A quick look at the state of KDE 4, including screenshots. “Over all, KDE 4 alpha 2, was a pleasant experience. Not much worked on a user level, but large parts of the underlaying infrastructure seems to be in place. I’m looking forward to the more releases and the final version due in October.”
October isn’t that far away, and it looks like it still has a long way to go. Let’s hope they don’t rush it to ensure KDE 4.0 gets off to a good solid start.
Edited 2007-07-11 21:33
If you consider this to be looking good, you haven’t had a look at what the KDE Games folks have been doing lately
Awesome stuff!
I’ve been building from svn semi-regularly for the last few months and the pace at which user visible changes have been appearing has definitely been on a big upswing.
As with previous KDE, the toolkit and libs provides a relatively large amount of the actual functionality in KDE apps and that has been where the lion’s share of the effort has been spent. Now that a large part of this work is nearing feature completion, the apps are suddenly starting to make an appearance on the scene and make use of it. And plasma gets about 3 new engines every time you turn head for a minute
I’ve followed the steps of KDE toward v.4 since the early development versions, we’re already at Alpha 2 and there’s still not much visual improvement. It’s still not aesthetic to the least. Just compare it with earlier versions:
KDE 3.4
http://www.kde.org/screenshots/images/3.4/snapshot13.png
KDE 4b2
http://thelins.se/images/Kde4a2-kword.png
Dull colors, pink background, same simple and washed out widgets. The only visual improvement that I see is the new icon set which is kind of ok, I think they should have chosen Tango icon set or CrystalClear to replace CrystalSVG. In KDE, everything is thick, they should change everything to pixel-precise look and feel, for instance input fields have thick borders, if the border were 1px, not more than that, without rounded corners, it would be a lot sharper, more professional and attractive. Everything looks thick with blurred and rounded corners.
Compared to other desktop environments, KDE leaves to be desired from a visual standpoint:
KDE 4b2
http://thelins.se/images/Kde4a2-kword.png
openSuSE
http://shots.osdir.com/slideshows/847/8.gif
Windows XP
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/ba/Windows_XP.PNG
Windows Vista
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/55/Windows_Vista_Desktop…
Ubuntu
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Feisty_with_apps…
Ok, I’m aware it’s an alpha version, but still, I hope they improve the look and feel of KDE dramatically. When you work in front of your computer all day long, it counts.
Edited 2007-07-11 22:41
That, and the naff shutdown dragon
Ok, I’m aware it’s a beta version
Clearly, you aren’t, because this is an alpha version.
Anyway, I don’t know how many times it has to be said that the Oxygen style is still in it’s early phases and will be dramatically changed by the time KDE4 is ready to be released. In fact, I don’t believe the Oxygen window decorations were even been included in this alpha, just the new icons. Can someone please explain why everyone repeatedly complains about something that we all know is going to change later anyway?
Edited 2007-07-11 22:41
Because they have nothing else to complain about.
can we see already what the oxygen team are doing so we can see how it will “dramatically” change the look & feel?
Edited 2007-07-11 22:50
But of course you can:
http://davigno.oxygen-icons.org/
http://pinheiro-kde.blogspot.com/index.html
http://blog.ruphy.org/
http://huerlisi.wordpress.com/2007/06/04/kde4-oxygen-dolphin-screen…
Thanks. It’s nice to see that they do have things ready to be put together now, especially so close to the release date.
This is looking great, thanks for the links.
Another thing that people seem to forget is that KDE is *highly* themable, and some of the best icon/window decoration/widget themes for previous versions were provided by artistically-inclined community members.
Some distros are also notorious for “branding” the DEs with their own themes and decorations. KDE/Gnome users are less likely to use the “default” themes than Windows/OS X users…
KDE is *not* highly customizable. You can change several things but not all you want except you’re a software developer. Have a look at the kde-forum.com web site. Many people want to change their look and feel and they can’t.
What are you talking about?! KDE is probably the single most customizable DE out there! Can you give me a good example of how you *can’t* customize its look and feel?
By the way, kde-forum.com is not a real web site.
Because that would involve them having to read, instead of look at pretty pictures, and we all know how everyone demands screenshots whenever an insignificant point release of app xyz is announced.
