Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you the brand new shiny Plasma theme that will be used for KDE 4.1:
Here you can see the new applet and krunner backgrounds, the new panel, our brand-new carbon fiber clock and some items that once upon a time weren’t themed at all, like the pager and the taskbar.
This is the wonderful work of Nuno, i did some work in the code in the last month to make the theme support even more extensive, to have all your nice plasma widgets with more SVG prettiness, so let’s start thing by thing 🙂
- The pager: the mini-desktops now have 3 different backgrounds, and when the mouse goes over the widget the mini desktops fades in and out with a neat animation
- The panel: when composite is disabled his borders must be nice even if we don’t have antialiasing and when its width is the 100% of the screen it’s really a different beast, so a different svg it’s used, one different for each edge of the screen the panel can be
- Dialogs and krunner: they have the same styleas the applets, but when composite is disabled we don’t have antialiasing for border, so it’s drawn in a nice retro-style
- Taskbar: it now supports SVG backgrounds for several task states, there was some performance issues but we hope we will be able to enable the neat animations on mouse over also here 🙂
- System tray: yeah even that now has a SVG background to make it look coherent with the other panel plasmoids like the taskbar (and the pager, if the size is enough)
- The analog clock: KDE4 is all about analog clocks, right? 😛 so how could we neglect it? Absolutely not, so it now has cool drop shadows under each hand, that are always projected in the right position when the hands rotate
- The folder view: due to its very nature it must have a more translucent background, to be easier on the eyes. Do you want to use that background on your applet? just call setBackgroundHints(TranslucentBackground) et voil
I love it!
Man oh man what a nice screenshot! I can’t wait until I get my new laptop (about the time when kde 4.1 is released).
That’s pretty elegant, I must say. Last time I tried KDE4, I couldn’t get KWin compositing to work, even though compiz worked fine. Is that resolved now? I have an ATI Radeon Xpress 200m.
Hi there.
Looks nice. Is it themeable? i mean, if i don’t want a black desktop, can i change the system colors to change the panel color? (aya does this, not)
thx
I really like what I see 🙂 Kudos for all involved in making this! 🙂
I like this theme more than the previous default one, but I still prefer this one:
http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Glassified?content=81388
This is an improvement over the current look, but I must still say I prefer Elegance over this theme… I hope the author of Elegance continues to improve it 😉
Looks, wow, 1000 times beter! Great work guys.
very nice, great work !
just one or two complains (because I’m just an user…)
– the clock is great but maybe a little bit “too much” for a default theme
– the icon on the icon plasmoids (like the trash) could be better centered (maybe 3 or 4 pixel lower because it touch the top edge)
Cheers 🙂
(me again)
Maybe I seems a bit negative in my previous post (always complaining !) but IMO, this is still the greatest theme out there for the moment (the second one may be Elegance)
Thank you all
The corners of plasmoids still look a bit ugly in my opinion. Is there no way they could be antialiased a bit better? Seeing such jagged corners makes me cry inside 🙁
Pretty nice all around though.
What things are affected by the Plasma theme? It seems odd to me that the clock SVG is in the theme as it is just one plasmoid. Don’t SVG’s that affect a single plasmoid belong to the plasmoid and not to the Plasma theme? Does creating a plasmoid need modifying all the themmes, or the clock is a special thing?
There have already been a lot of suggestions about another theme; I still think that Aya is the most suitable to be the default (as in openSUSE) as, even if it is not much eye-candy, unlike other themes, it is as consistent as possible with the other parts (Qt widgets) of KDE. Any other theme means not providing a normal KDE look. And, can the user set the colors of these themes? If not, it’s a shame (especially for a default theme) and another point for Aya.
looks great!
Looks really nice! Though I think that the white highlights around the edges of plasmoids should be a little bit more suble and not so white. Great work Nuno!
Yup, this theme really kicks ass! Sober, unobstrusive and very professional.
The only thing I kind of dislike is the new analog clock. It seems a bit too heavy for my taste. I think I fancied the old one much better.
Anyhow, gotta say KDE4 look is rocking more and more by the minute!
This looks definitely great!
Just one little comment. I still see a thin horizontal line below the icons in the tray. I’m running openSuSe Factory at the moment and it also suffers from this. Don’t know it there’s a bug report about it.
Still ugly and unusable. Instead of nice effects, maybe a good layout for the panel would be nice. Allow me to put small icons on two rows for the launchers and systray and i will jump for joy. But people spend time on clocks that are most of the time covered by windows… You have one in the right corner you know…
And the theme is way bellow the expectations and the hype.
But I am not surprised… KISS is dead, go Vista
I’ve testet ATI propritary drivers 8.40.4 and 8.471.3. With 8.40.4 I can play OpenGL games, but desktop effects doesn’t work. With 8.471.3 ktank hangs, flightgear run’s without textures but desktop effects works like they should. 😉
My biggest complaint about the default in 4.0 was that borders took too much space. The default qt theme still has this issue though.
I personally am am fan KDE, but not of black themes. I have the impression that Plasma is called ugly in many cases becaus e it is provided with a black theme. Everything I have seen so far from openSuse 11 looks much better.
Hey, I like the theme overall. It does look like the numbers on the analog clock are below the ‘carbon fiber’ pattern which makes them difficult to read. An fix could be to render them on top of the pattern.
Thank you for making KDE beautiful.
out of curiosity, will normal window decorations be rounded properly when composite is enabled, or will they be pixelated as is the case now?
will this be done for kde 4.1?
