Kver,

I can't see how a mix of different sliders, tick boxes, drop-down boxes etc. in the 'Quick Links' area wouldn't end up looking a bit cluttered. Instead a 'Favourites' area where you can add links directly to the pages you use regularly (like you can add programs to the favourites area of the default launcher - styled like anditosan's 'Recent' area), might do the job. I'm not sure there's a need for both 'Favourites' AND 'Recent' though, if i've messed up a setting and want to change it back ASAP then 'Recent' would probably be more useful.

I'd vote for keeping the 'System settings' title from anditosan's mockups, to me it's a really nice way of setting the clean, modern style of the whole thing.

ken300 wrote:Kver,

What about having instead of the 'Quick links' area, a 'Favorites' area instead? Like you hinted at in your post, I can't see how a mix of different sliders, tick boxes, drop-down boxes etc. wouldn't end up looking a bit cluttered. Instead a Favourites list where you can add links directly to the pages you want (like you can add programs to the favourites area of the default launcher - styled like anditosan's 'Recent' area), it might be just as useful and easier to keep nicely styled!

I'd vote for keeping the 'System settings' title from anditosan's mockups though, to me it's a really nice way of setting the clean, modern style of the whole thing.

I'm smellin' what you're sellin'. Mockup in T-minus -10 minutes.


(I couldn't think of stuff for the other two big icons / pardon the roughness of the mockup. Working with Kolourpaint )

Minor edit: I put "System Settings" in the window title.

Having though about it some more, I CAN see the point in having both 'Recent' and 'Favourites' areas, i think they'd both be useful to me in their own way IF they can be done without being cluttered!

Kver,

Just my opinion but i like that.

I think the 'Recent' & 'Favourites' areas are a little tall (take up a bit too much room) but i think otherwise they work. What i REALLY like is the 4 big icons with bits of info below them & the 'More info' links - that's a good idea.

I still think it would look better replacing the big Kubuntu logo with a nice generic 'System settings' logo like anditosan's though!

I would say, let's use "less" icons on the startup screen. It is slowly turning into what it is now. I think have to keep minimalism as a priority. If Kubuntu or openSUSE decide to tweak the system settings startup, then great. But I don't think it would be wise for use to taylor to each of them, it takes away some of the simplicity in the mockup and also adds more development to bring those things together. Also, most of the times, distributions bring their own software management systems not integrated with KDE, so it would be their task to integrate that if they see any benefits.

Good point.

anditosan wrote:I would say, let's use "less" icons on the startup screen. It is slowly turning into what it is now. I think have to keep minimalism as a priority. If Kubuntu or openSUSE decide to tweak the system settings startup, then great. But I don't think it would be wise for use to taylor to each of them, it takes away some of the simplicity in the mockup and also adds more development to bring those things together. Also, most of the times, distributions bring their own software management systems not integrated with KDE, so it would be their task to integrate that if they see any benefits.

I agree. I like Kver's proposal, but then most of the Information could easily live on their own respective KCMs. I like this idea of "Favourites" though. I prefer your startup proposal though because there's space to explain what the user can find in the different categories.
anditosan, what purpose does the Icon and user-name have in the top left corner in your proposal? If it doesn't have a clear function then we could maybe use it to take the user to a "State of the System" page, like Kver proposed. Just a quick idea though.

I fail to see the advantage of having Favorites for Settings. Imho this introduces unnecessary clutter and should be optional.

Favorites are imho not needed. But recent is a very good idea – and what would be even better: some kind of popup information about the recent change when hovering over the recent icon (for instance: "Changed icon theme to Oxygen" or "Added new window rule").

BTW: I was not following the work here for quite a bit, and after returning just today i see something that is increadible good way to organize the settings (not a huge fan of visiual part, but I strongly prefer 90s look and feel so feel free to ignore that opinion ). I was not expecting such a briliant design be honest. Keep it up!

kdeuserk wrote:I fail to see the advantage of having Favorites for Settings. Imho this introduces unnecessary clutter and should be optional.

I agree, I think we can keep favorites/recent as a possible user selection. Remember that at the top of the mockup there is plenty of white space that is yet to find uses. Also, i did not include anything as far as the window goes for the syse settings button next to the search. Those are areas that I haven't touched at all and could use some love for mockup development.

anditosan wrote:

kdeuserk wrote:I fail to see the advantage of having Favorites for Settings. Imho this introduces unnecessary clutter and should be optional.

I agree, I think we can keep favorites/recent as a possible user selection. Remember that at the top of the mockup there is plenty of white space that is yet to find uses. Also, i did not include anything as far as the window goes for the syse settings button next to the search. Those are areas that I haven't touched at all and could use some love for mockup development.