On the other hand, over in the Leopard thread, people are jumping to the defense of OSX aesthetics by insisting “it’s a beta! it’s not final!”, so I guess pre-dispositions may have something to do with it.
Don’t forget that there are people that will actually refuse to use Ubuntu because it is brown. This is simply the world we live in.
Don’t forget that there are people that will actually refuse to use Ubuntu because it is brown. This is simply the world we live in.
Yes, of course, what are the differences between linux distros these days, if not the look and feel? They are all the same thing. I have tried dozens of distros over the last few years. They are all based on Debian, RH or Gentoo, they all have Gnome, KDE or XFCE, they all come with Konqueror or Firefox, the list goes on. And they all allow you to customize it. If you don’t take look and feel into account, you have an even harder time to choose between the hundreds of distros out there! If you have to choose between two similar PT Cruisers with the same options and horse power, one is grey, the other one is black, what criteria will you use to choose one instead of another?
But see, the thing is that the differences between distros go deeper than look ‘n feel, but inevitably any comparison reduces them to simply that.
How stable are the core packages? How effective is the updating mechanism? Does the distro have a management infrastructure? How are things configured? Access to backports/updated packages post-release? Responsivenes of bug trackers? How much input does the userbase versus developer base have in distro planning? How transparent is the development process? Does the distro simplify integration of proprietary technology or discoruage it by design? LSB compliance? Integration with Windows business networking?
Everybody has different priorities leading to perceptions of value, different distros emphasize strengths and weaknesses that people will balance differently. Some people value the manageability benefits of Yast or Drake over .deb based packaging. Some people want a distro that configures itself and emphasizes ease-of-use at the expense of performance and granular configurability. Some people want click-to-install software, some people want a configurable build environment to custom compile everything themselves. Some people need to integrate with MS domains and AD infrastructures more so than easy multimedia capability.
Certainly if you’re experimenting with Debian derivatives, the conversation could boil down to “what colour do you want it in?” since everything else is just an apt-get away. But among the different distro families, there is much to consider that, to my original point, invariably gets reduced to screenshots of a default desktop. Reviews nowadays amount to an overview of installation and screengrabs; rarely do you see reviews of what the distro is like 6 months after the fact and whether intial perceptions of strength and weakness still apply after real-world use.
Screenies are nice when there’s something to see, but more often than not they compensate for what is not there in terms of substance.
So I just find it a bit sad that the remarkable work the KDE devs have done in laying the foundation for what could become one of the most powerful and flexible free-software application stacks is often reduced to complaints about the GUI in an alpha release. Granted, and in fairness, much of the work done to date will mean little to the non-dev/non-geek userbase until they have the applications to leverage it, but at the same time then those users shouldn’t really be toying with alpha packages, or at least placing judgement on them.
Rather than dismissing Ubuntu because it is brown, that’s like writing off Gnome entirely because Ubuntu is brown.
No, it’s not a beta, it’s an alpha. This is the time when core technologies get finished, and applications reside in various states of completeness. Not a single GUI element has been finished – icons needs renaming and completing, the whole new widget style is not yet enabled, the panel is going to be replaced. You base your ‘insightful’ rant on abandoned leftovers from old codebase, which is highly inappropriate.
Besides, have you ever played a leaked alpha of the original Doom? With one broken level, enemies which you could walk trough, and 4 non lethal weapons, it wasn’t barely looking like a game that would turn the gaming industry upside-down.
I’ll repeat it once more for you: is an ALPHA.
That’s right, but the problem is that KDE 4.0 is due for October. That is barely three months. It’s not much time for perfecting the GUI, what matters the most for users. After all, technology doesn’t really matter if you cannot use the damn thing!
I am really looking forward for KDE 4, but it seems like it’s not going to be the revolution as expected, at least UI-wise. A great UI doesn’t merely involve nice icons, windows and effects. It takes some time to make everything blend together. I’ll judge the interface once it’s out, but three months seem a little short for making radical changes from KDE. Let’s just hope there won’t be tabs with vertical texts.
I did tried that leaked alpha of Doom. Indeed, they came from a long way to deliver the final version, but I’m pretty sure they had more than three months!
