systray but a taskbar. ;-) And it kinda defeats the purpose of it to have so much stuff in it, wouldn't you agree?
I don't know what the answer is to that problem (does all that stuff really need to be in the taskbar?) but the MS solution of a sliding arrow which doesn't stay open when you click on it is a bad one IMO (I wasn't done looking at those hidden icons dammit!). I'm sure Celeste and rest of the usability crew will come up with something, er, uh, usable. ;-D
WRT KDE 3.5, I never knew that--it seems that it was disabled by default, which is as it should be. ;-)
I did that, and oh boy, they do love casting (dynamic and static), and when you see a lot of that it means something wasn't planned well in the beginning or some scenarios weren't noted.
That's possibly one of the most desperate things I have ever read. Seriously. You honestly think that you can write software like that without converting one data type to another?
I reinstalled ubuntu 5 days ago and o boy, I love it, It just get the work done, discrete animations, fast, stable and reliable
Alas, you can try and describe Ubuntu as such all you like, but there are an awful lot people who do have trouble with it, who can't install the functionality that they need and whose printing and camera works infrequently between releases and who don't have the features they have on other platforms. Linux Hater is right sadly. It is used by a minority who think that it is something that it isn't.
it doesn't get in my way with graphics saying "Look how pretty im", I simple love it.
I feel sad for you that you want things to stand still. I'm sure that the Mac interface from 1984 wouldn't get in your way, but unfortunately for you, graphical interfaces have always moved on and those desktops that haven't haven't kept up have fallen by the wayside.
You can't sell free desktops to the wider world by telling people that the inferior graphical interfaces are there so they don't 'get in their way', and the features they have within other desktops aren't there because it would confuse them.
Is the issue with blinking systray icons when panel is hiding/appearing somewhere on your personal roadmap, Aaron? :)
@Ostrowski Michał: that's just one of the reasons i want to kill the XEmbed icons. we can't put them on the canvas properly and it leads to various curiosities, like those unhappy-when-hiding blinks.
@Shamus: look for example at the KDE3.5-Screenshots - there you can find the arrow I spoke about...
...not as cool as the new one (with KDE4.2) but it still exists ;-)
I did that, and oh boy, they do love casting (dynamic and static), and when you see a lot of that it means something wasn't planned well in the beginning or some scenarios weren't noted.
Clearly Gnome products are written using Coq and Martin-Lof type theory.
In general, yes, cast : a -> b is a bad thing (did you even bother to count the number of casts?); however in languages like C and its horrible spawn this function is simply unavoidable (plus more modern languages aren't yet proven, nor do they have such a rich set of libraries that are organized for a given style).
Furthermore, there are other issues which should be more problematic: take sub-classes. These structures in most languages are not truly sub-classes, beyond the uninteresting definition of objects which respond to a set of functions with the same name. Even better is the fact that empirically this doesn't matter---in general (ghasp!) software works.
To further beat this point to death, has it ever occured to you that functions such as round : R -> Z and + : Z x R -> R are also casts? In fact, one of the main uses of dynamic_cast is *safe* coercion of a class hierarchy.
Why are you here? Suppose your outrageous claims actually are correct, what do you want? I think we have enough software around to safely assert that use of casts---does not---in general imply instability, failure, or difficulty of extension (C++ line count should be a good indicator).
Too bad you can't just install the software you seem to want KDE to converge to. Nothing better than several copies of the same product with different code bases.
It's clear you're just an ignorant troll groping for anything to harangue on. Now go show off your ability to solve the halting problem and count to infinity elsewhere.
Please have in mind that icons is systray in kde are TOO big compared to xp or vista. One icon in kde takes as much space as 4 or even 9 in ms systems. Not everybody has 24-30 inch monitor and this is against deployment on smaller form factor machines like umpcs, mids or netbooks...
@cenebris: "One icon in kde takes as much space as 4 or even 9 in ms systems"
windows has 2.5 or 5 pixel systray icons?
"this is against deployment on smaller form factor machines like umpcs, mids or netbooks"
*cough*
I have now tested 4.2 Beta and indeed the functionality with the iconization of Plasmoids on the panel as I imagined it is there! VERY good work! Now really the only things that keep me from using KDE4 regularly are:
- Mouse gestures not yet working (but I'm already looking into external programs for this)
- Still slower than KDE3 for me (Maybe still due to the crappy NVidia driver)
- Compiz doesn't work so nicely with it (and I still like it better than KWin)
Oh, and one annoyance is that the system tray icons are painted too far down when I use a small panel. I have no idea who is to blame here since I don't see it on screenshots.
But I'm confident that I'll be able to make the switch soon. Hurray!
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