I noticed that several functionalities disappeared in the few last versions of kde - 4.4 and even more so 4.5

To name a few :

Zoom in / out (Zooming UI) gone in 4.5 in favor of a strip that does not give preview of the activities, just an obscure icon instead

Have to go to systemsettings to change plasma theme, no longer there in the right cick menu

Folder view popping up folders first changed to open only when pointing at icon, then disappeared completely, and no option to change in the config

CPU monitor since 4.4 is impossible to remove the title from the monitor, few other features in the system monitors disappeared as well

Notes since 4.5 does not have "Save As"




Since the beginning KDE 4 used to remove clutter from menus and settings, but in the last versions it's gone to the extent that only complicates stuff rather than make it usable

Any opinions / things to point out ?

>Zoom in / out (Zooming UI) gone in 4.5 in favor of a strip that does not give preview of the activities, just an obscure icon instead

The new system is much more userfriendly. there where many problems, for example multiscreen setups, that could not be handled correctly with the old system. There was no real way to solve this, other than with the new system.

>Have to go to systemsettings to change plasma theme, no longer there in the right cick menu

This is a change to make it more consistent with all theme handling. Qt theme, window decoration, icons etc are all there. There was no real logical reason to have that configuration option in the wallpaper settings, since it affected the whole desktop (panel etc) and not just the wallpaper.

>Folder view popping up folders first changed to open only when pointing at icon, then disappeared completely, and no option to change in the config

This wasn't a perfect change, there where many complaints about the automatic popups. Now there are many complaints because they are not here. From what i know, 4.6 will have a option.

>CPU monitor since 4.4 is impossible to remove the title from the monitor, few other features in the system monitors disappeared as well

Cosmetic change, don't know anything about it, you'll have to ask the system monitor maintainer. i would not call that a deterioration.

>Notes since 4.5 does not have "Save As"

Never noticed that before. Interesting that it was removed, sounds like a nice feature. would be interesting to ask the maintainer or at least check the commit logs.

In general i think plasma gains features and is not regressing.

Asraniel wrote:>Zoom in / out (Zooming UI) gone in 4.5 in favor of a strip that does not give preview of the activities, just an obscure icon instead

The new system is much more userfriendly. there where many problems, for example multiscreen setups, that could not be handled correctly with the old system. There was no real way to solve this, other than with the new system.

There were also performance issues, I think this was the deal breaker.

>Folder view popping up folders first changed to open only when pointing at icon, then disappeared completely, and no option to change in the config

This wasn't a perfect change, there where many complaints about the automatic popups. Now there are many complaints because they are not here. From what i know, 4.6 will have a option.

The Plasma developers have said that they are open for such patches, but I still don't see an option in trunk (from last week). viewtopic.php?f=67&t=90013&p=169049#p169049

By the way, it hasn't disappeared. Maybe you're using a Plasma theme that doesn't show the icons? In 4.5.2 you only have to click on the icon for the first folder, the popup is shown on hover for the rest.

Imagine the new strp with thumbnails of the activities instead of the icons. Thats better right ?

Now imagine that the strip height is set to take the entire screen, and the thumbnails arranged in multiple rows on the display (and also are bigger), so that it appear like a wall with the activities on it (like "desktop wall" desktop effect). This essentially IS zoom UI

So by technically changing the height of the strip and amount of rows (a simple change to make), from the user point of view, he is essentially changing between the strip and zoom UI

This setting can be made by adding a maximize button (like on a window) to the top corner of the strip / minimize button to the wall. The setting is left in the way it was when the user exited the activity switcher

By the way, I'd like to see that added to the add plasmoid strip as well (except maximizing it to a floating window instead of entire screen)

Features that existed in the old zoom UI, such as dragging plasmoids between the activities, can be added to both the strip and new zoom UI



There are 2 settings of multiple monitors which I am aware of. For example we have 2 1680x1050 monitors side by side

Single 3360x1050 activity : each monitor displays half of the activity normally. When zoomed out, the strip / activity wall is split in half same as anything else displayed (if i understand it xorg presents the software with a single 3360x1050 screen, so the software is not aware of the 2 monitors at all)

Two 1680x1050 activities : each activity can be changed independently, so when (the new) zoom UI is used on one, the other still displays its normal activity




Look and feel is the result of all styling there - including wallpaper, plasma theme, window decorations, qt theme, colors, icons, desktop effects

IMHO it makes much more point to let the user change most of them in one easy to access place, and not stuff everything except wallpaper into system settings

I'd prefer that as following :

• Overall KDE theming with themes that change at once plasma theme, window deco, and splash screen, consistent with each other. Choosing one of the themes or downloading new is accessible from the desktop, customizing and saving multiple custom themes is accessible from systemsettings
  
• "Desktop settings" item in the desktop menu and cashew, which includes changing activity type, mouse behavior on the desktop etc - everything except appearance
  
• "Appearance" item in the desktop menu and cashew, which opens a settings window with the following items in the strip on the left : Overall KDE theme (with "Advanced" button to open the related systemsettings page), Wallpaper, Plasma theme (with "Advanced" button), Desktop effects, Window decoration
  
• Everything else is in systemsettings, like now

I'd like to code some of what i've proposed, but have no clue where the stuff is located in the source tar.gz (quite newbie in coding)

I would suggest that you post such ideas to Brainstorm if you haven't already (and if it doesn't already exist, such as the theme idea). As for "maximizing" the activities bar, I don't see any advantages other than being able to move widgets between activities. Furthermore, this doesn't solve the problem with performance which was the reason the ZUI was replaced in the first place, as far as I knowe

It looks like the original zoom UI was implemented in a different way (it was noticable - pin cpu load to 100 when zoomed out etc)

there should not be performance issues with the implementation i suggested - as it is the same strip just bigger

There has been a lot of talk about implementing thumbnail previews of activities in the activity manager. The developer originally stated that he/she didn't know how to go about it, then someone offered a suggestion that may or may not work. The underlying activity code necessary to support previews wasn't ready for 4.5, but it should be for 4.6. I am not sure if the previews have been implemented yet or not, but it is certainly something developers want to do and will do eventually.

But whatever the case, these would likely not be live previews, but snapshots of the activity's state at a particular point of time. I suspect live previews would take far too much resources. That means that dragging widgets between previews will not be possible.

I can confirm that Trunk has folder view popups restored. You need to press a button on the folder in question to activate them first though.

If I understand what you are saying, that is the case with 4.5 as well.

This functionality was restored to KDE 4.5 in the following commit 6 weeks ago:

http://websvn.kde.org/?view=revision&revision=1171793