ivan wrote:> If we go for it, we need to resolve the alignment problems - the bars go over the icons in the system tray, but not in the tasks applet.

Ha! this is actually kindof a problem.

The reson is that taskbar icons on small panels are 16x16, while other icons are 22x22 (and systray icons the only one that go out of standard sizes: 24x24 that is *not* a standard size for KDE icons)

so fun, fun.
We could try to give margins to all the icons, but then i'm not sure if it will look that good.
and would mean that now the default systray icon size would become 16x16, ouch :/

I think thinner bars would be the trick. I mean in essence they simply tell you that "here be thing" and the color is the central indicator so the exact width of the bar is irrelevant? Make the line really thin a few pixels and the same effect is present

alake wrote:

notmart wrote:The panel itself has an option for prefixes nort- south- east- west- (not used in the current theme) so i would go for using the same prefixes?

Those prefixes make sense to me.

pushed a version of the taskbar with the 4 prefixes (man, it's a lot of items:/).
the south version doesn't exist and the prefix-less version is used instead, so will still work in plasma1 and old themes will still work in plsma next

I confess I'm less excited with the panel and taskbar visuals I'm seeing in the plasma2 screenshots vs my plasma1 install. I can't quite put my finger on it... wait a minute... The translucency.

vs


Yeah, there are some spacing and typeface differences but we'll get to those... For now, the translucency. The panel (and panel applet) translucency is almost non-existent. It really creates a different perception of the material properties - sort of cheap copier paper vs high quality cardstock. I assume that's due to the extra contrast magic going on. I'll have to check the opacity setting in the theme, but I think we need to get that right first. It's a small thing, but nothing else will look right if the "canvas" looks wrong. Feel free to experiment with lowering the opacity on the panel-background elements (I'd do it but then I'd be doing it blind). I'm thinking it'll look start to look right when you just start to see the edge of the panel like in the plasma1 screenshot above.

Oh, and that's not saying we won't revisit the visual design of the tasks and item selected panel item indicator if necessary. I'm just hoping we can get one thing right at a time before twiddling too many knobs.

notmart wrote:I'm seeing that actually looks so-so when used with an old theme with a classical button-like taskbar entry, so may make sense to have a new element.

Another that will probably need to be a new element is the tabbar (would really like to give to it the same look) depends tough also how much we want to stay retrocompatible, I'll still put a fallback to use button+frame as now?

Yes, I think new elements would be helpful with the fallbacks as you describe. I also may need to understand better the focus behaviour:
a. Any highlight color on the panel should probably be used sparingly to indicate what has focus - only one thing at a time really has focus.
b. When the desktop doesn't have focus, the only selected element on the panel with the highlight color should probably be the active window.
c. When the desktop has focus, the selected element (if any) in the panel should be the only thing with the highlight color (i.e. the active window loses focus - that's how its working in plasma1 for me).
d. For panel applets that stay open when the desktop doesn't have focus (e.g. the clock), we might need either an unfocused-but-selected theme element OR just not show the selected panel item indicator when the desktop doesn't have focus.

There may be technical or practical limitations to the this getting this focus behavior but, even if there are, at least then we'll know how to properly work around it from the visual design side (like a different selected panel item indicator design).

Oh and THANKS so much for taking the time to help with this Marco and Ivan!

notmart wrote:pushed a version of the taskbar with the 4 prefixes (man, it's a lot of items:/).
the south version doesn't exist and the prefix-less version is used instead, so will still work in plasma1 and old themes will still work in plsma next

Great!

jensreuterberg wrote:I think thinner bars would be the trick. I mean in essence they simply tell you that "here be thing" and the color is the central indicator so the exact width of the bar is irrelevant? Make the line really thin a few pixels and the same effect is present

That may be exactly where we end up with after all. I'm hoping we can get the translucency right first, then we can reevaluate those taskbar indicators.

random layout **** aside, that's how a prototype works in vertical panel mode:


not 100% sure how to feel about it, either great or meeh.
(also expanded group tasks would have to look the same, not sure)

alake wrote:It's a small thing, but nothing else will look right if the "canvas" looks wrong. Feel free to experiment with lowering the opacity on the panel-background elements (I'd do it but then I'd be doing it blind). I'm thinking it'll look start to look right when you just start to see the edge of the panel like in the plasma1 screenshot above.

Also the intensity of the effect can be tuned, will do some experiments on the two sides

another real world screenshot of an edge case:


when the taskmanager is two lines (yep, we have to support it) looks kinda crowded, would probably be better having no graphics at all for normal and minimized tasks

attempt at making the rest of the applets aligned exactly as the taskbar.. indeed more aligned, but i don't like it..

Well this is problematic... I mean the "double taskbar". We can't cover ALL usebases and double taskbar is one of those things we won't get right at the first go and shouldn't let it dictate the looks of the current design.

I say use the decorations and ignore the double taskbar for now and look at it later to fix if at all possible. Or if that can be added to the double taskbar somehow (that it doesn't use decorations).

As for layout the reason why it looks "meh" is simple - the headers in your applications lack subheaders making them skewed and the sizing is all wrong. It also need a solid graphical element at the top (an actual square) to be able to weigh out the other bits otherwise the spacing will be too big and everything looks like its floating.

I'd also suggest that, if it is at all possible, the the applications are spread out evenly vertically based on size available instead of leaving a massive gap under them.

jensreuterberg wrote:I'd also suggest that, if it is at all possible, the the applications are spread out evenly vertically based on size available instead of leaving a massive gap under them.

you mean the start menu? right now there are subtitles but appear only on mouse over, maybe they should be always visible?

Sry, yes the start menu... I'm fiddling with a mockup right now

Ok so a quick and dirty mockup



And then I did some trying around with different layouts of the icons

Heres one with two columns



And one with a centered column based on the text



And a centered column based on both text and icon

jensreuterberg wrote:Ok so a quick and dirty mockup

yeah, that's how i wanted the tabbar, I'll see if I can implement the code part in time for the alpha release, so designers will be able to play with it on a live system.
about the white part, i'm not 100% sure how to do it cleanly from the implementation part, I'll think about it. probably just will end up providing a component for that hoping it will not get too much epicly misused