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Notification UI Overhauled in KDE 4.10 (And a Plan For Modernized Notifications)

Posted by Unknown on from the it's-the-little-things dept.

Via Planet KDE, some good news for people who hate the KDE 4 notifications applet (coming in KDE 4.10): "So, it seems it's that time of the year again... the plasmoid used in KDE Plasma Desktop to display notifications and the progress of transfer jobs started to really show its age, due to some bad limitations in the old QGraphicsview code to handle complex layouts, so it appeared quite buggy and not so smooth to use. ... The fact that there is some research/development being made to build a new backend for notifications that will support many new features, more 'modern' to be actually useful with the applications that are so heavily 'communication' oriented (both desktop clients and web stuff), that became essential part of out workflow. ... The story begins more than a year ago: we needed a way to display notifications on Plasma Active, and obviously the desktop applet used back then wasn't enough. ... Since we would have to rewrite it in QML anyways, we started it." The article has two videos: one of the new UI in Plasma Active on a tablet, and another of it on the desktop. They share basically the same code base, differing only by a couple hundred lines of QML. In addition to this, another KDE developer has been musing on a replacement for the freedesktop.org notification protocol designed to fix the deficiencies that have made themselves apparent over the last few years (parts one and two).

19 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Plasma Active 3 by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 5, Funny

    A place where beautiful window frames and bizarrely spartan, giant, anaemic "X"es coexist in harmony.

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    1. Re:Plasma Active 3 by Swarley · · Score: 2

      Especially when the swipe to remove functionality pretty much removes the need for the fugly X buttons in the first place.

    2. Re:Plasma Active 3 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The swipe isn't familiar action for users, the X in other hand is familiar. The difference is that after learning swipe and as for touch screens, it is easier than pressing X. So disabling that X should be in options. But pressing multiple times X in same location, is simpler motion than swiping multiple times.

  2. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks like that group of whiners will finally move off of Gnome 3 and Unity, and start talking about how EVERYONE hates the new KDE.

    1. Re:Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wait! I'm not done hating the old KDE.

  3. Well by Hsien-Ko · · Score: 2

    It's a step forward from the mysterious program in the taskbar unable to display a message due to not being run through a console and a bouncing mouse cursor going for 15 seconds.

  4. Bouncing Cursors by TheNinjaroach · · Score: 2

    I always have to disable them. Too often, they continue bouncing for all 15 seconds even though my app is already loaded, or perhaps isn't going to open a window at all.

    --
    I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
  5. QML is pretty disgustingly easy... by CajunArson · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've done quite a bit of code but I fully admit to being a lightweight at GUI development. Having said that, QML makes the design of the interface pretty easy... even including wacky animations & stuff. Here's a link to some Python based QML tutorials: http://www.pyside.org/docs/pyside/tutorials/index.html

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
  6. Er... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm serious, how do they keep screwing this up? That looks hideous. Look at WebOS for a simple notification system. A small unobtrusive message appears at the time of notification. A small icon remains when it is unanswered. You can drop it down and swipe it away.

  7. Re:LDAP support? by TheNinjaroach · · Score: 2

    Perhaps you'll have better luck if you state your feature request over here.

    --
    I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
  8. Freedesktop standard? by Compaqt · · Score: 2

    What happened to the idea that Freedesktop will come up with the standards, Gnome and KDE will implement that, and app developers will code to a single standard (and library)?

    As it is, I'm guessing that if you have a KDE program running on stock Ubuntu, it's not going to show notifications in the Ubuntu way (upper left corner)?

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    1. Re:Freedesktop standard? by Unknown+Lamer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is an implementation of the freedesktop notification protocol. The second part (overhauling notifications) presumably would become an fd.o standard after all of the kinks were worked out and the KDE/GNOME folks finished battling to the death over the details ;)

      --

      HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
    2. Re:Freedesktop standard? by unixisc · · Score: 2

      Thank god that never happened. GNOME has taken a direction that the FreeDesktop project would be insane to adapt. Actually, the rationale for FreeDesktop was there when GNOME actually was about creating what its name meant - a network object modelled environment, around Bonobo and other Object oriented standards, and combining it w/ the best features of KDE and Qt. But since GNOME dropped those goals and was all about being dumbed down, it is pointless for the Freedesktop to continue to develop as a standard.

      Particularly given that today, we have a plethora/bonanza of DEs & Window Managers - KDE, Razor-qt, GNOME, LXDE, XCFE, Unity, Cinnamon, Etoille, Awesome, Enlightenment, Window-Maker, ScrotWM, RatPoison and what have you. Why do we need FreeDesktop?

