IRC is proving fertile ground for finding kicker janitors. illogic-al provided an update to kicker's documentation. awesome! he's now looking at doing some JJ jobs around the kicker code, which is very cool. another fellow, Oleg_, is also poking around in things, and [mX] is getting his sea legs in the core/ code in order to lend a hand with the de-Panel::the()-ification. wicky's QLayout code for ContainerArea is done and soon to be merged into HEAD.
i've been trying to clean up the kicker bug database and become familiar with the body of reports at the same time, specifically so i know what needs to be addressed.
the DESIGN and TODO documents are shaping up nicely as well.
i'm considering doing two things, both of which may result in some controversy. so i'm going to outline them here so people can yell at me pre-emptively:
1. get rid of the non-kicker "MacOS-style" menubar. instead, this will be replaced with a kicker (child)panel that has some special constraints, such as you won't be able to move it from the top. the menu applet will also disappear from the Add -> Applets menu and will lose its applethandle (hello Fitt!). this change is being promprted because i dislike having duplicated functionality, having to deal with silly bug reports that result from both kdesktop and kicker trying to do fancy workspace strut stuff and because i think having a menubar that allows adding applets to it is far more interesting than the current "MacOS-style" bar. oh, and there won't be a "Desktop Menubar" option, either. instead, i hope Seli will be able to help out with making the Desktop menus appear automagically when the rootwm has focus.
2. get rid of icon zooming. yes, you heard me right. get rid of icon zooming. i've been working on smooth icon zooming and its been fun, but i had an ephiphany: what purpose does it serve exactly? oh, right: eyecandy to look like Something That Isn't KDE(tm). well, screw that. instead, i want the icon title to appear above the icon when its moused-over. no zooming buttons, just useful text. this will provide an indicator of which icon you are over (along with the mouse-over icon effect), show some useful information and make kicker appear a bit "calmer" instead of Inflatable Icons The Grow When You Point At Them.
commence complaining at me now.
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26 comments:
Could you make the icon zooming thing a choice, instead of just throwing it away? Kde is about choice, don't think the gnome way :)
Hi!
Just wanted to give you some support for your planned changes... as I'm sure you'll get plenty of dislike from other people. :)
I especially like the part about comming up with something different and more useful. :)
too bad, i'd like to see more eyecandy, not less... make it an option, smooth zooming is fun =)
Zooming is not enabled by default is it? So what's the problem? Tooltips already seem on by default + highlight.
What's this about removing the Desktop Menu option? Sounds very confusing... can't be good for usability. Why should one know about Kicker internals (panel this, panel that) just to enable the Desktop Menu?
Hmm, I always thought that the rationale behind growing icons was Fitt's law? IE, make the icons bigger when needed to make picking one easier/faster, without eating up desktop real estate the rest of the time...
You may get some protests in removing the non-kicker "MacOS-style" menubar, I believe people use this without kicker in combination with things like *karamba or smoothdock(?)(based on screeshots I have seen).
Hi Aaron,
As much as I esteem you usual usability work, your suggestion about the kicker icon zooming is not your best one.
"Screw it. I want..." is not exactly the type of phrase I would expect in an article by you on usability.
BTW, I use icon zooming. And I don't use it for eye-candy, but because it's an easier way to distinguish where the cursor is than having to read the tool tip. Plus, I KNOW what the icon is for, so I don't need the icon text above. But with a tiny-sized kicker on a high-resolution screen, it's easier to see which icon you are over with icon zooming than with an additional text. With only the text of the button above, I have to read the text, which is slower than just seeing the large icon.
Cheers,
Reinhold
> "Screw it. I want..." is not exactly the type
> of phrase I would expect in an article by you on
> usability
first, this wasn't an article on usability. =) second, there are good reasons for doing this. i don't change my mind because someone says they think i suck, i change my mind because someone gives a compelling counterargument.
> Plus, I KNOW what the icon is for, so I don't need
> the icon text above.
count yourself lucky, as many users don't know what the icons are. tooltips get in the way and take time to show up, and yet that's how many people figure out what the icons are.
