What I find quite irritating that the taskbar in the screenies looks like a 1:1 rip-off of kicker...

As an update on the KDE systray see this blogpost from aseigo: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2008/11/plas ... ay-42.html

Sounds fascinating If only I had any idea what you were talking about... I'm not quite certain of the difference between the freedesktop.org specification XEmbed thingie and the D-Bus implementation... (this sentence probably displays my ignorance in more than one way...) Oh well, looks like you guys put a lot of work into making it cleaner and more user friendly

Ars Technica has posted an updated, in-depth look at Windows 7:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ ... 7-beta.ars

My opinions:

I like the idea of moving app-windows to the top of the screen and it will maximize the window. Also, moving it to the side will make it take up half the screen. Very nifty, and very doable. But we already knew these features. One new feature is that if you grab a window and shake it, it will minimize other windows. Very handy. Kwin-developers, how about it ?

Looking at the taskbar in 7, I keep on thinking that similar approach could be used to kill Systray in KDE. When an app is running, it would be displayed in taskbar like it is right now. If the user wants to, he could "pin" the app to taskbar, so it would be in the taskbar even when it's closed (as a faded icon only, so it takes less space, while telling the user that the app is not running). If the app is "running in the systray", it could be displayed in the taskbar as an full-color icon. If it were actively running (that is, it has an app-window) it would be presented in the taskbar like apps are today presented.

In place of systray we would have an icon that would provide notification via Knotify. This system would also replace the various system-updaters distros use (why do we have those? Why not provide notification via Knotify, from which the user could launch the relevant app? Seriously?).

Janne wrote:Ars Technica has posted an updated, in-depth look at Windows 7:

http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ ... 7-beta.ars

My opinions:

I like the idea of moving app-windows to the top of the screen and it will maximize the window. Also, moving it to the side will make it take up half the screen. Very nifty, and very doable. But we already knew these features. One new feature is that if you grab a window and shake it, it will minimize other windows. Very handy. Kwin-developers, how about it ?

Looking at the taskbar in 7, I keep on thinking that similar approach could be used to kill Systray in KDE. When an app is running, it would be displayed in taskbar like it is right now. If the user wants to, he could "pin" the app to taskbar, so it would be in the taskbar even when it's closed (as a faded icon only, so it takes less space, while telling the user that the app is not running). If the app is "running in the systray", it could be displayed in the taskbar as an full-color icon. If it were actively running (that is, it has an app-window) it would be presented in the taskbar like apps are today presented.

In place of systray we would have an icon that would provide notification via Knotify. This system would also replace the various system-updaters distros use (why do we have those? Why not provide notification via Knotify, from which the user could launch the relevant app? Seriously?).

hmm I am not sure I agree with you on that. I don't really like the new taskbar. At first I couldn't stand it. But now that I have gotten a bit used to it I find it simple "acceptable". (Speaking of the taskbar..it's quite large and seems to take up more screenspace then it should). The shell upgrades on 7 aren't the greatest things. I mostly like the upgrades to the applications like wordpad. I'm quite happy that odf support is now in by default for wordpad etc.
I do like some of the Window manager features. They
seem quite nice. Mostly I'm talking about the ability to move the windows to the sides and they snap to half the screen. However one thing to keep in mind when looking at many of the new taskbar/wm features of Windows 7 is that though they may be nice for windows, but a lot of them are simply not needed on linux. Workspaces for example solve a lot of problems that windows users have to fight with etc.

I must say I can't get excited based upon what I've seen in the Ars Technica review. It's bascially a toned down Vista which resembles Windows XP more and some slight detailed touch-ups of old ideas.

I have removed the task manager/task bar from the default setup and now use the window switcher as my main method of walking through windows.

As I've stated earlier somewhere on the forums I would really like to be able to have application centric window management instead of the current implementation. So that the window switcher becomes more of an application switcher. The application is the parent and you can then cycle through the windows.