I’m perfectly fine with you doubting that KDE 4.0 will be a revolution UI-wise, what annoys me is when people look at what is clearly old 3.x code that is going away in the next week or two and critique it like it was going to stay around in the final product.
I’m not really sure what KDE 4.0 is going to be like yet, it seems like there is a lot of potential there but as you say they don’t have much time to pull it all together. I’m betting it doesn’t come out before December, though, and 4.1 could be a major improvement when it comes out.
I would even risk the statement that that is the way the software works (gets developed) in general. And it’s not like the KDE team is charging lots of $$$ for their work…
Yes, it’s utterly unfair to judge the looks of the final KDE4 release from this release. However, there are things that I doubt will get improved.
One such thing annoying pop ups when you move or copy files by drag&drop in konqueror or dolphin. Why not just do it like it is done in Windows, Gnome, XFCE,MacOS-X and if my memory doesn’t fail me CDE, just move files on drag and handle linking and copying elsewhere. Just moving the files or folders is also the action that best fits desktop metaphor.
Not to mention that linking is an extremely rare action. At the very least remove the “cancel” action. As it is now, the user get four choices where there are 99% or so probability that two of them will not be chosen. This is not good usability.
The drag&drop ‘copy here’, ‘move here’,’link here’menu also constitutes an inconsitency with other drag & drop situations in KDE e.g. when dragging text around in a text editor, where you (thank God) don’t get this menu.
Another thing that should go away, but I doubt will, is the annoying aimated tooltips on icons in the panel. Yes, they look very cool, but they also makes very poor usability. You already know what icon the tooltip belong to, seeing it drawn once again before the text that you actually want to read slowly gets drawn only increases computer related stress.
Anyway, KDE4 seam to become a great improvement over previous version. Even the alpha feels very snappy and there are great improvements in how system settings are handled.
The drag & drop popup won’t be fixed because it’s not a bug but a feature and many people prefer it to how it’s done on other desktop environments. This way you don’t have to guess if it will copy or move.
The animated tooltip you can already disable in KDE 3.5.x, and kicker won’t be in KDE 4.0 anyway.
The drag & drop popup won’t be fixed because it’s not a bug but a feature and many people prefer it to how it’s done on other desktop environments. This way you don’t have to guess if it will copy or move.
I don’t think MacOS-X, Windows, or Gnome users guess what will happen when dragging a file. From the desktop metaphor perspective, ‘move’ is the expected action.
It is however still a bug that this behavior is not used consistently for all drag and drop situations involving moves or copying in KDE. I don’t like the menu, so personally I’m glad that they don’t, but that doesn’t make it less of a consistency bug.
In fact, if the reason for the menu was that users should know what would happen, this menu would be even more needed when dragging text in a document where the desktop metaphor is less obvious than when dragging things on the desktop.
In these situations the menu wouldn’t be as bad as on the desktop as we here only have to deal with ‘move’, ‘copy’ or ‘cancel’. In other words, the menu would contain options that users quite frequently would select (perhaps with the exception of ‘cancel’), as opposed to when dragging files where you have also have the ‘link here’ option that almost never gets used.
Another problem with the konquerer/dolphin pop up is that the ‘link here’ operation is completely hidden. Imagine you were blind and navigated your desktop by the keyboard and a voice reading you the text on the menu. How would you find out how to make a link as you most likely would move/copy files by doing cut,copy and paste operations. So at the very least there have to be some other way of creating links that was reachable from e.g. the ‘Edit’ menu. Speaking of links, why is there no way of making a hard link?
The windowing environment that handles this best is probably Microsoft Windows. It creates a pop up menu, similar to the KDE one, on right menu button drag. This way the user can easily chose in what situations he wants the menu or not.
The secret of making good user interfaces is to keep simple things simple. If you have dialogs or menus where some of the options are used very rarely this is a good indication that you should consider some other design. On my filesystem less than 1% of all files are links, and most of them are made automagically by e.g. install scripts. This is an indication that at the very least that if the pop up is kept, that option should be moved elsewhere. One solution could be to use cut or copy and add a ‘paste as link’ menu item to the ‘Edit’ menu. That would also have the advantage of making it fully visible.
