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I have been dreaming of having the native ability of KDE (i.e. not relying on Google Desktop) to display on either the left or right side of my screen a set of widgets to provide basic information such as, TO DOs, System Information, Email Notifications, etc. This tool could be told to be always visible or could be hidden, and when visible would redefine the edge of the screen (i.e. when I tell an app to maximize, it would not go under the My Life information bar.) Of course, it would be nicest if this tool could communicate with Kontact to pull tasks, appointments, email notifications, RSS feeds, etc.)

With the modern wide screen monitors, there always seems to be extra space on the edges of the screen, so this app wouldn't really hinder anyone's productivity. In fact, by having information visible at all times, one (especially me) could easily keep focus on the tasks that are left undone.

this idea can only be made better if we could do this with any window.. attach it to the side of the screen for easy-access.. :^) maybe even with a "hover on screen edge and then window slides into view option :^)
(I've been hoping for this for a long time too..)

Plasma already supports this. Simply add an additional panel, configure the size desired and fill it with Plasmoids. You can also configure the panel to be autohiding so it does not consume screen real estate.
Idea marked as implemented.

bcooksley wrote:Plasma already supports this. Simply add an additional panel, configure the size desired and fill it with Plasmoids. You can also configure the panel to be autohiding so it does not consume screen real estate.
Idea marked as implemented.

How about generic applications.. so that someone doesn't have to write a plasmoid wrapper around it? Unless I'm missing something about plasmoids (which is entirely possible) this is not yet implemented..

The only way to embed normal applications in Plasma involves creating an extremely hackish XEmbed based Plasmoid, which would embed the Windows of Arbitary applications. It would have numerous issues also ( not following theme, not cross platform, introduces instability, etc ).

For this reason it has not been ( and probably never will be ) implemented.

maybe a plasmoid isn't the way to implement this idea, but writing code into the window manager to provide this could be an option.

how it is actually implemented doesn't matter to me all that much.. I just want to be able to set an arbitrary window so that I can scroll my mouse to a side or corner of the screen and have it appear.. and when it looses focus disappear..

Sorry to dig this old topic but what about now? KDE/Plasma had quite some changes since the original post. An option to make any windows a side panel or behave like yakuake (but more on the side than drop down) would be extremely powerful and remove the need for dual screen on many applications. It was possible back in the compiz'days but now it is strangely becoming harder to configure. It would behave like an overlay of sort , so you don't have to change activity/desktop to compose mail, answer irc or phone with kdeconnect and add to productivity. Could be useful for multimedia too, but that is somehow already available with widget+sidebar, to get your fav' webrowser/file explorer always close from a mouse mouve away or shortcut. If I've I missed a software out-there that can do that (no xdotool), please redirect me to it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kro6att3bmenh23/ww.png?dl=0