I'm trying out the Neon 5 ISO & noticed the following issue:

When you have a 'Folder' widget on the desktop (it's there by default), & you hover over it, a side bar appears with several icons on it that allows you to manipulate the widget. On it there's an icon that's duplicated, circled in red on this screenshot_

If the issue was just a duplicated icon then i'd file a bug report for it and that would be that, but i think there's more to it.

The top of the two circled icons resizes the widget, the bottom one launches the file manager. The Folder widget is the only one that's in Plasma 5 so far that has this bottom icon but in Plasma 1 there are several widgets that have it (the icon is the one for 'fullscreen' in Plasma 1 though). Some of these widgets use the icon to open another application (Folder, RSSnow & News), some open web pages (Remember the milk, Social news, Web slice & Web browser) and the icon on the Picture frame widget appears to do nothing at all.

Firstly, what's the purpose of the lower of the two icons circled in red - aren't there easier ways to open Dolphin than unlock the desktop widgets then click that icon??

If the other Plasma 1 widgets that have this extra icon are just going to be ported to Plasma 5 with this icon just like it is in Plasma 1, then IMO we need to decide whether it's still needed (is it the most appropriate way to perform whatever function that button performs) and if it is, come up with a better icon for it (or separate icons depending on whether it launches an application etc).

All KDE installations that I've done have had a Folder widget on the desktop and had the desktop widgets unlocked by default so after the first boot a new user will hover their mouse over the Folder widget to see what it does, at which point that side bar pops out and they're presented with these duplicate buttons - not the best first impression

Depending on the theme being used, the two icons are not necessarily the same; for instance in KDE 4.13.2, using the Light Warp theme (from GHNS) the bottom icon has icons in all 4 corners rather than just the two. I think most themes provide separate icons for the two functions, one to indicate resize and one to indicate expand/big-ify/open.

IMO, such an icon is not so useful, as it isn't really clear what exactly will happen when you click it: will it open up another application? will it open up the widget in its own window? will it expand it to cover the desktop? will it expand it to fill available space on the desktop?

Most widgets (at least, that I am familiar with, which admittedly is a pretty small subset) don't have an associated application to open and thus don't provide the extra icon. In addition to this icon, the folder view provides a context menu item to open in dolphin (this could easily be substituted for a submenu of possible folder-opening applications), and I would expect other widgets which have associated applications to provide an open with ... item in their context menus. This is where I'd expect to find such a thing. If there are widgets which export the open with icon but don't have such an item in their context, it is my opinion that they should and we can just remove the icon as redundant, confusing, not discoverable and inconsistent.

airdrik wrote:I would expect other widgets which have associated applications to provide an open with ... item in their context menus. This is where I'd expect to find such a thing.

My thoughts exactly

Ken, you are absolutely right: The "Plasmoid toolbar" (don't know it's official name) is certainly not the right place for a button to launch an application or website.
It is meant for functions to manipulate the Plasmoid itself, and nothing else.
Looks like we have to make that clear somewhere in the HIG. Seems like we do need a HIG specifically for Plasmoids, after all...
Launching an application or website from a Plasmoid can make sense, but then the button has to be on the Plasmoid itself.

Shall i file a bug report??

ken300 wrote:Shall i file a bug report??

Let's write up a HIG first, then a bug report citing that HIG. Andrew already volunteered to work on Plasmoid HIGs, so let's postpone this issues until the HIG is there.

A thought i had about the "Plasmoid toolbar":

The area where the mouse pointer is in this screenshot is used to move the widget but at the moment there's no hint at all that you can do that - if you were a new user then the only way you'd discover that is by accident. Might it be worth highlighting that area on mouse-over or identifying it in some other way and maybe adding a tooltip to it too (the tooltips for the other icons have already been done)?

Good catch! The cursor could change to the Move cursor when over that area (though not when hovering over the buttons). This would clearly indicate "this is the move handle".

That sounds like a good idea.

I'm not addicted to filing bugs (I can stop any time i want - honest), but do you want one filing for this or wait for the Plasmoid HIG for this one too?

ken300 wrote:That sounds like a good idea.

I'm not addicted to filing bugs (I can stop any time i want - honest), but do you want one filing for this or wait for the Plasmoid HIG for this one too?

Since this is something that I hope will be implemented globally anyway, we don't need the HIG for that, so go ahead, file away!

Maybe not right on the topic but i think that by default all widgets should be "locked" and the lock/unlock option is redundant. I would do it a little bit differently.
Simply hovering the widget with some key pressed(shift/ctrl/alt) would unlock the widget(show the toolbar) and allow to manipulate it.

1) It would be faster
2) Lets be honest how often you manipulate(resize/move/rotate) your widgets?

EraX wrote:Maybe not right on the topic but i think that by default all widgets should be "locked" and the lock/unlock option is redundant. I would do it a little bit differently.
Simply hovering the widget with some key pressed(shift/ctrl/alt) would unlock the widget(show the toolbar) and allow to manipulate it.

This could work well as a "quick-unlock", but it would not be discoverable enough to replace the existing lock/unlock mechanism.

2) Lets be honest how often you manipulate(resize/move/rotate) your widgets?

For me, that's an argument for a global lock/unlock mechanism, actually. One doesn't often manipulate the widgets, but if one does, one often wants to rearrange several things at once (i.e. creating a new Activity or Panel or rearranging an existing one in general).

One more 'Desktop widget' issue - & hopefully the last

In this screenshot there's 2 things wrong:


1 - The 'Close' icon seems to have moved from it's usual place at the bottom of the sidebar to the top and is now obscuring the 'Resize' button - I've reported this as a bug already so don't worry about this one!

2 - The tooltips that were missing from the icons have now been added, but the tooltip in the screenshot above is 'Rotate' (i couldn't get the mouse pointer to appear but it's hovering over that 'Rotate' button). I've looked at all of the default Widgets in the Neon 5 ISO and none of them appear to rotate when that button is clicked on. Is it simply that the button has been labelled incorrectly, and it should be 'Refresh' or something else (does anyone know what it should be?), or is it that that button should rotate the widget but that it's just not working (that button seems to have no effect in Plasma 1 either)?

ken300 wrote:2 - The tooltips that were missing from the icons have now been added, but the tooltip in the screenshot above is 'Rotate' (i couldn't get the mouse pointer to appear but it's hovering over that 'Rotate' button). I've looked at all of the default Widgets in the Neon 5 ISO and none of them appear to rotate when that button is clicked on. Is it simply that the button has been labelled incorrectly, and it should be 'Refresh' or something else (does anyone know what it should be?), or is it that that button should rotate the widget but that it's just not working (that button seems to have no effect in Plasma 1 either)?

It indeed should rotate the widget while being pressed. So "press and hold rotate and then rotate the widget with your mouse". If this doesn't work then you have found a bug

ken300 wrote:2 - The tooltips that were missing from the icons have now been added, but the tooltip in the screenshot above is 'Rotate' (i couldn't get the mouse pointer to appear but it's hovering over that 'Rotate' button). I've looked at all of the default Widgets in the Neon 5 ISO and none of them appear to rotate when that button is clicked on. Is it simply that the button has been labelled incorrectly, and it should be 'Refresh' or something else (does anyone know what it should be?), or is it that that button should rotate the widget but that it's just not working (that button seems to have no effect in Plasma 1 either)?

It is indeed a rotate button, and in Plasma 4 it does exactly that. Click the button and drag to rotate, that's what it should do at least (it does in Plasma 4).