Hey, I like the theme overall. It does look like the numbers on the analog clock are below the ‘carbon fiber’ pattern which makes them difficult to read. An fix could be to render them on top of the pattern.
I also thing that the Aya theme makes for a better default since it integrates better with the widgets. There are other beutiful themes out there but I think that the Aya is more “neutral” and makes for a better default without entering to the discussion of which one is “pretier”
for the black i was not directly involved in the choice of that so can’t really say, but can say that we needed something that like a brand is strongly recognizable, that you look a screen for half a second and you can immediately say “wow, this is KDE”
fot the clock font not readable the thing that covers the characters is the metal effect, the problem maybe is that the font is a bit little but it only uncovers a limit of the svg, you can’t do something that looks good on all sizes, or it gets really little on little sizes or enough big to be ugly when the clock is big
i can has v3.5 with no plasma widgets and no stupid kickoff menu, pleez? kthxbai.
I like it, much better than before.
Thanks a lot for your work 🙂
They should just change that default background… we’ve all seen the same wallpaper over and over since the beginning. A new one would be nice to mark the step from 4.0 to 4.1
Otherwise, this is not related but, Mart, please port the Tasty Menu to KDE4…
Lots of people requested it on the kde-apps page, give us some hope.
I hate kickoff 🙁
Ed: the code of the kde3 tasty menu is an old mess and pretty much unportable, i was thinking about taking kickoff code and making it appear with the tastymenu layout, i only have to find time… that will be the hard part i guess 🙂
Very nice! I like that now the contents of the panel use all of it up – before a lot of space was wasted. Also I see the tray icon backgrounds have been fixed! Great 😀
It’s really modern and makes me want to install Arch just to see KDE 4 😛
Ok, thanks for your answer and sorry about going off-topic.
I’m actually considering to try to do something myself.
Don’t know much Qt yet, though. But that’ll be for this summer, if i have time.
ingrate: It’s 2 clicks to switch to the traditional menu. The first is a right click on the menu button.
‘you look a screen for half a second and you can immediately say “wow, this is KDE”‘
Or “this is ugly black KDE”.
Anyway, there is no such thing that one can say that it’s KDE after looking at the screen because even if there’s a default, people (and distributors, thank God) can configure it to look completely differently.
“fot the clock font not readable the thing that covers the characters is the metal effect”
Couldn’t you then make the numbers be over the effect so unmodified by the effect? It would be more readable.
Very, very beatiful. Amazing. Thanks so much!
I like it, much better than before.
Thanks a lot for your work 🙂
Its a nice looking clock .. buts its still just a clock.
What’s that Gnome foot doing in the top right corner?
KDE 4 sucks 🙁
It totally wastes screen space, offering unimportant “widgets”. I mean if you just stare at the background the whole time you use the computer, then yeah, kde 4 is great.
Trying to make it “easy” and “intuitive”, and offering “common defaults”. The only default, guys, is that there is no default. I don’t eg. need 10% of my file manager screen occupied by a huge bar that lets me “email picture”, “crop picture”, and whatever.
For the love of god, let all these huge bs bars and menus, out of the way.
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@Guy
If you want to have a sparse, simple layout, there’s nothing stopping you. You can hide pretty much everything in Dolphin. You can remove all the widgets and all the panels, if you want. KDE is insanely configurable.
But if we don’t show things by default, a lot of people will never discover them. It’s easier to hide something that’s there than to show something you don’t even know exists.
KDE 4 is turning into a truly weird project. The bizarre design decisions and odd looks are bound to create a cult following but otherwise KDE is doomed. What is the obsession with clocks all about? KDE developers are crazy about black clocks.
Looks sorta like…I don’t know, Vista?
Who thought THAT was a good idea?
You are right, that is purdy!
JJ
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
KDE 4.1 doesn’t support files on the desktop, unless the improbable “folderview plasmoid” is used.
If you think the average desktop user is going to accept that, the KDE devs, who seem to live in a bubble, are going to face a cold, hard reality check. The backlash is coming. It’s not too late to reverse this decision.
“KDE 4.1 doesn’t support files on the desktop, unless the improbable “folderview plasmoid” is used.”
Sure it does, read the following article, carefully. Don’t be mislead by the first few lines
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/05/no-more-desktop-icons-in-41.html
Have to say that the folderview plasmoids look a lot more bearable now than at first.
Incidentally, can anyone confirm whether hiding of panels will make it into 4.1?
This is definitely the most beautiful plasma theme!
Many thanks!
how to get rid of those black frame around icons
learn something about padding for god sake
Check out the following video tour of KDE 4.1:
http://blog.linuxoss.com/2008/06/05/video-kde-41-trunk-demonstration/
this is the most amazing desktop i have ever seen .
the new theme is amazing , the new clock is sexy and its all
beautiful .thx for your visions and hard work .
yihaaa…………
pete 🙂
this is the most amazing desktop i have ever seen .
the new theme is amazing , the new clock is sexy and its all
beautiful .thx for your visions and hard work .
yihaaa…………
pete 🙂
themes downlod
Tried it. It sucked. Maybe it was Ubuntu Icky Ibex. Don’t know. Don’t care. XP is 40% faster. And I hate XP, but it’s still faster. If you’re going to model yourself after a nice desktop, why doncha look at one of the Apple computers. They’re pretty cool and make KDE look like is was designed by a buncha programmers. But don’t give up. Just maybe take a few lessons in usability. And don’t change something just because it’s been around for a while. Like what happened to Konqueror?? What’s up with that. God, I could whine about this all night. Hey, I went back to Ubuntu Goofy Gopher and all is well.
I don´t fully understand – Can I download this theme?