Ok, tabbed windows. Thanks again for the reminder Ivan! So I started playing around with the existing mockups and eventually settled on breaking the titlebar swatch into segments for each tabbed window title. Then I tried to resolve any inconsistencies that came as a result:



Full size here: http://wstaw.org/m/2014/02/20/mockup_b4_1.png

You can see the progress from the top left to the lower right. The lesson for me is: Let the pixels do the talking! Right up until I mocked up the new titlebar on a full app, I was convinced it would look just boring. Yeah, I like the asymmetry of the original but, considered as part of a whole app visual design, I think the new titlebar on the lower right successfully communicates the light, cohesive feeling intended by our mood goals while also affording a consistent tabbed window experience. Let me know if anyone prefers the old one.

Hope this helps!

Looks really neat I must say.

Awesome!

How do we implement it? Ivan you mentioned that the window decoration wasn't an issue, just the widget theme?

I'm guessing that the easiest approach is to write an aurorae theme (it is qml based, so it should not be complicated - haven't done any of those myself).

It will need to be rewritten later to be a proper C++ plugin (just asked mgraesslin** about this), but it would be nice for mocking and testing for the time being.

@Jens: he said that he could give feedback, but has no access here

Another thing, guys at #plasma sent me this http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Ae ... ent=162303 and Marco said that the design group might want to contact the author of QtCurve theme (the theme engine used in the linked theme).

The good thing about QtCurve is that it is made for Qt4/Qt5/GTK.

** @Jens: he said that he could give feedback, but has no access here. It is up to you guys to decide whether you want a another developer here.

Wait, who what? What dev doesn't have access?

About Qtcurve - I've tried reaching out to the guy who made it but haven't gotten in contact with him (on the orders of Fabian a few days back ) - no mail have been replied to so if you know a better way please help and try to contact the dude.

ivan wrote:Another thing, guys at #plasma sent me this http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Ae ... ent=162303 and Marco said that the design group might want to contact the author of QtCurve theme (the theme engine used in the linked theme).

The good thing about QtCurve is that it is made for Qt4/Qt5/GTK.

QtCurve seems like the perfect target! I'm not at my computer but it seems like we can get maybe 60% of the way there without any code changes - just QtCurve settings changes. When I get home I'll start fiddling with QtCurve settings to see just how close we can come. Hell, if no one else will and the developer needs it, I'll even volunteer some of my time to help the developer with coding to help get us the rest of the way there.

So for my next mockups I wanted to start focusing a little more effort on the Plasma Workspace desktop. Since the networkmanagement folks asked for design help in the public forums (viewtopic.php?f=285&t=119742) I thought I'd go ahead mock up a possible Plasma Next version.



A little closer:




I haven't shared anything with the folks that requested design help. Any thoughts?

Sry for the short comments (and lack of them) stupid diseases... My husband is playing nurse so maybe that's why I'm still sick and this song is going on repeat here apparently I'm cute like a "teddybear on heroin" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_W0puyAJFA (doesn't have an official video so some guy doing weird things)

1) Looks fekking awesome - I wanna do mockups and riff of yours! (see "stupid diseases" above)
2) There is a cool thing coming which is an integrated systemtray window which consists of shortcuts within the window to different areas and its the same size, opens in the same area and is generally awesome
3) I had an idea to edit it where it contained the icon of the current "area" of the system tray window as a decoration (meaning the list of it moved around) so that it mimicked the layout rules of the calendar (which was a separate window) sorta going with the print design idea of similarities (even superfluous ones).
4) I think you can find it in Marco's mockup above... pretend its that - but without the list of icons on the left being centralized vertically (and instead spread out evenly) and a larger icon for the current area aligned with the header and set to 60% opacity.

As for the network manager - see its gonna be in Plasma Next but it will follow the rules of the new System Tray (so the surrounding left hand column of icons and the header will be Plasma Next).

Ah! I found a layout sketch-up


Anyway I think I can safely say your content layout is AWESOME! Just you wait until I'm better though... then I'll bomb this place with mockups... Now back to sleep (Its 03:30, I just got up because I was freezing too much)

That's a screenshot of actual window with an Aurorae windec theme, a color scheme and qtcurve settings. I wanted to see how close I could get to our mockups without compiling code. QtCurve in its current form does a fair job as a starting point for non-QML apps I think. Definitely not quite the right the scrollbar, progress bar or the right size checkbox and radio buttons, but not completely terrible either. The Aurorae theme I did up just cuz I was curious. It's not quite complete since I didn't add the tabbed window themes just yet. But it might be enough to get us going. If anyone's interested the files are here:
Color Scheme: http://goo.gl/gE8Ncx
QtCurve settings: http://goo.gl/ln3k1y
Aurorae theme: http://goo.gl/8TKv3h

Hope this helps!

