Dear all,

as discussed with Andreas at the Randa meetings, as a follow-up to http://user-prompt.com/look-and-feel-of-plasma-sidebars/ and with regards to the discussion in the bug reports Bug #321190 and Bug #324234, I would like to discuss changes made to the present window effect in kwin.

As far as I am informed, the effect will already be streamlined according to http://user-prompt.com/look-and-feel-of-plasma-sidebars/, which means that

* The overlay will move to the bottom, among with the icon
* There will be a title
* There will be a panel at the bottom with global actions

and that panel is the most interesting part. Some of the shortcomings discussed in the above blog posts would be solvable with such a panel, e.g. as described in https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=321190#c69, which would add toggle buttons in that panel for batch actions (close, pull to current desktop ...). This would not only provide visual feedback and prevent unwanted actions (especially destructive actions), but also provide rather efficient ways of group-managing windows. If the toggle button can be toggled with all three, pointing device, touch device and keyboard (modifier key), it would also work well and efficiently on all kind of device types.

If there are further ideas with regards to that effect (regarding the generic layout, the overlay and the panel), please feel free to discuss that in here.

I hope that I can provide mockups later on, if I manage to get a working balsamiq installation again. (Else I'll pencil it)

(Oh, and hi, I am new here, please don't be too harsh if I missed anything important)

Kind regards,

Fuchs

Here is the next Bug https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=352588 regarding this topic.

A few notes from technical point of view: both Present Windows and Desktop Grid have reached a code point where I will not accept any changes. This means: a rewrite is needed. That is something which is not new, but which I have communicated for years. I also started a thread for the VDG to think about a redesign. I encourage the VDG to pick that thread up again and stop this thread.

As another note: I don't have any time to work on it. I expect a team who comes up with a new design to also think about who will implement and maintain a rewrite.