Description: My effort is to form a brain-storm of usability of the desktop and provide some feed-back to KDE on booming the desktop with new usability concept to replace traditional methods.
When I saw new lycoris preview shots, this idea droped on me. Here in the mock what I mean is: Left side of desktop we are having some special desktop icon set representing certain task groups, Ex: Multimedia, System, etc. And the icons on the desktop will have mouse over like effects. When one of those icons are clicked, Corresponding icons to the applications belonging to this group will popup on the right side od the desktop with some 3D like effect (Some effect like Kooldock of kde-look have). We can arrange task group icons and ordinary icons in seperate area's or can give distinguish effect in order to identify them. Optionally we can include karamba sys-info, KickerPIM to get best of it. Superkaramba with Kooldock (http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=12097) or (http://www.xiaprojects.com/www/prodotti/kxdocker/main.php) can be used if they extend their support for this target.
Please note that this is just a suggestion and bottom line of this idea is "Effective use of desktop". With all os this, please include your thoughts/ creative ideas/ critics etc to make a forum for KDE usability.Last changelog:
1. Ugly desktop mockup 1.1 Included detailed illustration 1.2 Included multy desktop usability illustation. This is something to do with more improved version of pager (Ex: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php?content=6702)
If we were to Use the Kmenu Button as a starting point and move the desktop foreground into the background (do something like take the screenshot of the desktop and make it appear to move back and maybe become transparent or grayer) and then have a 3D style interface that works on top of everything to choose your next task.
This could replace the standard Kmenu. The Kmenu button would stay, but only menu would be replaced by a field big as the root window. After the click you would have the room for wizards etc. on the whole window.
The right click or scrool could be used for icon-wheel rotation and left click for selection. Offcourse the keyboard must allso be usable.
I think it is right time to make somethink "fresh" and different from MS like menu, and more usable and simple.
well there is one major problem if wou have a big window runing wou are vrituly unable to get to the menus.
the only way for this to wor is if we have 3 more things, transperent windows, a simple way to make them more or less transperent, and a simple way to chose one or other window.
it is agreat idea and would be a great desktop. just this small problem that needs to be takan in consederation.
I think this problem could be easily solved by having this system slide up or out from the bottom or side. Or better yet, have it slide out from the corner, that way, the user isn't accidentally activating it all day long while trying to get work done (boy I hate that). Anyway, I think this is a great idea and I'd like to look into implementing something like this.
-kM
What do you think about having Mac OS X's Exposé like feature. I recently tried out same thing called "Expocity" on Gnome (It's GTK based). It's working perfectly and worth port it to Qt/KDE. You can get it from http://www.pycage.de/expocity.html
This is great idea, and could lead to completely new KDE desktop experience - together with Leinir's ideas, especialy that of little in-the-corner kicker, we could have totally uncluttered desktop, with fancy & modern look... hope to see this implemented soon...
After a bad first time impression, I changed my mind and I definitely think that this idea rocks!!
Let think: we have this giant place (desktop) almost unused and used only to put a nice wallpaper on it. Instead we can use it to replace (well, integrate) the current k-menu behaviour.
One can say: it's not immediate. But let think about it...you have to click on k-menu to have all sub menus available. Here you can click on the "show desktop" button or it may be implemented a "border area" where if you move the mouse in, then desktop is showed.
IMO it's a great idea!!
Doing this in karamba is very possible, but coding it efficiently may be a little tricky since you'd be doing a lot of mouse over/mouse location detection stuff. I have some interesting mouse over code in my iLaunch superkaramba theme if you would like to check that out. If you would like a working prototype mochup, send me some icons or design layout of what you want exactly ( ie what does what, what locations things reside in, behavior of the task areas, etc)
Actually, I'm starting to do this. Spiny icons and animations and stuff. kstart --type Desktop. I might need to make it have an icon container so that you can keep regular icons on your desk, or maybe make a tab that will hold the regular icons.
Somebody with experiance should do this. Not me. So far, all I have gotten is a spinning grapiant cube against a gradiant background. I want to be able to load pngs and do antialiasing and loadable objects, but I kave never used GL before.
I second this suggestion! Frankly I got a similar notion when I saw the screenshot. I actually thought Lycoris has already done something like this.
Anyway, you have a great notion and if implemented, it would put KDE way ahead of Longhorn or MacOSX IMHO :-)
I think this could be done with just a Karamba-Theme and the Konqueror-sidebar activated for the Desktop... And you got something more powerfull as on your ugly screenshot.