Even if this menu is popular by many users, it have serious usability issues.
I don’t think MacOS-X, Windows, or Gnome users guess what will happen when dragging a file. From the desktop metaphor perspective, ‘move’ is the expected action.
Well, on windows the action depends on the relative locations of the source and destination. If they’re on the same device it moves, otherwise it copies – not exactly obvious!
It is when you see a plus sign next to the arrow key indicating that this is what will happen.
We keep battling one problem on Windows again and again at work: someone inadvertedly moving a whole directories around, usually with a touchpad. How much would I love to have the menu with a “Cancel” option!
Indeed, a good example. Just because Mac OS X, Gnome and Windows do it different doesn’t mean the KDE way is bad. Most ppl seem to like it (as do I) and if you don’t want the menu, you can use shift (move) and ctrl (copy).
Using for example right-click-move to have a menu (windows) isn’t too obvious, you must know how to do it.
One shouldn’t expect an eye candy revolution with KDE4, nor for it to use radically different UI elements and metaphors. There’s a reason why the WIMP paradigm endures – it’s a good one!
I think those who want more experimental desktop metaphors need to look to other projects. Personally, I want KDE4 to be not *too* different from KDE3, which is already an excellent desktop. I’m anticipating lots of improvements to the experience (and a better framework), not a completely new way to interact with my files and programs…
Actually, I am not pleading for a change from the WIMP paradigm, but rather for better usability. It’s not just a question of paint job : it’s trying to fit everything together harmoniously for making it pleasant to use. Basically, trying to adapt feng shui for human interfaces.
Unfortunately, it takes quite a lot of time and resources to get it right. Even though a better HIG is a stated goal for KDE 4, it’s going to be a tough job to finish it and implement the recommendations in just a few months if nothing has been done yet.
That wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t the weakest area of KDE (IMO, anyway). I would definitely welcome all the customisation features and the rather brilliant framework if most apps didn’t look like a pretty bad mess.
Now, I am well aware the developers can do whatever they want, I would just be disappointed if nothing was done on the usability front, especially if I’m coming back (probably soon; I definitely like Qt)…
Well, at the very least Dolphin and the new replacement for KControl seem to be big improvements usability-wise. Other apps will likely improve more over time. I, like you, fear that some of the finer aspects of for instance the control panel applets will be rushed. Not that UI layout issues couldn’t be fixed later, just that they tend not to be after a product comes out of beta.
On the whole, though, time will tell. The good thing is that we have a fresh start, and even after the 4.0 release there will still be plenty of room for feedback and improvements. Just stay positive and keep bugging the developers if something seems out of whack to you; hopefully they will listen!
AFAIK, KDE4 is going to look much like 3.5X…
4.1 is supposed to give us the revolutionary look/goodies/etc, right?
KDE…It’s the DE I just keep coming back to lol.
Now if I could just figure out how to theme this thing correctly…
I tried some experimental plasmoids today, and my expectations for plasma have gone up a lot. It looks and works just great! I think you don’t need to worry, they’ll do some new stuff with their desktop…
Well, look and feel work for the individual applications has been going on for some time. The KDE games all have a new shiny look and mostly are arbitrarily resizeable since they’re SVG-based.
Plasma is coming along rather quickly now that the basic framework is in place. Since this is going to be used to build the new kicker, hopefully we’ll start seeing prototypes before long. The Oxygen widget style has also been developed in parallel, as has the GL / compositing support for Kwin.
I would hope that we’ll start seeing all these independent efforts come together fairly effectively to finalise the overall look of the desktop, to complement the new look already existing in many of the applications.
It does seem that the original “Goals for KDE 4” are being pitched as goals for the KDE 4.x series, not for 4.0 in particular, so some of the original plans may not show up yet. But with the new look, new infrastructure and new functionality (desktop search and tagging), I’m hoping to see a really nice desktop that I’d really want to use.
Relax!
You shouldn’t worry too much about that. Let the KDE core team focus on enabling new powerful and fun technology and wait for the KDE user community to move in and pimp it up once the first release is out.