P.S. No matter what, the application widget style, windec and QML/Qt Component themes will only get us a tiny part of the way there. App UIs need to be redesigned with careful and supportive visual (and UI) design guidance to get us the rest of the way.

It actually looks really nice! Kudos!

I'll have to nitpick a bit later - you can (and ought to) bask in your glory for now

> App UIs need to be redesigned with careful and supportive visual

That will be ... difficult? ... to pull off.

Though, I have to say that kde apps actually look really good regarding the fact the uis are made by developers. (a few hits and misses, but overall quite sane)

That'll do perfectly for now. I'll try to get a hold of Craig the dude who made Qtcurve. I'm just tied up in rather angry debates with certain devs via email... You'd think the idea of "you have to pull your weight for design work to be able to be done or you won't get help" wouldn't be so complex to describe to a dev but for some... apparently it is.

The thing is we kinda need to move slow here - I mean if we can't edit the widget style lets use one that works for now and this is the best choice I think (I'm setting it up here to try it out on my end) we have a ton of work ahead so we might as well focus on the work we can do for now and prep for the work needed.

Again Andrew, wth - awesome work!

Ivan - nitpick away...
Andrew - I will suggest we use this until we can edit the widget style and window dec's and post it as part of next Monday report as long as Ivan, Marco and Sebas are on board.

I'm gonna sit down and play with it to try to create a dark color theme with it

> Ivan - nitpick away...

No issues with the design this time.

Just additions that I forgot to mention earlier. We support reordering of the buttons (close, max, min) and adding custom ones. So, if alake can incorporate a few custom buttons (for example, the application menu button*) on the lefthand side of the caption, it would be more than awesome (no need to hack aurorae for this, I'd just like to see what those would look like in the mock-ups).

The other thing I forgot is that tabs in tabbed windows should have their own close buttons.

--

Now, regarding the Monday meeting. We had a few discussions on IRC regarding the first release (mainly Marco and myself... with a few others I don't remember ). The original idea behind Plasma Next was to make the transition seamless in the sense that people should not really see that anything changed.

Obviously, we have changed a lot of things (not only under the hood) so it will not really go according to that plan, but... we came up with the following road-map:

- First release: New default Plasma themes (a white and a black one).
This will not be a big deviation from the original plan, since we have already had significant theme changes during the 4.x cycle - so it is not unexpected that we will do it again.

- First release: New *non-default* widget and decoration theme, leaving Oxygen as default.
This will allow us to keep consistency with old kde applications and not to worry if some things are not in the final state (I expect that we will be able to pull off 100% of the window decoration, ~60% of the widget style, and ~10% of the icon-set**), and it will remove the issue of ''we are creating an icon theme, systray icon theme and a plasma theme that not only needs to prepare for a better widget theme but also fit into the current one AND the current window decoration theme?", as Jens eloquently has put it.
Also, it will allow the users to test the new things and give us feedback, so that we can improve before the final release.
This might sound like a downer, but I hope it will not. For me, the best feeling is when you create something that is not shipped as the default, and you start seeing it in a huge number of screenshots that people post***.

- Later release - When the team agrees we are satisfied by all the components, we change the defaults.

* see http://wstaw.org/m/2014/02/21/buttons.png if I was unclear (my current setup for decoration buttons)

** this is not because I don't trust our icon makers to do the work, it is just that I know how much work needs to be done. Obviously, would love to be proven wrong (I'd enjoy a new high-quality icon set)

*** talking obviously about the Stripes wallpaper, and to a lesser extent the Slim Glow plasma theme

Ok just found out MORE issues (oh poor Alake will be LIVID when he wakes up) apparently Aurorae isn't supported in Plasma NEXT right now according to Sebas.

What we would need about now is an exact "what to do when" list tbh - as it is it feels like we have a bunch of bosses above us who tell us about half of the relevant information and we're supposed to guess the rest.

Whats needed is a "yes that one!" with some design choices, a few "this will happen, that wont"s and a nice proper list.

Ivan: yes it is a bummer. Think this should be talked over ASAP.

I said that Aurorae theme will need to be implemented in C++ (you're excused, you were feverish ). The Aurorae theme is just so that we can get the feel of it before we actually implement it - it is easier to create working mock-ups.