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"It was actually replaced very, very recently with a slightly less ugly semi-circle with an icon in it in the top-right corner of the desktop, although I hope a better solution will be found eventually. You can see a picture in one of Fred's screenshots here."

I would still prefer to not have it on the desktop at all, because in my opinion this feature should not be used very often. Perhaps on the context menu or something would be better. How often do you use this anyway? Once or twice to configure the look of your desktop and then never again?

IIRC, it's there for debugging purposes, so you can easily test out the various plasmoids, and won't be present (in anything like its current form) in the final version.

yes, there's a little circle area. it's still ugly, though, as i have done exactly nothing to style it. once it's all working nicely it'll have a nice translucent gradient (glassish) with a tasteful border edge for contrast.

first function (designed with style in mind, of course), and then style. finish carpentry is called that for a reason

But what are the reason for having it visible at all times? Will there be any way of making it transparent/invisible? I prefer to keep a clean and clear desktop with as little icons/functions as possible. That is why I am using Gnome at the moment. These are the kind of details that I care about (its weird but true).