Hello, this is my first post to the KDE forum. I've been a KDE user since 2003, and I'm mostly very pleased with it.

As I'm using Gentoo stable, I've just emerged KDE 4.9.3, and I was perplexed to discover that my favourite window decoration, the Tabstrip, has disappeared. Is there any hope of getting it back? I love the clean, minimalist design.

Moved to KWin.

I think the reason could be summarized as "because it was unmaintained", but the KWin developers can probably give you a better answer.

Tabstrip is a window decoration which should have never been released in the first place. It was basically a window decoration to demonstrate to developers how to use the window tabbing functionality. Given that Oxygen supports window tabbing there has never been the need to release with the window decoration. The fact that it got released was a mistake.

After the first release with the decoration it did not see any further activity. The decoration had been unmaintained and the logical step was to remove it, especially given that the API needed some rework.

mgraesslin wrote:Tabstrip is a window decoration which should have never been released in the first place. It was basically a window decoration to demonstrate to developers how to use the window tabbing functionality. Given that Oxygen supports window tabbing there has never been the need to release with the window decoration. The fact that it got released was a mistake.

After the first release with the decoration it did not see any further activity. The decoration had been unmaintained and the logical step was to remove it, especially given that the API needed some rework.

I can see the problem. But would it take much work to reimplement the design and publish it as eg. "New Tabstrip"? Pleeeeze?

leifbk wrote:I can see the problem. But would it take much work to reimplement the design and publish it as eg. "New Tabstrip"? Pleeeeze?

But that wouldn't fix the initial problem of the decoration being unmaintained. We haven't had developers on it for years and I don't see that changing.

Decorations are designed as plugin. Anyone can write one and use it.
You probably want to wait for tabbing support to (re)appear in aurorae, dekorator or smaragd (skinnable deco engines)

luebking wrote:Decorations are designed as plugin. Anyone can write one and use it.

That sounds nice, but I take "anyone" to mean "anyone with sufficient skills in KDE hacking" , which certainly doesn't include me

luebking wrote:You probably want to wait for tabbing support to (re)appear in aurorae, dekorator or smaragd (skinnable deco engines)

I don't care about tabbing support, I just want the simple and clean Tabstrip look

That doesn't require KDE HackFu - dekorator skins are just a couple of images.
Fetch one from kde-look.org as example and adjust it to your preferences.
Smaragd supports emerald themes, i think we lost IceWM skin support.

leifbk wrote:

luebking wrote:Decorations are designed as plugin. Anyone can write one and use it.

That sounds nice, but I take "anyone" to mean "anyone with sufficient skills in KDE hacking" , which certainly doesn't include me

Inspired by this thread, I gave it a try using Aurorae. It was not that much of an effort to learn how to do it, but polishing was time consuming.

leifbk wrote:

luebking wrote:You probably want to wait for tabbing support to (re)appear in aurorae, dekorator or smaragd (skinnable deco engines)

I don't care about tabbing support, I just want the simple and clean Tabstrip look

Have a look at http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Re ... ent=158445