The only thing which is currently not possible to remove without having a proper replacement is the system tray. Both the system tray and the task manager are metaphors introduced by Windows and as KDE 4 presents a radical new vision in other areas (also on the desktop, with Plasma) it would be great to have optional replacements to differentiate from KDE from the old Windows paradigms. [size=xx-small]I hate it when people state that KDE is a free implementation of Windows Vista.[/size]

zrchrn wrote:hmm I am not sure I agree with you on that. I don't really like the new taskbar.

I didn't say that I liked the taskbar in Windows 7. I tthink the idea of having just icons is dumb. But some of the ideas in it are interesting.

Workspaces for example solve a lot of problems that windows users have to fight with etc.

But even on Linux, not everyone uses virtual desktops. And having those windowmanagement-features in KDE does not take away from KDE, it makes it better. Simpky saying that we don't beed better windowmanagement since we have virtual-desktops is quite counterproductive.....

Janne wrote:

zrchrn wrote:hmm I am not sure I agree with you on that. I don't really like the new taskbar.

I didn't say that I liked the taskbar in Windows 7. I tthink the idea of having just icons is dumb. But some of the ideas in it are interesting.

Workspaces for example solve a lot of problems that windows users have to fight with etc.

But even on Linux, not everyone uses virtual desktops. And having those windowmanagement-features in KDE does not take away from KDE, it makes it better. Simpky saying that we don't beed better windowmanagement since we have virtual-desktops is quite counterproductive.....

oh no I think we do need some new window management features. I am talking more about their new taskbar features. The line about not needing certain features on linux was intended to relay the notion that certain features that microsoft has to include are simply workarounds to fix issues inherit to the windows design. When I said I disagreed I didn't mean with EVERYTHING you said. Just with certain points. But your right to want some new window management features. I think that kde4 till now has been lacking in the area of innovative new Window manager features, especially considering all the innovation going on in the rest of the DE. But I read that there were a few new things for kwin that missed the feature freeze but will be making it to kde 4.3 so that is something to look forward to.

I'm also one of those that installed Windows 7 and I'm quite impressed.
For me it's like KDE4 but just a bit different some things are better and hope that they come in one way or another to KDE soon, like keeping widgets on top of everything... Or peek through (someone said in this or the other post KDE vs Win7 that KDE has that, but it dosen't nor the changing by clicking on the thumbnail of an app)...
Other things are behind KDE, like you can't lock widgets, you can't resize them (I guess they aren't SVG)...
But it's quite good and now my favourite Windows is not XP no more but rather 7...
And one more thing that was also said it's really fast, really didn't did any test so I could compare it with Kubuntu but it feels faster, but on other hand it's more or less vanilla 7, I didn't have much time to personalize it...
Now for some reason GRUB dosen't want to work any more even though I more or less just "updated" XP...[hr]
And did anyone tried KDE on it already??

Primoz wrote:(someone said in this or the other post KDE vs Win7 that KDE has that, but it dosen't nor the changing by clicking on the thumbnail of an app)...

Check in the alt-tab switcher. As long as you hold alt, you can click on the windows peek at them (make sure desktop effects are on).

To reinstall grub, follow these instructions: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

Janne wrote:I didn't say that I liked the taskbar in Windows 7. I tthink the idea of having just icons is dumb. But some of the ideas in it are interesting.

I thought so too, but then I tried it, and it worked, so... Its pretty easy to recognize an app by its icon.

SteveMcQwark wrote:

Primoz wrote:(someone said in this or the other post KDE vs Win7 that KDE has that, but it dosen't nor the changing by clicking on the thumbnail of an app)...

Check in the alt-tab switcher. As long as you hold alt, you can click on the windows peek at them (make sure desktop effects are on).

That's not the same I meant the option to peek with mouse hover over the thumbnail above the panel. Or maybe I'm doing it wrong... But the alt-tab is quite good too.

Seven looks very nice