Really, I think almost all the nicest and most popular KDE styles/themes (like Keramik and Plastik) and icon sets (like Everaldo’s Crystal icons) at present have originated elsewhere and been incorporated later on. Just check the activity and goodies at http://www.kde-look.org. And also post your specific remarks in relevant forums where they can help the project.
Dull colors, pink background, same simple and washed out widgets. The only visual improvement that I see is the new icon set which is kind of ok, I think they should have chosen Tango icon set or CrystalClear to replace CrystalSVG
It’s because the new icon set is the only part of the new theme that’s in place Sherlock.
And they most definitely shouldn’t choose Tango. If you really like it, I’m sure someone will make a KDE version and put it on kde-look.org.
Compared to other desktop environments, KDE leaves to be desired from a visual standpoint:
KDE 4b2
Half the icons are missing, it’s using the old window decorations and widget style. Yes, clearly this alpha screenshot is worthy to stand in for all of KDE4.
openSuSE
The screenshot is blurry but the colors are hideous, the icon set is ugly, the input field borders aren’t any slimmer and the size of the desktop icons is ridiculous.
Windows XP
Are you kidding? *Anything* looks better than Loony. Motif looked better than Luna, Windows Classic ftw.
Windows Vista
I was always a sucker for Aero Glass. But I’m sure I could find some Apple fanboy around here, that would rip the screenshot a new one. With numerous mentions of Fitt’s Law even =)
Ubuntu
Ubuntu’s ugly. Especially the colors. I know that lots of people think otherwise but I really don’t see how you can stand looking at that screen all day. Apart from that the style is a cheap Plastik knock-off, the split panel is a waste of space and sacrificing the valuable top right corner for a log-off button is just stupid.
See, there’s nothing a determined naysayer can’t naysay. I’m not even desperate enough to use an alpha that explicitly doesn’t include the new style.
EDIT: Before someone misunderstands and gets all righteous on me, let me repeat: All of that above are exaggerations to make a point.
I think all of them are good enough to use with the exception of the KDE4 screen because *obviously* half of the interface is broken in that picture.
You can switch all of them to a different look easy enough, to each his own.
Edited 2007-07-11 23:53
Ubuntu’s ugly. Especially the colors. I know that lots of people think otherwise but I really don’t see how you can stand looking at that screen all day. Apart from that the style is a cheap Plastik knock-off, the split panel is a waste of space and sacrificing the valuable top right corner for a log-off button is just stupid.
“cheap plastik knock-off”? The ubuntu human theme is based on clearlooks which in turn is based on industrial. Industrial was made by ximian way before plastik.
Technically, sure. But don’t say it wasn’t heavily inspired by plasma… At it’s first incarnation it was almost a clone (just with every widget being larger, as is typical for Gnome). I must say I really like the latest glassy one, used in Ubuntu. Big fan of the colorscheme as well. Imho it looks better than polyester and QtCurve.
they should change everything to pixel-precise look and feel, for instance input fields have thick borders, if the border were 1px, not more than that, without rounded corners, it would be a lot sharper, more professional and attractive.
I’m a big fan of resolution independent displays and everything being vector graphics and everything, but I agree with you. Even with vector graphics, there should be a way (maybe there is already, I don’t know much about SVG) to say this line is 1 pixel wide no matter how big or small you scale it.
EDIT: why does preview support <blockquote> but when you actually post it, it doesn’t?
Edited 2007-07-12 20:59
..But if the screenshots are so tiny, of what use are they?
Anyway, I think screenshots should be abolished.
You can only get to know an operating system user interface by using it and feeling it, not by looking at stills of it.
Doesn’t mean I’m not curious about KDE 4.
You have to click the “large” link below the images or remove the “thumb” portion from the url to get the full size images.
But that doesn’t stop the horrible colour count, unless that background image is supposed to look so hideous?? In the thumbs I could understand the colour count but if people want to see what the large version looks like file size isn’t too important.
“Quick Look: KDE 4.0 Alpha 1” should really be “Alpha 2” (this is now fixed).
The first Alpha was released on May 11; and the second Alpha–on July 4–which coincides with the Independence Day in the United States.
