I'm currently running 5.2, and it's been bothering me a bit that the application icons shown in the task manager are so small.

In this picture I've compared them to the system tray icons:



The system tray icons look nice and their size is good IMO, but the application icons are really too small. Or?


As a suggestion for a fix:
While the blue line over the icons is kinda nice, could we consider letting the icons take up the whole (or almost whole) available height in the Icon Task Manager, and be on top of the line? It wouldn't really hurt much to cover parts of the blue line, and then the application icons would like bigger and nicer IMO.

I think task manager should be redesigned. Maybe new thread is needed as I heard that there is some hierarchy now.
I've written about other problems with it in other threads so maybe it's a good idea to make one new thread about it.

I faced with this problem too. I've configured vertical and narrow main panel with Task Manager applet on it. I hoped it would be quite easy to distinguish windows by icons only, but icons on the panel got way too small, despite there is a plenty of space to the left.



I guess the reason is the space reservation for that little white triangles — and that reservation occurs even then window grouping is disabled at all, — but why not make that grouping markers bigger and overlay them over icons?

Isn't there a way to remove the blue line of the Task Manager? It's a serious question, I do not have Plasma 5.X installed so I don't know if this is possible... but if not I think it should exist a way to disable it, I don't consider it an important feature (in my opinion it looks better without the line, I already know which application I'm using, but again, this is just my opinion) so if we make an option to activate/deactive the blue line it should be nice for everyone.

I also think the task manager icons are way too small compared to systray and other pinned icons.
The margins are just all over the place. KDE4's icon-only taskmanager does a better job imho:


- the active window indicator should be an overlay instead of being on the same layer as the icon
- the margins around the icons should be the same for the menu, taskbar and systray icons
- personally, I'd like to see smaller margins around the taskbar icons and bigger margins on the systray icons
- possibly being able to have more than one row of icons in the systray

Something along the lines of this:

Frankly, the blue line needs to go. It sticks out like a sore thumb and eats up precious space from showing the actual icons. Why not just color the background of the selected item differently?

Or this?

That's just using the vertical orientation of the panel to get away with extra height on the icon buttons, isn't it? Are you proposing we do the same with the horizontal panels and place vertical lines between each icon there?

I still think the line should be placed over or under the icon, so that the whole height (or width of vertical panels) can be used for the icons.

There is also a possibility of using a desaturation effect on inactive icons.

@pedrorodriguez: I thought about that as well, but the problem with making the line horizontal is that it's no longer clear which icon is underlined - or rather, "overlined" in your example.

@veeti: I agree it's not optimal. I'm fine with whatever lets me have same size icons all over the panel.

My only issue is the size of the digital clock. The date font is too small to read:

KDE 4 http://i.imgur.com/Sv46F71.png
vs
Plasma 5 http://i.imgur.com/y6AdT7E.png

I agree the blue line has to be improved. The icon only task manager has regressed badly imho.

I was experimenting with moving the lines up, but I did not quite like the result:

I like the discussion about the panel and hope that you play more with visual options. maybe sameone can post a status quo for vertical and horizontal panel and than different possibillities.

Soukyuu wrote:I also think the task manager icons are way too small compared to systray and other pinned icons.
The margins are just all over the place. KDE4's icon-only taskmanager does a better job imho:


- the active window indicator should be an overlay instead of being on the same layer as the icon
- the margins around the icons should be the same for the menu, taskbar and systray icons
- personally, I'd like to see smaller margins around the taskbar icons and bigger margins on the systray icons
- possibly being able to have more than one row of icons in the systray

Something along the lines of this:

Apart from the lack of spacing between programs, the mockup is a huge improvement. But there has to be a better way of showing the active program without using a blue line that appears in different places depending on the orientation of the panel.

Hi!

Perhaps the blue line do have to go. Instead, what if the task manager applet sort of acts like two applets? One being the shortcuts portion, and the other being the running tasks portion. When a shortcut is open, it moves to the running task portion. In my opinion, distinguishing between "active" and "inactive" as they are defined now is pointless. Does a user really need to know what program is currently on the desktop? It's usually pretty obvious. However, the distinction between running and not running is much more important. As any running app could potentially have unsaved work.

tldr: Seperate shortucts from running apps. Distinguishing whether a program is currently shown on the desktop when a user can clearly see if that program is on the desktop only adds clutter to the task manager.

molecule-eye wrote:Apart from the lack of spacing between programs, the mockup is a huge improvement. But there has to be a better way of showing the active program without using a blue line that appears in different places depending on the orientation of the panel.

Well, spacing it a matter of taste. Personally, I don't like too much spacing because it wastes space needlessly. Ideally, it'd be something like a 32x32 icon taking space of 48x48. That should be enough spacing to not appear crowded. The mockup I did was a quick copy&paste one.

CTown wrote:Instead, what if the task manager applet sort of acts like two applets? One being the shortcuts portion, and the other being the running tasks portion.

No. Nononononono. No!
That would make me stop using KDE altogether. As it is now, at least most of the functionality of a "win7" bar is replicated.
Icon = shortcut = running program is the defining feature of the icon-only taskmanager for me. Splitting it into active and inactive would "revert" to the old taskbar design that only shows active windows and a quicklaunch component.

The blue line could be replaced by a blue highlight, though not too saturated. Something like this?


Though personally, I'm not bothered by the blue line as long as the icons don't turn microscopic as they do now.