After coming back to it, I think favourites is getting a tad redundant - especially when 90% of the settings are two clicks away anyway. Plus, every KCM would need to have a "favourite" button somewhere, so yeah - not superfantastic. I like sir_herrbatkas' idea of tooltips which show the latest changes; I don't know how feasable it is, but if we had something like that I would also say we should include a "history" module with an undo history, since we'd already have the information. Granted, I think it would need to be implemented on a per-module basis, which would be painful...

Anyway, mockups! We like those!

(Sorry for the increasing badness of my mockup - I'm not using a full image editor)



... And here's one with a simple one-liner giving the distro version;

First of all, I absolutely love this work. I have a few questions.

The expander for fine tuning: Is this fine tuning on a per selection basis (like the selected widget style) or universal (all widget styles)? The blue plus and minus buttons are much better at getting attention than the plain ones with the redundant arrow (not sure which is the newer work). But I think text with an arrow (Details >) is clearer and more discoverable than unidentified plus and minus buttons. Also, while it is more balanced to have them on the right, I personally always look to the left side for tools like this.

Secondly, are the explanation tiles on the start page clickable? If there are recents (more on that later), I would like it to be clearer that one set is clickable and one is not. I would picture that clicking would select the category and open the submenu? Also, do the menus react to hover, or clicking? I would image hover for the main topics and clicking on the sub-topics to open the setting page, but that is based on my experience with the KDE default Launcher.

While I can see the utility of the "Recents" list, I am afraid of it causing clutter because the original given now is so beautiful .

Tsukasa Buddha wrote:First of all, I absolutely love this work. I have a few questions.

The expander for fine tuning: Is this fine tuning on a per selection basis (like the selected widget style) or universal (all widget styles)? The blue plus and minus buttons are much better at getting attention than the plain ones with the redundant arrow (not sure which is the newer work). But I think text with an arrow (Details >) is clearer and more discoverable than unidentified plus and minus buttons. Also, while it is more balanced to have them on the right, I personally always look to the left side for tools like this.

Secondly, are the explanation tiles on the start page clickable? If there are recents (more on that later), I would like it to be clearer that one set is clickable and one is not. I would picture that clicking would select the category and open the submenu? Also, do the menus react to hover, or clicking? I would image hover for the main topics and clicking on the sub-topics to open the setting page, but that is based on my experience with the KDE default Launcher.

While I can see the utility of the "Recents" list, I am afraid of it causing clutter because the original given now is so beautiful .

Yes, actually with the buttons, the thing is that the mockups evolved so the look is not consistent in all the mockups. Maybe it would look really good if we combined the colors with the latest versions of them. The ones that have the expanders but instead of a blue icon, it is a blue button to show the selection more prominently. I will work on showing something like that.

2nd question, I didn't even think about it, if they are great. If not, I think it still feels very usable since the icons are there still.

Sogatori wrote:Can someone contact the forum administration and ask for a subforum for the SystemSettings redesign? I had no luck in contacting them, maybe I did it wrong, I don't know. Anyway, I keep loosing track of where the discussions about SystemSettings happen as the forum gets fuller. The forum sadly makes it very easy to keep losing track of things.

Not sure if it makes sense to make a new subforum for the few topics on System Settings (I count 4). Instead, you can bookmark this page to get a list of System Settings topics.
The link goes to a page showing the search result for the tag "systemsettings" in the Visual Design Group forum. You can tag new topics with the "systemsettings" tag by using the blue tag bar at the top of the topics. Note that it may take a while before newly tagged topics show up in the results.

To create your own custom search, click on "Find a solution" at the top of the page.

Finally, for future reference, if you need to contact the Admins you can send the "Administrator" group a PM, or send us a mail using the email address at the bottom of the page (as far as I can see, I haven't received anything from you). If it's related to the Visual Design Group you can just PM me, since I like to pretend to be part of it even though I'm not contributing anything.

EDIT: Oh by the way, you can also follow these topics through RSS using the awesome link at the top of the page.

Anditosan & Kver,

In the cold light of day i've come to the conclusion that even though it was my suggestion i think the 'Favourites' area makes it all a bit cluttered when one thing that i loved about anditosan's original mockups were the style & simplicity.

Just one more thought - of the 4 big icons on Kver's mockup, 2 of them have the same info below them as you get on pop-ups etc in the system tray (the state of the network & whether there are any updates), that only leaves 2 that are showing 'new' stuff and i think that if we just had those 2 it would look odd, my vote is to stick with anditosan's original ideas.

I think Hans might have a point