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An Alternative Look for KDE
An anonymous reader writes: "I'm a huge OS X/Gnome fan, but still highly respect the KDE project. I still try and keep up with it's developments and recently came across this posting on KDELook which proposed a totally new GUI design for KDE, which I think could be quite easily adopted in other environments as well. A rolling Slashdot discussion I think would help keep the open-source innovation going. Thoughts?" Update: 11/27 20:12 GMT by T : Amended to give credit where due, which in this case is to the anonymous submitter :)
Since when does copying the XP rounded-edges candy-colored-icons count as "totally new GUI design"?
Please, if people what to copy the XP look-and-squeal, then we can (and should, and do) have particular themes to do exactly that. But this doesn't strike me as innovation.
Making the not-kicker-thingy expand as needed is an interesting tweak. But the rest is just more #*!% copying.
(I wonder what a desktop that actually looked like a desktop would do for ease of use? Hmmm. Have to give that some thought.)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Or was it supposed to look more like OSX?
In any event, it's a great improvement over the current blocky, ugly format.
My own taste prefers a single hierarchical menu for launching applications, some system monitors and not much else. For that reason, my preferred desktops are classic MacOS and WindowMaker. (I keep meaning to test utilities to give me Apple menu type launching in OS X -- the dock feels so restrictive and cluttered.) But, it's nice to see people thinking about real alternatives.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It made me think about Squeak/Smalltalk except that in Squeak it is called flaps and when expanded they look like the standard kicker ie it takes all the width when the flap was attached to the bottom or top of the screen.
The card idea is great !
Overall, I like it a lot, but I have a few notes:
- I don't understand why the term and home buttons are on the clock panel. Both are simply shortcuts to applications and should go on the quick launch.
- If the task bar is on the upper left, then where does a screen maximize to? Does the taskbar cover part of the frame (I hope so, or it might as well cover the entire top of the screen). If it does overlap the top of a maximized frame, then all controls will have to be on the right for this to be usable.
- Static screen shots don't show the interaction well. Will there be a lot of OSX-ish animation. I would suggest a minimal amount of flash. It seems to fit the *nix crowd better (everyone wants to run it on their 90mhz p1), and it would set it appart from XP and OSX.
It has a very clean and simple look, (which everyone always likes but we rarely see in a finished product). I hope, if this does take off, it remains clean and simple.
I really hope that this project gets all the attention it deserves, and becomes the new 'de-facto' look for KDE.
I am not a big fan of desktop environments (I use AfterStep alone), but this idea shows a big improvement over the rather old and boring start-menu-taskbar model of win95/NT4/98/me/2k/xp, GNOME and current KDE.
It really shows innovation, and moving away from what is already stablished cannot be anything but a good thing.
Articulos para gente geek: Poleras, linux, libros y mas
PS: As for comments like "Why is copying WinXP by rounding things considdered new?", it's not. The fact that the edges are rounded is NOT the point, that wouldn't be new. Why don't you try looking at the forest once in a while. That said, I think that rounded things look better than square boxes. The use of curves instead of straight lines seems natural now that graphics cards are better equipped to deal with it than they were back in Win 3.x days.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
After the author's initial revisions, this is a pretty spectacular redesign.
I would really love to see something like this implemented for Linux.
While the core theory behind the design is *really* good, I would eliminate the extraneous application elements. The quicklaunch above the K menu should go, and the quicklaunch on the right should be used instead. The slideout on the right should be what the card application for "information center" launches from. The taskbar on the upper left should be open by default, hidden on the click of the arrow. I don't think the cards should be activated on mouseover, the behaviour should be:
If !ontop{
focus
hideothers
}
expand
All in all, the card concept is great, and this design would be a much needed ideological break from OS X and XP. I've heard some grumblings that it will "confuse windows lusers", and "we need to keep the old style for windows to linux converts!". Remember though, users don't need the operation of the interface to be immediately apparent, it need only be easily learned and consistent, which is a common failing of Linux applications/desktops. It would help to think of usability as "learnability" instead of idiot-proofing, a la Jakob Nielsen.
