1

So, it would be cool to be able to have a Plasmoid that would be able to align your other Plasmoids prettily in columns and rows.

[img]http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/7643/mockup.png[/img]

The container Plasmoids might be able to be rotated just like a regular Plasmoid. My vision would be that you would only see the body of the container when you clicked "show groups" in the activity's context menu. The red lines could be draggable to resize rows or columns. Resizing a Plasmoid inside the container should (maybe?) stretch the column or row and move other Plasmoids further down. Right clicking an empty area in the group should give you the option to split the group vertically or horizontally.

So anyway, that's my idea of how it could be. What do you guys think?

I'd like to see this taken a step farther;

Very much like we have folder-view and desktop plasmoids for the desktop itself, I would like to see this "grouping" plasmoid be available as a desktop-capable plasmoid.

Any plasmoids placed into the grouping plasmoid (when it is the desktop) would lose their frames aswell, much like folderview loses its frame when set as the desktop.

If this was done, you could theoretically create some very interesting, seamless desktops. For example, you could have a desktop that -looks- like a single folderview, but in reality might have 4 separate folderviews in each corner.

@Kver:

So what you're saying is that you want to be able to set your entire desktop to use the grouping scheme in activity settings or something like that?

As an option, yes. Because the grouping widget could potentially handle a few things differently, I think it would make a very viable desktop activity.

I agree. When I wrote this idea, I thought about adding that as part of it, but I thought that it might be better off as uncomplicated as possible...
Definitely a good idea though.

I've been working on this concept for some time.
I created a desktop containment with support to groups, that is, a simple frame you can drag, rotate,... You can find it on kde-look (http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Gr ... ent=116926). With that you are already able to create a desktop like that on your mockup, even if it has surely bugs and flaws, still.