    3. Re:Freedesktop standard? by TemporalBeing · · Score: 2

      Particularly given that today, we have a plethora/bonanza of DEs & Window Managers - KDE, Razor-qt, GNOME, LXDE, XCFE, Unity, Cinnamon, Etoille, Awesome, Enlightenment, Window-Maker, ScrotWM, RatPoison and what have you. Why do we need FreeDesktop?

      While I agree GNOME has departed, fd.o was the organizer to help ensure all those DEs and their applications could easily communicate together in a uniform manner. KDE is a very strong supporter of fd.o from what I can see, so I expect if they change something they will work with fd.o to get it adopted by fd.o.

      Regardless, GNOME has apparently left the building for fd.o. So don't expect them to implement it.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
  9. Re:LDAP support? by Zombie+Ryushu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was being factious. OpenLDAP support has been a requested feature of KDE since KDE 3.5 was around. It has been repeatedly rejected, even back in 2006 when Buchan Mline was a Mandriva employee and made a KDE to OpenLDAP Schema for Mandriva Corporate Server.

  10. Don't repeat Akonadi by agm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    As long as they don't do what they did with the PIM suite and the monstrosity that is akonadi. That is some very badly developed, badly tested software. I stopped using Kmail in favour of Thunderbird because of it and I wish I had done it sooner. Hint to KDE devs: Linux is a multiuser desktop. People want to log in remotely from home as the same user that is logged in from work. akonadi does not handle this. I've had mail with subject, sender and body stuffed up. Seriously guys, who is responsible for that massive disaster? It was just plain unnecessary to pollute what is otherwise a decent email client with that crap.

    1. Re:Don't repeat Akonadi by bmo · · Score: 2

      This.

      Kmail, and Knode are both applications that you want to work, but mostly don't. Akonadi is slowly getting better, but the speed of this is glacial. I can see the logic of having a central daemon controlling all your settings and such from a user perspective, but I think it overcomplicates things from a system perspective.

      Other than that, though, much of KDE is very useful. I use it rather than any other desktop suite (I have ripped out gnome and unity from Ubuntu manually (I dislike kubuntu)), and when I want lightweight with no features, I just run FVWM and no DE at all.

      As for PIM stuff... Gnome Docs and Gmail do what I need.

      --
      BMO

  11. It is nice to see... by ApplePy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...that the KDE folks are working at making the little details better, rather than the Gnome fix-what-ain't-broke philosophy. (Not meant to start that old flame war, but mentioned because it's nice to have choices.)

    Count me as one of the people who found the Windows 95 desktop to be a godsend. Taskbar, docking for a handful of everyday applications, a clock so I know when it's beer:30, and one comprehensive "start" menu to find stuff I don't need that often. There's a reason this design has been so successful: it's intuitive for most everyone. KDE 3.5 -> 4.0 wasn't a major change, just like Win95 -> Vista. (Referring to UI there, not core) There were, of course, growing pains for both, but by KDE 4.8 and Win7, pretty much worked out.

    If we want to yet again bring up the conversion of Windows users to Linux, KDE is the only Linux DE that isn't a confusing pile of shit to a Windows user. It's a virtually painless transition, especially if the user in question has already gotten used to cross-platform applications like Firefox & Thunderbird.

    My job has programming and sysadmin duties, so I'm not exactly a fresh-from-MS noob. Do I lose nerd cred for using a DE that resembles Windows? Meh. I don't care. I've got KDE where I want it -- clean, simple, organized, a workflow I'm used to for 15+ years, and exactly the right amount of eye candy. I've no interest in using an incomprehensible desktop with tons of keyboard shortcuts just to prove I'm 1337. :-)

    --
    That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
    1. Re:It is nice to see... by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

      When I launch KDE I have many reactions. First that it looks full featured at a glance, and modern even if the blue colors, fonts, icons whatever seem over the top. Oh my god, it's full of animations! Stop playing with my eyesight so much. Desktop items display big controls buttons whenever I mouse over them including "X". Ugh, I'd have to lock that feature out. A tabbed menu with four random categories! it shows a handful of programs at the time! Right. I only need to find firefox, the terminal and log out anyway. Even then this start menu wastes space and is starving for it at the same time. The KDE3 start menu was brilliant when I used it a couple of times in 2004, possibly the best start menu ever. Back then the UI really looked like a windows clone, but better looking and more powerful.

      So, right from the start I have to fix at least four or five things, and didn't bother hunting for settings dialogs or a KDE control panel, because of the unfriendly start menu. So I'm back to LXDE which is an actual Windows clone (a sort of Xfce but without the control panel, easier to use taskbar and lighter).

      The whole thing is probably very nice but throws too much crap at you, and is so complex it feels like learning a whole new OS. and I know there are at least two weird databases to disable, thanks to reading slashdot rants over the years.