Edited 2007-07-11 21:46
Looks really cool – what is even better, Solaris will an official platform of KDE 4.0, which hopefully will mean that it’ll compile with Sun Studio compilers
JDS is great, but nothing beats KDE in terms of integration and usability; spelling available in every application, for instance
video support in Kopete 😀
Oh boy will you like Sonnet, Decibel and Telepathy 😉
is this the final look of the clock? i hope not… i know the look doesn’t matter much now, as the underlaying frameworks does.
i hope they will come with a more pretty look at the end
Ok, a little offtopic, but is someone else having problems starting it in Virtualbox 1.4.0?
So they had konfab-/wid-/gadgets, which they called plasmoids or something like that? And they had a new settings center that was full of gray and white? And finally, they had an unstable Yet Another Office App Clone. Either the alpha 4.0 or this article was useless.
They’re going to have a busy few months to make that even look like a ++release, let alone feel like one.
Hopefully there are some useful surprises hidden in its intestines.
C’mon KDE you can do better. That sounds so geeky. I guess we can be thankful it’s not kplasmoid though.
It´s a reference to plasma. Plasmoid is a coherent structure of plasma and magnetic fields.
By the way the presentation layer in plasma is called, the corona, a reference to the suns corona which contains plasma
Edited 2007-07-12 06:12
Thanks for proving my point m_abs.
nobody is ever happy with the names, it seems.
The old KDE and Gnome had thinks like Kwhatever/Gwhatever. Everybody said it sucked. So they started to make names like Konqueror, Kopete. Not good either. Now we try even more original names, with a common theme as well – Solid, Decibel, Sonnet, Plasma…
And of course, not good enough. What, we should call them iWhatever? MyCoolApp? Sorry, but we won’t get everyone happy anyway, is it OK if we ignore you?
I like the last names, like
Solid, Decibel, Sonnet, Plasma…
Plasma sounds really nice =)
Dolphin also sounds cool… anyway, GO KDE! I can’t wait for 4.0!
My Biggest fripe is still the settings menu. Why do they have 3 different settings options, why haven’t they been consolidated? The toolbars, why don’t they have drag and drop placement of toolbar icons? It’s little things like that that is why I use gnome and Macosx. Settings in gnome are simple and easy to understand, they are usually all placed in one area of an application all under one option not three. That is my only gripe at the moment that I honestly don’t think is going to change. You can’t fix that with a new icon/widget theme.
Could you be more specific, which settings options are you talking about?
If it is System setting, replacement of the old kontrol center, it is very much like the one used in Mac OS X Tiger I´ve on my macbook, at least I think it is from my experience with the version in Kubuntu (also running on my macbook).
If you think there are too many options, please remember that to people like me, KDE’s high configurability is one of the main attraction of KDE. Not that I configure KDE every day or even once a month, but if I find the need for it I can.
Edited 2007-07-12 08:00
I meant if you open up Dolphin (or any other KDE app) and go to the settings manu there are currently three different options. Configure shortcuts, Configure toolbars, Configure (program name). All three options should be consolidated or at least streamlined. In gnome all options are under the edit menu under preferences, the same for MacosX. One can complain about the lack of options, but it shows a clear HIG that is adhered to and the UI looks a lot cleaner as a result as they don’t have a whole menu entry just for settings. It’s little things like this that is the reason I stopped using KDE. I was hoping that KDE4 would address some of these minor issues, but the there is no indication that this will happen. Well, we’ll see in October.
if you open up Dolphin (or any other KDE app)
So basicly it’s the same in all KDE applications, that sounds like all applications adhere to it and follow a clear HIG.
And I think it makes more sense than to place the configurations settings in the edit menu. Not all applications need a edit menu, and the content of the meny wary widely for those application that have one making a separate menu for the settings look much cleaner. And it’s not very logical either as you usually don’t change the data of the application(edit) when when you change your configuration.
As for consolidate tre different configurations into one, you will obviusly get a huge configuration panel, resulting in what some may call clutter.
