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KDE 4 to Support Apple Dashboard Widgets
Ryan writes to tell us Applexnet is reporting that Zack Rusin, a lead developer of KDE, has confirmed that KDE 4 will be able to run and display Dashboard widgets similar to Mac OS X 10.4. From the article: "Basically, this means that a layer (similar in some ways to layers in Adobe Photoshop) in the KDE desktop could function the same way that Dashboard does in Mac OS X. Widgets themselves are not inherently difficult to write nor properly interpret, since they are usually just HTML and Javascript (although Cocoa code can be included, the developer's skills permitting). Furthermore, since Konqueror and Safari share very nearly the same rendering engine, KHTML and WebKit, this too will simplify the process."
Apple already took a lot from UNIX. It pretty much *is* UNIX. Perhaps it will lend something to KDE.
Most UNIX-people use Apple because it still is UNIX but with a better GUI. Perhaps KDE will convince Apple to make the GUI Free Software.
Or maybe Apple will just sue the socks off of the KDE project.
On the other hand, if KDE is slow for you (on hw with speck >= to my duron conf.), than you screwed up your config (or your distro screwed up kde). KDE permorms admirably well these days...
I know of plenty of people like that. You might have misinterpreted what I said. I did not mean that most people that like UNIX, use Apple because of its GUI. I said that most people that use UNIX and use Apple, do so because of the GUI.
Why do you think the UI is awful?
You forgot to add "and if you don't like it you should write your own Window Manager, that's the power of open source". That's my favourite knee-jerk dismissal of constructive criticism.
If the KDE community is happy for their user base to be restricted to those willing to hand tune and compile KDE, fine. But if we're going to stick with the "Linux Desktop takes over the world" mantra beloved by many here, the way KDE runs out of the box does matter.
I've been using KDE for several years. It's hard to say if it has slowed down or speeded up, as I keep upgrading my hardware. But this laptop I'm typing on ran XP and Office just fine in 256Mb of RAM, but needed twice that to run KDE and OpenOffice comfortably.
Now maybe that's down to KDE, or Open Office, or the Redhat Network icon for all I care, the point is that overall system performance does matter, especially when it is worse than that of Windows, and berating the users for noticing the bloat is not a great growth strategy IMHO.
Virtually serving coffee
Well things in the style of the OSX dashboard widgets can be useful too. In this interview, Zack Rusin (the guy mentioned in the summary for this article) talks briefly about OSX-style eye-candy in KDE4, and he says that they want their interface to be useful as well as good-looking. If you still don't want the useful magic eye-candy thingies because you think they're too heavy on resources or annoying or whatever, then you'd probably be better off not using KDE anyway. You could just use XFCE or Fluxbox or something like that instead. You'd still be able to run apps from KDE or GNOME or whatever, but the DE would be more minimal.
I have to admit, I am completely new to KDE/Linux. However, I just installed kubuntu on a HP omnibook p3 600 w/ 256mb RAM. It runs beautifully and flawlessly with zero post-installation configuration. I dare say the notebook is a good deal snappier than when WinXP was installed on it. I'm very happy with it, and I plan to run it in the future...whenever possible.
I hate to break it to you, but Java beat them by a wide margin a long time ago. Java has been able to do the write once, run anywhere since around JDK 1.2. Yes, you still need to do testing on platforms you plan to officially support, but the big difference is that Sun has made incredible strides in making Java that reliable on all officially supported platforms.
Now, as a Java developer I see nothing wrong with this and even see a good place for Java in the development of widgets. It's an easy language to pick up and you have the applets concept which was the first attempt to create something similar to widgets. All things considered, Java is an asset, not a competitor, for widgets.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
So now KDE users can enjoy the same RAM-hogging pleasure afforded us OS X users by an array of useless, bloated widgets. Now THAT is progress! ;-)
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
But 150+ Mb for a weather widget? The Mac widgets were pigs. Though, I don't think it was the individual widget's fault. I think Dashboard was funky.
Like I said, I've since turned of Dashboard and am using the Yahoo Widgets, with far less trouble.
You're not "binding" the browser in. You're using KHTML to render HTML/CSS/JavaScript-based widgets in a seperate layer. You don't need to use it or enable it. One could use Gecko to accomplish the same feat, but it being KDE and Apple using KHTML in thier WebKit, which drives Dashboard, the KDE devs used the KHTML rendering engine. Konquerer has no part here, if I understand correctly.
It is actually quite difficult to use KDE without KHTML being installed. Lots of things depend on it. I believe you wouldn't even be able to load KDE without KHTML.
As only mentioned by one poster earlier. Isn't superkaramba an older implementation of the same idea? im curious since everyone seems to give apple credit for the concept.
Konquerer will have everything to do with unless the abstraction layer is running off the X server, much like Windows ActiveX components, which wouldn't make any sense. KHTML has to be rendered by a browser because that's how the scripts will be parsed. The desktop is just a Konquerer shell anyway. It's going to make Konquerer even more like Windows Explorer, which it is a lot already, with the browser making calls to the hardware abstraction layer. I see the makings of a security hole you could drive a small band of Mongols through.
Yes sure, lets all waste cpu time on running scripted programs in our OS, they are not horrible enough on websites... script languages are so great because every moron can use them... do you realize that the fastest "programs" written in SCRIPT languages need about TWENTY TIMES the ammount of cpu time that a COMPILED C++ Program would need? Is it so important to us, that every idiot can write "programs" for us? do we need them so badly that we have to throw our CPUs performance out of the window for them? just my two cents I love my c++ compiler =) AlgoMan
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes