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One minor thing that has always bugged me is KDEs handling of controls in fullscreen apps, and overlays in some apps.

This idea calls for creating a KDE-standard for fullscreen apps and apps that overlay controls on their content.

For example, Dragonplayer in fullscreen will use it's native QT timeline bar, and when that bar is visible, it will shrink the video content, jarringly too, because there is no smooth animation. This is noticeable when even a tiny mouse movement is registered.

Gwenview, on the otherhand, has what I can only discern as a completely custom bar at the top, with a non-standard look-and-feel, a scrolling effect, and it covers the content (as opposed to shrinking it)

Okular, also has a custom fullscreen UI. This UI has a custom pie-style page display, and a completely transparent bar, no animations. It will take after Gwenview and overlay on top of the content.

I propose that we standardize the fullscreen UI of KDE applications to either a plasma or plain QT style heads-up display. Specifically, I propose Plasma as it is more flexible, and the transparency/shadows widgets tend to have lend themselves well to being overlays, in addition to good-looking floating controls.

I also would like to add that we should standardize the behaviors of the displays, such as always laying over-top the contents (instead of shrinking them) and always using either fade or scoll-type animations when available.


On that same note, this standardization should also be applied to certain apps in windowed mode, to whichever is more appropriate. E.g. Gwenviews left-size drawer button is just a non-standard faded QT tab, and it uses a completely nonstandard UI for browsing-mode (which can sometimes just look really, really bad). Control centre uses incredibly large tooltips, and again, a nonstandard browsing mode. While it makes these applications "unique", we should find a way to standardize them (such as using proper "conventional" controls) or making a spec for these "third layer" UIs.