That’s a tiny feature that apparently makes several people happy:
Now the plasma dashboard is a way to quick access your desktop widgets whente desktop is covered by windows, and i really like this feature as it works.
But since KDE 4.2 it’s possible too with a little bit of digging trigh the config files to set a different activity for the dashboard, that is a similar behaviour to what some other operating system i can exactly remember the name does (it has something to do with fruit and groceries iirc :p)
But this was sooo well hidden that people kept asking if some day that feature will be available, so here we go:
In KDE 4.3, just zoom out and you will see a new controls box that has the actions that don’t belong to single activities (yeah, no more silly add activity on each activity:) and two options: click on “use a separate dashboard” and then you’ll have an activity just for the dashboard (not visible in the zoom out view) so here you have different plasmoids on desktop and dashboard:
Oh, and there is also the other checkbox, “use a different activity for each desktop” this was availale in 4.2 as an hidden config option too, if you check it it’s what you get:
Great! I’m one of those that are very happy about both of those but especially the first. While I did manage to get a decoupled dashboard by manually editing the files, it wasn’t exactly straight-forward…
These have been THE two feature I have been looking for in KDE, and I am incredibly happy that someone got to them.Before this, I feel like plasma was just not intuitive enough to be used on a home desktop efficiently, but this brings it up to speed with the other modern OSs.
As a suggestion, and since you’re already working on it, would you consider implementing a sonfiguration dialogue like the one in this mockup?
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182192
Really KDE rocks!!
It’s time to shine!!!
Scott’s link to Javier’s bugreport contains a great mockup, and I think that’s indeed the right way of configuring this. Integrating the virtual desktops and activities just makes sense.
@Scott and jospoortvliet: the mockup could make sense (even if redundant, since it’s possible to switch activity every individual desktop anyways) problem is that for now having an activity on 2 desktops gives some problems, so it’s avoided (by swapping activities if another desktop already had that activity) with a combobox wouldn’t be really possible.
also, we are trying to minimize the amount of configuration dialogs in plasma as much as possible (i.e. direct interaction with the object to configure rather than a separate remote controller that is a configuration dialog)
Awesome feature, terrible naming. You can’t expect the users to know what an “activity” is. I’m sure planetkde users know what it is but the overwhelming majority of KDE users does not read blogs and has no clue what an “activity” is. Please consider giving this option another name. Something that is easy to understand for everyone.
i always read your posts because of the nice pictures & video’s, really cool stuff 🙂
Is it in trunk or somewhere else or is it a mockup ?
Where is the hidden kde 4.2 option to set one activity per desktop? I’d really love to turn this on here:-)
this explains how to enable both options in 4.2
http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma#Can_the_Dashboard_show_widgets_other_than_those_on_my_desktop.3F
That is great to hear. I’ve tried tying activities and desktop together in KDE 4.2 but with not so happy results.