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Tuesday, January 3, 2012

More changes in Plasma NM GUI

The changes made the new implementation looks a little more like the old one :-)

  • Changed disconnect icon to user-offline.png;
  • Re-add the interface list, now it is hidden by default and can be toggled by the new "Show Interfaces..." button;
  • The interface list is always shown when clicking on an activated connection. If the connection list was hidden before clicking then it will be hidden after clicking on the "back" button in interface details window;
  • Add a disconnect button in interface details window. The current disconnect button is small, someone can wrongly tap on the connection item instead of the disconnect button, which will trigger the interface details window. With a disconnect button in interface details window the user can still disconnect instead of trying to tap the disconnect button again. The button is hidden when the connection is not activated;
  • Improvements in the filtering algorithm in connection list;
  • Show number of suppressed networks in the m_showMoreItem.

The result is below (use this link if you do not see the video):



And yes, I have noticed the graphical artifacts, the misaligned traffic plotter, the plasmoid's popup always closing when clicking on the "Hide Interfaces" button (it does not happen with 3D effects disabled, do not ask me why) and the not smoth plasmoid resizing. Except for the misaligned traffic plotter I do not think I can fix the other problems.

18 comments:

agata said...

I think that "Enable wireless/moble broadband" occupy too much space and therefore there isn'i too much space for the list of available networks. They could be placed in one line.

Tarazed said...

And yes, I have noticed the graphical artifacts, the misaligned traffic plotter, the plasmoid's popup always closing when clicking on the "Hide Interfaces" button (it does not happen with 3D effects disabled, do not ask me why) and the not smoth plasmoid resizing. Except for the misaligned traffic plotter I do not think I can fix the other problems.

If you can't fix the graphical artifacts, why are you doing this work? Are you qualified for it?

Anonymous said...

Your video is empty. No way to see it.

Can you please post a direct link to the video or use new youtube embeds (iframe/html5-based)?

Ivo Anjo said...

@Tarazed He probably means that those are plasma/qml/qt bugs, and so the bugs lie outside his codebase.

Um GRANDE OBRIGADO pelo trabalho :)

Anonymous said...

@Tarazed

Take a look at KDE's Code of Conduct and also think twice... not, three or four times before writing disrespectful and frankly trollish-sounding statements.

Davide said...

The settings button and icons seems slightly misaligned with respect to the two above checkbuttons. What do you think?

Anonymous said...

> Can you please post a direct link to the video

The direct link is also Flash-only. :-/

Have you enabled ads? You need to disable them, they're not supported by the HTML5 player. Then we'll get HTML5 WebM which actually works with Free Software. And yes, use the iframe embed rather than the Flash-only one.

smurfy said...

The list of access points looks nice on your video. On my system the alignment of the ap list is not very well...

http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/2999/nmaplist.png

This may be caused by to long ap-names.

Tarazed said...

@IAnjo
He probably means that those are plasma/qml/qt bugs, and so the bugs lie outside his codebase

It's still his fault, for using a clearly broken technology such as Plasma instead of a regular menu (like the one Klipper uses, for instance).

Anonymous said...

@Smurfy. Seems some kind of problem with your desktop theme.

Anonymous said...

shit... KDE needs some UI guide, it can't be this way cause every developer is doing his vision of UI, using icons what he thinks are good and so on. Users are not developers, users (most of them) are just monkeys typing hamlet, they pay most attention to look not the technology in other words: WE NEED
a) UI/DESIGN SPECIALISTS
and b) UI/PLASMA/ GUIDE FOR DEVELOPERS

for Lamarque: your work is very very much appreciate! but this presentation is not so good I'm afraid ;( To much things, it flicker, it change size all the time it's messy it's not consistent. It's not "simple by default + advanced options and power tools one click ahead" it's more like a "click and guess what will happen mayhem game"

Lamarque said...

@agata, I prefer to increase the connection list by one line than moving the checkboxes side by side. One the problems with placing things side by side is that in some languages (German, Russian comes to my mind) the strings can be very long and make the plasmoid too wide. I placed the "Show Interfaces" button at the side of the "Settings" button because "Settings" is only one word, not three like in "Enable mobile broadband".