Edited 2007-07-12 15:12
That’s KDE’s fault for not designing a better configuration approach. You can say whatever you want about Apple and Gnome but they seem to manage to fit everything in one configuration dialog. Edit makes perfect sense, you want to edit the settings of you application where do you go, to the edit menu. I actually do agree with you in terms of the HIG, you are right all KDE apps have the same number of menu entries and they are all placed in the same area, however that’s like saying most apps in KDE have vertical tabs. It’s a standard and they are all in the same general area, but that doesn’t mean they are a good idea, or a good design choice. What I meant by my comment was that they haven’t changed much in-terms of the HIG and as I’e stated countless times before on the subject, the HIG should have been banged out by now, with more of a focus on usability.
That’s KDE’s fault for not designing a better configuration approach. You can say whatever you want about Apple and Gnome but they seem to manage to fit everything in one configuration dialog. Edit makes perfect sense, you want to edit the settings of you application where do you go, to the edit menu.
Actually it doesn’t make sense to put settings in the edit menu. Most applications are document centric and the edit menu contains actions to edit you document. Editing application settings is something completely different.
What I meant by my comment was that they haven’t changed much in-terms of the HIG and as I’e stated countless times before on the subject, the HIG should have been banged out by now, with more of a focus on usability.
There is a usability project: http://usability.kde.org/. People are working on an updated KDE4 HIG. But doing that needs time, especially because KDE doesn’t have lots of people working on the HIG.
Edited 2007-07-12 17:19
Configurability of toolbars and shortcuts on a per-app basis is a function of the KDE framework, it’s not (always) a function of the app. The functionality is added via simple calls without requiring redundant coding across applications, and I believe they are individually configurable via the kiosk framework to the point where the settings can be made immutable and the options even removed from the Settings menu for managed desktop/kiosk type applications.
It seems like it would be backward to force application designers to have to incorporate those settings into the application-specific settings menu, that frankly goes against KDE design, which is about maximizing the use of frameworks and re-useable code for common operations.
It’s not bad HIG just because they’re leveraging underlying functionality that alternative environments may not necessarily have.
My Biggest fripe is still the settings menu. Why do they have 3 different settings options, why haven’t they been consolidated?
I know exactly what you’re talking about. I think the multiple settings choices occur when one app uses multiple KParts, so it might be difficult to fix. But I too really hope they do fix this, because it is confusing not to be able to just click on “Settings” and have it work but instead to have to choose from a dizzying array….
It’s little things like that that is why I use gnome
Can’t agree with you on that one; of course it is just a matter of preference. Gnome may be simpler, but it gives me less power. For every 5 KDE options, there are perhaps 2-3 Gnome options. Unfortunately, in certain apps (KMail and Kate come to mind) the default settings are kind of crappy, which makes you HAVE to configure them, which just sucks. On top of that, the configuration process in KDE apps is often much less straightforward than it should be, due to vague and occasionally downright random organization of dialog boxes.
But even more than the relative power compared to KDE, it’s the quirks of Gnome that bug me. The biggest is the menu editor. Half the time when I try to drag shortcuts around, it simply doesn’t copy them, so I have to recreate them from scratch, which goes off without a hitch, so WTF??? A quarter of the time, it copies rather than moves them, and only that last quarter of the time does it work as expected. And then there’s that damn Gnome file picker, which quite frankly brings me back to the Windows 3.1 days, just with the added convenience of shortcuts… but I have said enough already.
still i have not found that ultimate desktop yet.
Personally i would prefer the look of Osx cloned with Gnome, including the feel from Xp.
Then I would like to have it as userfriendly as OsX.
I have still not found that (for me personally), the ultimate desktop yet.
On Topic:
Looking forward to see how Kde4 is rolling out as a complete product, and how it’s going to progress in the future. Go Kde-team… GO.. 🙂
I think it would be really nice if plasma have the ability to play video on the desktop while you still have your widgets and icons on top of it and also it would be nice if you can play videos on widgets, like mini players, etc, and it would be also nice if you can preview videos on your desktop, and everything accelerated of course.
I know you can do this with xwinwrap/mplayer, etc, but since plasma have all that cool framework there (gstreamer/phonon) it would be nice to use well.
Edited 2007-07-14 08:18
Oh it will be able to do that. Rotating, half-transparent and mirrored if you want 😉