> But with a tiny-sized kicker on a high-resolution
> screen, it's easier to see which icon you are over
> with icon zooming than with an additional text.
seeing a 22x22 icon versus a 16x16 icon is not much of a win.
i'd love to see what the timed difference in recognition is between a 22x22 icon and a 16x16 icon.. or a 32x32 and a 48x48 icon, for that matter. i doubt it's very much.
Icon zooming gone... horray! It's nice to see a dumb feature go away. It was jarring and confusing, and now gone. sweet!
I work at a company where the majority of computers are running OS X, and everyone turns off that bit of eye candy. So I feel that the KDE icon zooming is a copy of a feature that isn't even all that well liked in it's native environment.
im the anonymous from the first post.
Since i dont like the anonimity (sorry for the bad english, its not my native language), i weill introduce myself.
My name is Paulo Dias, long time kde/linux user and a kde lover :) also web developer, and with no time to hack kde, just bug reports and some ocasional i18n help :)
Well, back to business, like i said i believe freedom of choice is what Open source is all about, not to be free from paying but free to choose... what is pissing gnomians alike nowadays spawing things like goneme and others is the arrogance which gnome developers think they know what is best for users in the name of usability.
KDE developers some time ago had a fame for arrogance too, but that diluted over time (did you notice how those KDE DEVELOPERS ARE ARROGANTS PRI**S news stopped showing up?). Well, i know that you are a valuable kde developer, and i respect you for that, but what i can see here is a arrogant decision. I do the developing and I gonna throw this code awat even knowing this will piss of some users.
Come on, why all the fuss? its eye candy, it works, just turn it off by default if you must, but leave it there for ppl like me who like choices (you can call it bloat, but by that line of reasoning, then gnomians are right, and KDE IS bloat). Its icon zooming for god sakes, its not a security decision or a usability one. its a feature, so like it or not, its there, it works, so leave it there. You dont like it, and are pissed of for something? Fine, but dont bang on poor icon zooming just for the sake of it, leave it off if you want, but dont rip it off. thats the gnome way of doing things. Listen to users, they might not be right all the time, but they are right some of the time and think they are right all the time :) just my 2 cents...
I believe icon zooming serves a purpose besides eye-candy-ness. It reduces the amount of attention (if that can be measured :)) you have to pay when displacing the pointer to the button you want to click. Your eyes can be pointing some centimeters off the kicker, and you can still easily distinguish what button you are about to click.
Um. Why not both? Icon zooming + title layed over it. Or even better, make them 'icons with labels' on mouseover (as on the desktop, etc).
While some may not like icon zooming or other aspects of the current kicker, on my setup, icon zooming is the only thing that makes the kicker useful. I have a relatively small laptop display with a touchpad, so I use a small kicker to try to conserve screen real estate. If not for icon zooming, I'd end up with a desktop cluttered with icons that I'd have to constantly hunt for by moving windows out of the way. And personally, I like the mac-style toolbar at the top. I've just recently started using that on several apps, and have found it's actually pretty handy for a lot of things. So please, while you may not like them, I would guess that I'm not the only one using them. If you have to, turn have them turned off as defaults as they are now, but unless there's an issue with maintaining the code, please don't remove them as choices.
Besides, with tooltips on, the icon title already appears next to the icon. I have that turned off. The text isn't useful to me, since I can tell what the icon is. I need the icon to get bigger.
The icon zooming is something that I pretty much consider a necessity now. As someone else mentioned, when running with a tiny taskbar at high resolution (which I know a lot of us do) icon zooming greatly helps you to ensure you're on the right icon. This is doubly helpful for me because I also make the taskbar transparent.
I recently made the shift to Kubuntu (Hoary) and it uses KDE 3.4. I missed the icon zooming so much I switched back to Mandrake because they're still using KDE 3.3 (I always miss the distro-specific tie-ins like MCC or Kynaptic when I compile it myself so it's easier just to switch to a distro that has it in place).
