This forum has been archived. All content is frozen. Please use KDE Discuss instead.

New activity switching capabilities

41

Votes
50
9
Tags: desktop, activities, activities, zoom ui, zui, switcher desktop, activities, activities, zoom ui, zui, switcher desktop, activities, activities, zoom ui, zui, switcher
(comma "," separated)
User avatar
ash
Registered Member
Posts
280
Karma
0

New activity switching capabilities

Sat Oct 16, 2010 7:00 pm
This is a desktop activity switcher, with enhanced capabilities

Image

It is based on the existing activities strip, enhanced to show thumbnails and includes a maximize button, that opens it on full screen

When maximized, it looks similar to the Zoom UI (previous) activity switcher and to the Desktop grid desktop effect

It has a Vivid feature, which is like a "like" feature. with a right click menu or a mouse wheel the activities can be lit brighter or dimmer (also possible vivid or blured). This allows for easy selection of few favorite activities which stand out, and few activities which rarely see light

In the right click menu is also an option to easily set the selected activity to another screen (for multiple monitor setup), not the one on which the activity wall is displayed (to select one for this screen, click on it)

Plasmoids can be moved between desktop activities, or copied if Ctrl is pressed when dragging

The switcher is opened next time in strip or maximized form, depending on how it was left previously
User avatar
ivan
KDE Developer
Posts
918
Karma
14
OS

New activity switching capabilities

Sat Oct 16, 2010 9:51 pm
Previews
- technically very hard to do
- fine for activities with different wallpapers, useless otherwise

Activities are not only about plasma but also windows, etc.


Image
User avatar
Moult
Global Moderator
Posts
663
Karma
2
OS

New activity switching capabilities

Mon Oct 18, 2010 7:24 am
Approving but it is a valid idea, but I _strongly_ urge anybody looking at this to look past the eyecandy and consider "What are activities?"

Activities are _not_ virtual desktops. We shouldn't present activities as a list of different desktop configurations but instead try to present activities as an "association" of different types of data. Something like the left sidebar of GNOME shell springs to mind, but that's just an idea.


Moult, proud to be a member of KDE forums since 2008-Oct.
thinkMoult - source for tech, art, and animation: hilarity and interest ensured!
WIPUP.org - a unique system to share, critique and track your works-in-progress projects.
User avatar
ash
Registered Member
Posts
280
Karma
0

New activity switching capabilities

Tue Oct 26, 2010 4:32 pm
The desktop plasmoids are just svgs, and a desktop activity (the parts of it that are going into the preview) is a set of them. The said set of svgs can be rendered (scaled down) to make the preview. Then, the user can drag those svgs

This way plasmoids in the preview will look empty (empty folder view, blank notes, cpu monitor without graph) but i think its ok for a scaled down preview, no need to make it complete

Any additional concepts of activities (hiding tasks from another activity etc ?) can fit with this scheme
ngativ
Registered Member
Posts
66
Karma
0
OS

New activity switching capabilities

Fri Oct 29, 2010 7:30 pm
ivan wrote:
- technically very hard to do


that is a very poor excuse

ivan wrote:
- fine for activities with different wallpapers, useless otherwise


i though that Activities was about plasmoids, not wallpapers

ivan wrote:
Activities are not only about plasma but also windows, etc.


That's another good reason to have expose-like previews for Activities.


Bookmarks



Who is online

Registered users: Bing [Bot], Google [Bot], Sogou [Bot], Yahoo [Bot]