According to the discussion in this thread, just "Remove Plasma Cashew from Desktop Corner" in an easy way is only half of the story. So I opened a new topic: Panel of steel

One thing I should mention;

During the Sprint we did a walkthrough of the Plasma desktop to identify papercuts and one of the things that came up was the toolbox; the devs may try removing the background (so it's just the icon) to make it much more discrete when in the corner; I can't recall if that was put in the notes or not. If it was on a screen edge the background would return.

If that's what happens, we discussed extra visual effects (like outlines and shadows) to ensure it's "highlighted" but it sounded like they would stick with just the icon. I don't know if that's a thing that will happen, but it was mentioned during the Plasma sprint.

Kver wrote:One thing I should mention;

During the Sprint we did a walkthrough of the Plasma desktop to identify papercuts and one of the things that came up was the toolbox; the devs may try removing the background (so it's just the icon) to make it much more discrete when in the corner; I can't recall if that was put in the notes or not. If it was on a screen edge the background would return.

If that's what happens, we discussed extra visual effects (like outlines and shadows) to ensure it's "highlighted" but it sounded like they would stick with just the icon. I don't know if that's a thing that will happen, but it was mentioned during the Plasma sprint.

Cool, this makes it easier for me to visualise how the decision came to be. And it makes good sense. Do you know if these paper-cuts are available in digital form?

Sadly I've been ill so I've not been able to delve into it too much this past week. However, I have been thinking a bit about the way it looks right now in kde4/plasma5 and if nothing else it seems there are at least improvements to be made regarding colour choices. Mainly these stem from the choice of background colour, right now I'm on plasma5, using certain coloured background it can easily disappear into the background, a slightly darker background and it might be subdued and not too shabby looking. And with certain backgrounds it sticks out like a sore thumb and acts as a constant distraction since it ends up in the peripheral view.

The highlight animation that is there today might serve quite nicely for what you are referring to, provided backgrounds that match. Right now on certain backgrounds the animation which darkens the lines would make it even harder to see while the static background remains, making it quite awkward to realize the three bars are the important part.

Regretfully my vocabulary regarding colours and colour relations are not very good so I can't really explain it as well as I would like, but I will try to run it through my friend who is a professional artist and see if together, and in my native language, we can come up with a good way of explaining my concern. This might take a few days though.

Do you know if the content of the toolbox were part of the sprint discussions? I mainly refer to the problem that it does not appear to ever give you the option of restoring a panel, unless you know to first unlock the widgets and then right-click the toolbox, at which point the whole idea that it somehow makes it clearer than doing the same on the background seems rather moot, as it never ever occurred to me until I started researching this topic. Especially since the alternative-clicking "empty" backgrounds to reach further functionality are a fairly established pattern within modern mainstream computing. Microsoft's explorer does it, Apple does it (or at least used to), Android does it, every mainstream browser I'm aware of does it, as does file managers, editors.. the list goes on.

I'd be happy to repeat the survey I did for my mom on a larger scale given the new information that has surfaced in this thread and Panel of steel around my family and friends, giving a more varied crowd, while still keeping it small enough that I can engage with each person individually should it be required. If so, are there any images and or questions anyone feels I should include? Any question I should rephrase?

Caveats: I'm autistic and thus highly detail oriented and unable to learn to ignore stimuli such as this, and thus every time I use the computer it is as if it was my first encounter with the stimuli of the contrast difference of the toolbox.