Plasma always had this really cute concept of “formfactor”: in brief different areas where plasmoids can reside have different behaviours, for instance a desktop is planar, i.e. the applets can grow anywhere they want.
The panel on the other hand can have a vertical or horizontal form factor, it means the applets in it can grow only in the vertical or horizontal direction, so an applet with a high quantity of content can’t display everything it would want…
In past releases of KDE4 the right behaviour of applets was still not really finished, so some applets like the device notifier were more kind to the panel, displaying the whole device list on the desktop and an icon+popup on the panel, other applets like the twitter applet hmm not soo good 🙂
Now with KDE 4.2 every standard applet distributed with kdewill fully use the form factor concept, so far we have 3 different classes of applets:
Applets that are just the same or with very little differences in different form factors, like simple icons or the taskbar.
Applets that diminishes their information quantity in horizontal or vertical form factors, here are two examples:
when in the panel the now playing applet just displays the control buttons, and the leave note applet switches to an horizontal layout, so it makes enough room for an horizontal panel.
Some other applets, like the device notifier or kickoff wouldn’t mean that much without some of its contents, so in the panel will be an icon+popup and in the desktop the whole plasmoid will be shown. but what about very big panels, so big that the whole plasmoid could fit and a ginormous icon wouldn’t make so much sense?
When the applet knows that it would fit into the panel, the icon goes away and the whole applet content is displayed, and goes back to an icon when the panel is shrinked again.
Now, since Plasma in KDE 4.2 supports also panels not always on top and autohide panels, you could have for instance a thing that looks like a Quake console with plasmoids in it, just like Konsole for terminals 🙂
I really like the effect. It makes more sense. Plasma is getting more mature every day. Keep up the good work 🙂
Konsole can have plasmoids in it?
Isn’t there a KDE4 version of yakuake?
How does the folder view work with this feature?
Can I have something like a folder view plasmoid in an auto-hide panel (without an icon version only)?
Nice work, btw.
I should point out that the Now Playing horizontal and vertical form factors are definitely a work-in-progress. I want to squeeze a little more information in.
The video really shows off the concept really well and I think it will work beautifully.
What if I want my plasmoids on the panel to always stay as icons ? It seems like the demonstrated feature might mess up my horizontal element configuration (on a horizontal panel).
thanks you’ve fixed LeaveNote for me :-D! Now I should check IncomingMsg or have you done that for form factor as well?
Thanks,
duns
Looks great – thanks for the video.
Can the new blue theme be applied to plasmoids unattached to a panel? For example, the calculator looks better in the panel in the blue theme than the freestanding black theme.
Will it be possible to have a free-standing panel, i.e. one not attached to the screen edge?
Anyway thanks again for a useful screencast.
GREAT!
Will these features be available in tomorrow’s Beta 1?
Also, will a Quake folderview be possible or is it planned? I’d like a folderview drawer on the desktop and panel.
Thanks for the good work.
hi,
there is one thing that really bothers me in kde 4.1. the tasks are displayed when using vertical panel on more than 1 line each and dynamically adjusts depending on the number of tasks to display. that looks bad. i would recommend to force each task on a single line(even though you won’t be able to see much of task’s name if panel width is small). or at least put an option for this behavior. thanks!
I tried Kubuntu yesterday for reviewing on a Linux site and oh my god it sucks!
Plasma crashed the next day and didn’t start no matter what I did. KDE 4.1 looks good but is highly unstable. The devs are saying that 4.2 will be stable (coming to your nearest theaters in Jan). Why do you release such shitty alpha quality software as a finished release?
I posted my review here: http://helpforlinux.blogspot.com/2008/11/7-things-to-do-after-installing-kubuntu.html
@James: plasmoid into konsole? hmm still not :), btw the kde4 version of Yakuake is live and kicking 🙂
folderview for now always uses an icon, because tecnically it’s a bit different implementation (is a containment) so can’t use the automagic code (PopupApplet class)
@randomguy3: yeas i know, but it’s really cool already :p
@duns: didn’t do much on it just a touch, but it’s working pretty good already (maybe still needs some love for vertical panels)
@Horsey: no that background it’s just for panels, btw it’s very easy to instruct the theme on what graphics use where, there will even be a graphical tool to do such tweaks
about floating panels, yeah, it’s a thing that can be considered for the future, the code is done in such a way that could even be not too hard to do.
@Dr ABC: yes, it will work in beta1 altough will be a bit buggy compared to that video, since it uses some fixes gone in svn after beta1 tagging. for folderview as i said it’s a bit a specialized case, so it will be considered but i don’t know what are the intentions at the moment.
I think someone at Microsoft is crying now because of all the work they did with the Vista sidebar only to have it suck way more than this. I think it’s awesome that plasma can neatly encapsulate all the different desktop metaphors out there with relative ease.
cal or horizontal direction, so an applet with a high quantity of content can’t display everything it would want…
In past releases of KDE4 the right behavio
notebook battery manufacturer
I think this now obsolete as HD and 3-D is now hitting the market like a storm!