*everything* is Orwellian to cats.
I posted this yesterday on the discussion of What Features Would Make a "Better" GUI?
Didn't get any discussion and was only rated a 4.
Turns the entire desktop into a web browser type window. Hit forward and back buttons and you go forward and back between applications. It's nice, but kinda limited. If you could 'grab' a terminal or any other program to float on top as you flash back and forth between apps it would be nicer.
For now, I guess it is a matter of using virtual desktops 1 2 3 and 4.... (kde)
If it's made configurable enough for serious power users, this looks really smart and intuitive - not unlike how one would organize one's wallet, or Franklin planner, or Magic card deck...
Just my $2e-2,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
The MacOS 9 control strip, plus the MacOS 9 pop-up tabbed windows, plus the Mac OSX 10.0 dockings. But hey, Apple's abandoned all of these good ideas in favor of the vanilla dock, so it's great that somebody's using them.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'm looking at the screen shots, and with all those pop-out menu's, I'm left thinking CDE.
The graphics are nice, but what advantages does this have over a Windows style taskbar? On the one hand you have:
- "cards" with their titled edges at the bottom of the screen where a click on the arrow makes them slide up to reveal their whole surface
and on the other
- Win95 windows where you have the windows titles on buttons at the bottom of the screen and a click on the button makes them come to the front to reveal their whole surface.
If there are no major advantages you are simply adding another metaphor for the user to have to learn - unless you want to replace the window concept by these cards. Either way, you'll need more than a theme for KDE, you'll need to rewrite KWin!
I moved to Enlightenment because I wanted something simplistic, I'd definitely move back to KDE if they could implement this, it's the innovation they need, but I'm betting it would also have to come with a change in the thought patterns of the application developers. I'm glad someone has there thinking cap on.
Uh... you do realize that you can resize the XP title bars and windows buttons back down to the normal size with no loss of visual quality right? They were merely enlarged becuase the "average" user needed more mouse clicking space on smaller monitors. It has nothing at all to do with it's shape or graphical style.
I'm so expletive sick of this radioactive candy
dots design attack on my senses that I want to
go postal. First OSeX, then WinXPuke. Fer the
love of God, Montressor! Not KDE too!
I'm not saying "back to twm". I just don't want
the computer to get in my way. I want to be served,
not have my senses spammed.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
You can already do it in kde3.
The only difference between his layout and a customized kde3 is the look of his task bar (rounded edges and pixmaps).
Right now you can add more than one kicker, taskbar and kasbar on your desktop (right click on kicker -> add -> extension).
You can also choose where to display them (bottom, up, right and left side) and how (center, left or right) and their size (to the pixel) and the size of the icons.
My present layout is done in a way which respects most of his ideas since it came from my everyday needs.
( you could have many extension on top of each other for the double sized quick launch but it looks broken in kde3.1. Because they add this center, left and right thing?)
If someone could sort out moltiple monitor support, I'd be happy. Using my quadscreen rig in windows is a joke - I've got 1 monitor and 3 'bulletin boards' to drag windows over to. KDE is useable with multimonitors, but still doesn't do quite what I want without a lot of fiddling. It's still a pain to set program X to open at point Y on monitor Z, and inputting data when you have 7 windows open is still far from fun. Still, there's no way I would go back to a single monitor. Dirt cheap too - monitors = $60 each from computer fair, graphics cards under $10 makes a lot or feal estate for very little.
This is the kind of GUI replacement that could make Linux a real competitor against Windows and Mac in the interface department. It looks lightweight, innovative, smooth, and most importantly, intuitive. I think parts of this idea have been present in a lot of earlier *nix GUIs such as CDE, gnome, and to some degree with KDE's kicker, but those ideas that are outdated and not terribly elegant have been stripped out.
Good job.
If there is a God, you are an authorized representative. - Kurt Vonnegut Jr.