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I've found some things in common in some System Settings panels that are organized in completely different ways... as you can see bellow.

Legend:
green - search
blue - list
yellow - common buttons
red - previews and not common stuff






I think this things could be reorganized in a more consistent way.
When search is useful it should be always placed on the top right corner...
I think this should apply to all other KDE apps.
The buttons "add new", "get from file" and "remove" should be available on all this panels and on the same place. Maybe a control with the 3 button can be created to make it easier to reuse.
The previews(when available) should be always on the bottom.
All this things improve usability.

This is my proposal but maybe somebody else have better ideas:


The result would look sth like this:






I think this maybe apply to other panels like:
"Colors", "Icons", "GTK Styles and Fonts", "Emoicons", "Desktop Settings" and
maybe others

As Systems Setting is going to be ported to QML i think the opportunity should be used to review things like this.

I tried to post the images her but didn't worked.
Anybody else have better ideas?

thx

The reason for this inconsistency is that individual modules are left to implement things by themselves.

Also - as far as I am aware as System Settings maintainer - there is no active plans to port System Settings to QML. This is further confirmed by the fact that all the modules it uses are not written in QML - so it cannot be written in QML itself unless you are planning to port all KControl modules as well (and break the ABI of kdelibs)

Thx for your reply.
I thought I read about a System Settings QML port somewhere... but forget about it then.

Still there's any chance this get implemented?
I won't mind doing it if somebody give some tips about where to start but I don't have time right now.

Each module would need fixing in turn. Improving consistency itself however is welcome. You can find information on how to setup a KDE development environment on KDE Techbase. Patches can be submitted via KDE Reviewboard.

You have brought up good problems what need to be fixed to get same GUI to whole system settings.

You can add to your links a [ thumb=size ] URL [ /thumb ] codes, placing size to 400 so we can get good size previews of them. The size is width of the image and height is automatically calculated, good size is 300-500 depending amount and original size.

Fri13 wrote:You can add to your links a [ thumb=size ] URL [ /thumb ] codes, placing size to 400 so we can get good size previews of them. The size is width of the image and height is automatically calculated, good size is 300-500 depending amount and original size.

done. thanks.

Now it is easier to see and I must say it blows my mind off to notice that example "Get new..." is in different places in every place. When looking your mockups they just look: "That it is how they are now!" and just notice that they ain't.

In fact I think he raises a good problem: the inconsistency which might exist not only in this system setting, but all over the kde workspace...

Yes, one of things I don't like in example Dolphin is that the search box was removed and added a drop-down panel.
And the idea to follow Chrome started UI style as all browser to force user have a configuration button on toolbar if not wanted to see menubar.

Absolutely awesome. I'm often surprised how such "small" changes (moving some things around in the UI) are so important.

I actually can imagine that you don't need much, if any coding skills for this: the UI is in UI files which can be edited graphically with Qt Designer... You'll need to test and some parts might be a bit harder but somebody with a bit of time could make a big difference in say 1-2 weekends of work!

I actually can imagine that you don't need much, if any coding skills for this: the UI is in UI files which can be edited graphically with Qt Designer... You'll need to test and some parts might be a bit harder but somebody with a bit of time could make a big difference in say 1-2 weekends of work!

Correct me if I am wrong, but most developers don't use Qt Designer for GUI, but they make it by hand and there is no way to edit it with Qt Designer.

Fri13 wrote:Correct me if I am wrong, but most developers don't use Qt Designer for GUI, but they make it by hand and there is no way to edit it with Qt Designer.

Very well possible - that would make it harder

I actually like the inconsistency there... Breaks the routine

devenv wrote:I actually like the inconsistency there... Breaks the routine

sure why not…