This micro screenshot has two new little features that will come for KDE SC 4.5:
- KWin team worked hard to write a new cool effect: blur under transparent windows: the plasma theme will notice and use more transparent windows if that effect is enabled
- Monochromatic icons support for systemtray icons that use the new shiny protocol (dependent from the Plasma theme)
This looks very nice.I’m looking forward to KDE 4.5 .
Blur is great, but I don’t think monochromatic icons fit well with other icons provided by the app and not by the plasma theme….
Will that be activated by default or just something you can enable/disable at will?
“KWin team worked hard to write a new cool effect: blur under transparent windows”
Will this affect *all* windows transparency, no matter what?
Sure it’s great for plasma tooltips and the like, but the transparency you can temporarily give to a window by scrolling the mouse wheel over the title bar is actually very useful for temporarily letting the content of other windows “shine through”, for example to compare stuff. It would be a shame if the new blur effect would cloud the content in this case.
Very Very nice ….
Obviously these are inspired by Windows 7 and Mac OS X respectively, but they’re pretty nice so I’m not going to complain.
Maybe the monochromatic icons thing would work better if they’re totally flat and the whole panel itself has a minimalist aesthetic — unlike Plasma with the Air theme. Somehow in the screenshot they don’t really seem to fit, and I don’t think it’s just because of the colored icons next to them. (Maybe it’s just that black would work better on a light-colored theme?)
In one word: gorgeous!
feedback:
Would be nice to have the posibility on changing the “amount” of transparency in kwin effect
I really like the blur effect. I can’t wait to use that under the kicker. (Should make translucent kickers easier to read.)
I like the concept behind the monochrome systray icons. Hopefully the color (black or white) will be determined based on the color of the systray to produce the largest amount of contrast.
Another added benefit of monochromatic icons is that they will force application developers to choose more simple iconic icons to use. For example the systray icon for Amarok is a picture of a wolf with a tiny status (play, pause, etc.) section. The important aspect is the status (not the wolf) so they might be encouraged to simply display the status of Amarok.
Thanks for the great work.
its wonderful to work with you guys it realy is 🙂
WINDOWS VISTA WINDOWS VISTA WINDOWS VISTA WINDOWS VISTA [Snip]…
Comment edited by Mart:
I’m perfectly fine you don’t approve and express your disapproval, but do so in a polite manner.
Further comments like that will be just deleted.
I really love the monochromatic icons 😉
Hey mart,
I have a question. Will blur work on ati video cards with open source driver? because currently blur doesnt work, or if it works, then its horribly laggy. So did kwin team finally made it work on ati video card?
Thanks for answer.
One thing I was really missing for a long time is a consistent (color and size-wise) set of systray icons.
Thus, I really like the monochromatic icons, but I think they should be completely flat. I guess there will be separate icon themes just for the systray, so this won’t be an issue.
great job!
since i didn’t work on the kwin side i’m not sure, i should try with the opensource drivers (i guess it will depend wether those drivers support shaders or not).
the screenshot was taken on ati with fglrx.
@sascha: no, a window must explicitly ask KWin to blur behind its contents, otherwise by default it behaves just like before
As always: wonderful job! Keep it up!
I love you guys! 🙂 Finally monochromatic icons!!!
But who supplies the monochrome icons? The app or the plasma theme?
Is this post related to Windows Vista?
IMHO, we (the project) are copying a lot of things from other privative systems, like Windows (the blur) and OS X (the monochrome icons).
😉
who supplies the monochrome icons? The app, the plasma theme, who?
Clearly these are Vista / Mac inspired. That said, shouldn’t people also be arguing against using windows and a cursor because it’s Parc-Zerox inspired? Against using a console because it’s DOS inspired? Go watch “RIP: A Remix Manifesto” online, the film on Creative Commons. One of the basic ideas of creativity is that the future always builds on the past. Take what works. Adjust it to do what you want. Look at what doesn’t work and make it better. Avoiding using a word because someone else also used that word in their book would be as silly as saying we shouldn’t incorporate anything good from anywhere else.
The rant over, I would just like to put in a suggestion for the Kwin blur effect I would seriously love to see:
Blur Inactive
Much like “Dim Inactive” (I’d probably use both together), everything but the window in focus is blurred to minimise distraction. Optional could be blur the desktop when it’s not in focus and making windows that are behind more other windows more blurred. Like a real depth of field effect.
I know that some people would adore this and some would hate it (just like Wobbly Windows) but as a desktop effect only the people who loved it would have to use it. I know *I* would! 😀
I like the monochromatic icons very much. They are simpler, thus more descriptive and clear what does it mean. I always wanted unobtrusive tray icons which goes into color only when some action from user is needed or some problem occured.
Hi Marco, I’m trying out KDE SC4.5 on Kubuntu Maverick and I have a little question for you:
The blur effect in my box is applied also on the shadow of the plasmoid itself, I attach a screenshot of what I mean:
http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/2504/snapshot1x.jpg
Is this a problem of the beta, or the packaging, or…… what else?
Thank you,
Alessandro
Is it possible to disable the monochromatic icons in the systray? I’m already using monochromatic icon theme and it would be better in this case to be used the icons that come with the theme, not the ones provided by the plasma-theme.