@Tarazed, I do it because I like it. I did not choose to use Plasma technology, I am continuing the work of others. QML probably would probably solve the graphical artifacts and resizing issues, but I canno afford using it right now, I have my reasons for that. Also, nobody is paying me to do this work, I am doing it alone most of the time and if you are not here to help then go away.

@Anonymous, I added the iframe but it did not work with Firefox. I added the link to the video on youtube.

@IAnjo, you are right. All those problems I mentioned are not from my code. I managed to mitigate the misaligned graphic plotter in branch nm09 months ago so I think I can do it in master.

@Einar, thanks.

@Davide, yes, I wrote in my first post that I had noticed the alignment problems. This is a development version, it will take time (several months if nobody helps me) to fix all those details.

@Kevin Kofler, I disabled the ads now. Well, I was getting nothing with them anyway :-( I added the iframe but it does not work with html5, the link to youtube works with html5.

@smurfy, yes, the long AP names are causing this, but there are other problems here. Plasma NM cuts the AP names at 20 characters, but that is not enough for your screen. It looks like your screen uses very high resolution with big font's point size (or high DPI). The strange thing is the connection list not filling the plasmoid's width. I will take a look that.

Diederik van der Boor said...

Wow, thanks man! those are wonderful improvements.

I do hope the artifacts can be fixed in the next KDE releases. They always kind of bother me; the original vision of Plasma was based on fluent natural interfaces. With these artifacts in place that vision is (IMO) not achieved yet.

When you see the latest OSX Lion in comparison with these artifacts, the contrast couldn't be bigger (i.e. how Dock icons make room for new applets, the rubberband/natural scrolling, etc..)

I'm really looking forward to what KDE 4.8/QML will bring to improve/fix/supersede this!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link :).

It looks cleaner than the old one, i want to see it in action.

There are some animation issues (in the video):

1) When something is displayed, it is displayed wrong at the first moment, and then goes back to being fine. Look at "show more networks", at hiding/showing the side panel, at tab switch, etc.

2) Something is wrong with (re)sizing. For example: at 0:26 opening a side panel makes the height smaller. Why is that? The height should become smaller on closing the previous panel, or not become smaller at all.

BartOtten said...

1.) I agree KDE should have a stronger styleguide and some expert UX-designers and usability folks. However, as long as we don't have those, let's respect the people who make the technology. Maybe one day the GUI get's an overhaul...until then I want it bugfree ;-)

2.) Tarazed: Your style is very rude and does not show any respect for a freetime(!) developer. You place a comment but, looking at the style, I doubt you are qualified for that. Even if Lamarque is not qualified (so both would be equal) at least he does something -positive-.

Lamarque, I have seen many blogs and you are a hard worker. Thanks for all the effort you put into this!

Lamarque said...

@Anonymous, 1) yeah, yeah, in my first paragraph in my post I said I have noticed the graphical artifact and I have already commented about them.
2) there are three tabs in the plasmoid: connection list, interface list and interface details. Interface details is the highest one, if it is the active tab in left widget when you click on the "Show/hide interfaces" then the plasmoid will use its height. If the interface list is the active one, then the plasmoid will use its height, which is smaller.

@BartOtten, well, we did a usability study. I am just in the middle of the implementation. That is not the final result, but I did not expect some problems, such as the resizing issues.

2) Hey, I am qualified for this job :-P

Thanks.

Lamarque said...

@Diederik van der Boor, QML is much more fluent when resizing and moving elements, but I need more time and help to port Plasma NM to QML. I am just doing what I can, unfortunately the graphical problems are more impactant than I have thought. You must also take into account that youtube doubled the frame rate, so it is not that bad as is in the video.

Lamarque said...

@Anonymous, if I waited for Plasma NM to be finished to show anything I would never do it. I always have bugs to fix or things to implement. When I blog about Plasma NM is with hope someone noticed it and help me improving it.