A while since last blog, so it seems nice to give some updates on the progress on the Plasma netbook shell, since in the past weeks i did some visual changes.
Now the widgets in the newspaper activity shows their background, to achieve more opacity (and readability), and the scroll area have a neat shadow effect to make the clipped edges to look better. The widget in the newspaper containment now should also keep their aspect ratio in a better way.
Also the search and launch interface has some fixes in its layout, and when no query is entered in the search field it spots some icons that do default queries, like all programs of a given category, all contacts and all bookmarks.
To maximize the space given to applications in those tiny screen resolutions now the panel is auto-hide, with the same sliding animation present in the main plasma desktop autohide panels (from KDE 4.4 done by my first Kwin effect, yay :D)
Here comes the usual video (the flickering of the panel is just a problem of the screencast), in the usual YouTube or OGG-o-vision, enjoy 😀
Could you please explain how to compile and install the netbook ui from SVN? I’m currently running KDE 4.3.62 (KDE 4.4 >= 20090728) on Gentoo via the kde-testing overlay but there are no packages for the netbook ui.
Thanks!
i really am not sure about that auto-hiding panel… It makes it seem like something is broken – i know it maximises the amount of screen realestate, but it’s the same look you get if kwin crashes – with the panel always shown it looks like a clever integration of panel and windeco 🙂
Last I used it, plasma-netbook showed up on alt-tab. You’d just need to tweak the WM flags I think, unless it was some weird issue only I had.
How does it look with the scrollbar of the newspaper activity put in between the two columns of the newspaper?
In my opinion would be cooler to put it in the middle because it would have a two useful consequences: a “separate columns” function and in that position it would be clearer for the user the fact that the scrollbar controls both columns.
Anyway this project is uber cool!!! Thanks for the good work 🙂
I really hope that the “close window button” isn’t at its final place… A close button must be in the upper right corner, or introduce a new way to close an app (right click on the thumbnails in the “expos
same here on arch =)
My reasoning is quite simple. There is not so much space. However there is fairly large icons… Look and feel necessity? But in this case why the icons inside the panel are so tiny??? I hate large icon, or rather I love them, only few minutes during the discovery process. Then, I ‘d like to use an icon as a logo not as an art design that needs to be large so that the hours spend on it are visible (anyway thanks to contributors).
I usually run the openSUSE weekly snapshot builds on KDE 4.3. Can I grab this containment with those builds, or do I have to build from SVN myself?
My mother has a netbook running KDE 4.3 SVN and I thought this would be great for her to try out.
to all one impatient of trying it: i’m not aware of precompiled packages, what you can do is to download and build from svn at svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/playground/base/plasma/netbook
and follow the instructions on techbase.kde.org on how build stuff from svn (it needs kde from svn too, or at least fairly recent snapshots)
about autohide, widget positions etc: everything is really experimental and subject to change, even the desktop showing in alt+tab is an experiment, making it no more a background but something that can be chosen and used
Just two lines to say that I like the overall flow of this GUI (the newspaper layout, what a find!).
There’s a caveat with the panel auto-hide, though. I cringe everytime I see it covering and hiding the application’s menu bar. This is extremely error-prone, as the user intent at aiming to the panel vs aiming to the menu is expressed with a difference of just a few pixels in both cases. This means you’ll have the interface doing the wrong thing 50% of the time.
Also the autohide seems to be triggered by throwing the pointer outside the window. This simply won’t work when using a device with a stylus (such as the Nokia N800/N810).
A much better approach to autohide would be that used by the Fennec browser (see video):
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-mobile-concept-video/
The panel lies “outside” the visible area of the screen, and revealing it displaces the whole screen down. This way you have both the panel and the menu visible, without compromising screen space. Also you can reveal the panel without having to thrown the cursor outside the screen, by dragging around the background. Plus you can have hidden panels at the four screen edges.
The only problem I see with this approach is discoverability, but that’s also true of the auto-hide version.
Just two lines to say that I like the overall flow of this GUI (the newspaper layout, what a find!).
There’s a caveat with the panel auto-hide, though. I cringe everytime I see it covering and hiding the application’s menu bar. This is extremely error-prone, as the user intent at aiming to the panel vs aiming to the menu is expressed with a difference of just a few pixels in both cases. This means you’ll have the interface doing the wrong thing 50% of the time.
Also the autohide seems to be triggered by throwing the pointer outside the window. This simply won’t work when using a device with a stylus (such as the Nokia N800/N810).
A much better approach to autohide would be that used by the Fennec browser (see video):
http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/firefox-mobile-concept-video/
The panel lies “outside” the visible area of the screen, and revealing it displaces the whole screen down. This way you have both the panel and the menu visible, without compromising screen space. Also you can reveal the panel without having to thrown the cursor outside the screen, by dragging around the background. Plus you can have hidden panels at the four screen edges.
The only problem I see with this approach is discoverability, but that’s also true of the auto-hide version.
(Are these messages correctly submited? This is the third time I try to post.)
I managed to install plasma-netbook, but I don’t know how to start it. Can you give me a hint?
> I managed to install plasma-netbook, but I don’t know how to start it. Can you give me a hint?
just run plasma-netbook 😉
(better if plasma-desktop has been killed before)
> better if plasma-desktop has been killed before
Thanks
Mart, ma almeno questa GUI mi permetter
Could someone help me? just bought an ACER AOD250 but I am unable to see the bottom of the screen/windows. So I can’t press OK or Agree in some windows, tried to do so with TAB without seeing anything but doesn’t work for all things.. Suggestions?
hat do default queries, like all programs of a given category, all contacts and all bookmarks.
To maximize the space given to applications in those tiny screen resolutions now the panel is auto-hide, with the same sliding animation laptop adapter factory
I must say this is a great article i enjoyed reading it keep the good work.