If icon zooming never makes it back into KDE then I'll be frozen at 3.3 until the cows come home. :(
The icon zooming is something that I pretty much consider a necessity now. As someone else mentioned, when running with a tiny taskbar at high resolution (which I know a lot of us do) icon zooming greatly helps you to ensure you're on the right icon. This is doubly helpful for me because I also make the taskbar transparent.
I recently made the shift to Kubuntu (Hoary) and it uses KDE 3.4. I missed the icon zooming so much I switched back to Mandrake because they're still using KDE 3.3 (I always miss the distro-specific tie-ins like MCC or Kynaptic when I compile it myself so it's easier just to switch to a distro that has it in place).
If icon zooming never makes it back into KDE then I'll be frozen at 3.3 until the cows come home. :(
I also _loathe_ the tooltip crap that is trying to replace the icon zooming. It's HUGE and IMO rather ugly.
I just want the icon zooming to at least be an option in KDE. Thanks!
> icon zooming greatly helps you
> to ensure you're on the right
> icon
with the implementation of icon zooming in 2.2 this is true, though that causes other problems (obscuring neighbouring icons making positioning hard). with the implementation of icon zooming in 3.x this is not true. what you are observing is an illusion; measure the pixels if you don't believe me =)
> what you are observing is an illusion
Then it's a damn good one that helps me regardless and I want it back! :)
What you said about the "illusion" got me to thinking and tinkering, Aaron (thank you for responding, btw), and what I've come to realize is that the illusion is more real than it sounds. Sure, the 24x24 icon is _still_ a 24x24 icon but it is somehow _magnified_ to occupy around 38x38 pixel's worth of space.
It even extends below the toolbar meaning it has "broken out" of it, which I guess is accomplished by making it think it's still just 24x24 on the screen (otherwise the whole toolbar would probably grow with it).
So, while I can see while you call it an illusion it definitely appears different to the human eye and I'm sure that was your original purpose to it, and I (and apparently a whole lot of other people from the looks of this blog, the KDE mailing lists and LinuxQuestion forums) liked it to the point of calling it a necessity.
Can you please consider the share of people wishing icon zooming back compared to those who, for whatever reason, wish it banned? Make it an option(-al package) at least.
It is useful and it simply looks great on KDE.
After a while, nobody reads icon text! It is rather about quick and handy recognition of visual (iconic) representations rather than readability.
With every KDE >3.3 distro used, your new animation feature is the first thing I turn off, because it is just a slow and, sorry to say it, plain ugly roll over animation.
It doesn't have to be OS-Style zooming, even though I myself like that peace of what you call eye-candy and I wish it embedded in the desktop environment I use.
Please drop the patent issue! At least there could be a plugin offered to non-us users who whish it! Then, us-citizens may finally realize when it is time to go against stupid patenting laws and enforcing officers, that commercial products rely on and misuse towards the rest of the world!
So, please try to get a plugin system established so that other developpers can implement whatever animation effect they wish to offer to users.
As for configuration, this could be a simple dropdown kind of choice to switch icon animation. There could even be a "install new animations" feature from a install-base somewhere on the internet, much like mozillas plugin and theming system. Another thing you might need then were a "desktop feature test" before maybe citical or even untested changes are made, so that a user had a chance to switch back.
By the way I think a general update and extension system would suite nicely with all sorts of KDE features (compare firefox, stardock, etc...).
Please consider and don't misunderstand all those users that simply expess a wish. I really do value the efforts you put forward and I hope you are sort of rewarded for all the work you do.
But, as for me, when a system looses the aspects which made it useful, nice or slick to work with in the fist place or when developpers start to restrain its usefulness, for example by changing features or the license from freeware / open-source to a naggingly ad supported or commercial product, I tend to look for an alternative or drop it, and I guess others do too.
So, please reconsider the way you move on!
please bring back icon zooming. it was a cool feature and really nice eye candy. i haven't experienced any problems with it so far.
please leave it as an option like in previous kde versions. in my fc3 it was never activated by default.
How about icon glowing?
Firefox 2.0 beta 2: toolbar buttons now glow when you hover over them
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