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In KDE we already have settings depending on a specific desktop, activity ...lately even weather and geolocation.

Which made me think ...how cool would it be if we had settings that would depend on time.

Use case 1:
Hans Wurst is sometimes up late at night and uses his laptop in bed. He doesn't want to turn on the lights because his roommate is sleeping, so at night he needs a darker colour scheme (for his eyes) and muted sound (for his roommate). At daytime though he prefers a lighter colour scheme and of course sound not muted by default.

Use case 2:
Christi Moon has trouble studying because she likes playing games so much and visits social networking sites too often. She needs the computer for her schoolwork, but the temptation is just too strong. So she decides to set up KDE to not let her run games or access those websites in Konqueror on schooldays, but gives her full access on weekends.

Sorry had to do a negative vote...

Your attention not to interrupt the user is the right thing I think, but to block apps for a user is just to much....

I want to tell my computer what to do and not the way around....

But all in all it is the right approach to get distractions out of the users center of work!

Solid1986Snake wrote:Your attention not to interrupt the user is the right thing I think, but to block apps for a user is just to much....

I want to tell my computer what to do and not the way around....

I feel the same way. In my mind (and I can't imagine it to be done right in another way), these settings should be able to be bypassed or at least changed at any time. If nothing else, you can always change the settings and when you click "Apply" or "OK" things should be as you want it now.

IMHO this is just a logical enhancement of the same idea that Activities do. Those are (will) also (be) able to let you block apps, contacts etc.

Now that I think about it, the Use case 2 could be done even more elegantly by being able to just command KDE to choose (and force, if set like that) a specific Activity for that time.

I think the user would always be able to change the settings. So why do not integrate some warnings for social-networks or games?

No, this is to much, we do not want to get the "social" Vista that always if you want to do it, then asks if you are sure to do it, warns that it is risky to do it and you have to confirm that....

Just get the social parts out of the focus of the user...

Activities should do this...

An idea would be to change the widgets in the taskbar with the activitie, too...

But this does not really work together with the concept of the ZUI...

But in conclusion, we should only get anoyying things out of the users focus and disrupt him as less as possible...

But warning will not help....

Try out windows I told you, it asks you a hundred times if you really want to run a program as admin, after a time you just get annoyed by the questions, but they do not retain you....