Hi, I'm going to try out your idea and update/improve my mocks accordingly. So could you please advice me how to add custom programme group buttons in konq side bar and how to use karamba to work accordingly. Your feedback is much appreciated!
Ratings & Comments
25 Comments
If we were to Use the Kmenu Button as a starting point and move the desktop foreground into the background (do something like take the screenshot of the desktop and make it appear to move back and maybe become transparent or grayer) and then have a 3D style interface that works on top of everything to choose your next task.
This could replace the standard Kmenu. The Kmenu button would stay, but only menu would be replaced by a field big as the root window. After the click you would have the room for wizards etc. on the whole window. The right click or scrool could be used for icon-wheel rotation and left click for selection. Offcourse the keyboard must allso be usable. I think it is right time to make somethink "fresh" and different from MS like menu, and more usable and simple.
I once stumbled on this project... it has some similarity of what you are tring to do: http://segusoland.sourceforge.net/
Thank you Michel, That's a "Must to See" project.
Is it needed to be the xp icons?
No man, these icons are from Lycoris
well there is one major problem if wou have a big window runing wou are vrituly unable to get to the menus. the only way for this to wor is if we have 3 more things, transperent windows, a simple way to make them more or less transperent, and a simple way to chose one or other window. it is agreat idea and would be a great desktop. just this small problem that needs to be takan in consederation.
I think this problem could be easily solved by having this system slide up or out from the bottom or side. Or better yet, have it slide out from the corner, that way, the user isn't accidentally activating it all day long while trying to get work done (boy I hate that). Anyway, I think this is a great idea and I'd like to look into implementing something like this. -kM
What do you think about having Mac OS X's Exposé like feature. I recently tried out same thing called "Expocity" on Gnome (It's GTK based). It's working perfectly and worth port it to Qt/KDE. You can get it from http://www.pycage.de/expocity.html
This is great idea, and could lead to completely new KDE desktop experience - together with Leinir's ideas, especialy that of little in-the-corner kicker, we could have totally uncluttered desktop, with fancy & modern look... hope to see this implemented soon...
Feel free to help us out, you can find the attempt at doing it in the irc channel #slicker on irc.freenode.net and online at http://www.slicker.org and http://wiki.slicker.org ;)
That little 'kick in the corner' is slicker (http://slicker.org). ;)
Oh, didn't know how it looks like, only heard of it...well, nice, slicker is really nice ;)
slicker is very adaptable, and that's just teh start what you've seen, more work is still to come, just wait on the dev...
Have a look here :) http://www.leinir.dk/temp/new-clock-idea.jpg I believe a few of your ideas are explored there as well :)
After a bad first time impression, I changed my mind and I definitely think that this idea rocks!! Let think: we have this giant place (desktop) almost unused and used only to put a nice wallpaper on it. Instead we can use it to replace (well, integrate) the current k-menu behaviour. One can say: it's not immediate. But let think about it...you have to click on k-menu to have all sub menus available. Here you can click on the "show desktop" button or it may be implemented a "border area" where if you move the mouse in, then desktop is showed. IMO it's a great idea!!
Doing this in karamba is very possible, but coding it efficiently may be a little tricky since you'd be doing a lot of mouse over/mouse location detection stuff. I have some interesting mouse over code in my iLaunch superkaramba theme if you would like to check that out. If you would like a working prototype mochup, send me some icons or design layout of what you want exactly ( ie what does what, what locations things reside in, behavior of the task areas, etc)
This would be really cool with OpenGL support and plugins.
Actually, I'm starting to do this. Spiny icons and animations and stuff. kstart --type Desktop. I might need to make it have an icon container so that you can keep regular icons on your desk, or maybe make a tab that will hold the regular icons.
Somebody with experiance should do this. Not me. So far, all I have gotten is a spinning grapiant cube against a gradiant background. I want to be able to load pngs and do antialiasing and loadable objects, but I kave never used GL before.
Now that's what I call inovation. I think this is the best sugestion I ever seen!!! Somebody could implement that!!!
i like it.. i'm looking forward to seeing the first working versions..
I second this suggestion! Frankly I got a similar notion when I saw the screenshot. I actually thought Lycoris has already done something like this. Anyway, you have a great notion and if implemented, it would put KDE way ahead of Longhorn or MacOSX IMHO :-)
I think this could be done with just a Karamba-Theme and the Konqueror-sidebar activated for the Desktop... And you got something more powerfull as on your ugly screenshot.
Hi, I'm going to try out your idea and update/improve my mocks accordingly. So could you please advice me how to add custom programme group buttons in konq side bar and how to use karamba to work accordingly. Your feedback is much appreciated!