am considering starting up a new theme that functions as a complete replacement for kicker. would be using a bit of code from various other themes, trying to consolidate all of the various veins that have been created by the community. anybody got any ideas on what would be popular with the karamba kids? note: no, i'm not gonna be doing the osx bar dealy. that's severely unoriginal (IMHO), and i'd prefer to not rip off the hard work of the denizens of jobs. have already written a large amount of code, and should be releasing it to kde-look by wednesday. anybody got any input?
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hmmm....
not a lot of replies.
guess the community is overwhelmed by how many kicker replacements have come out.
honeslty, it annoys me to no end how many there are.
which is actually why i'm making one......
one ring to bind them all.
though i cant actually show anything till i do my first release (in a very SCO way, im sure), hopefully this thing will get some love from the community....
first release will be ready on wednesday.
if anyone has any ideas, PLEASE drop me a message.
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Okay .. I spent a whole evening on kde-look and downloaded almost every recent theme. Most of them were kicker replacements. Okay, in the end I didnt end up using even one of them. But the fact remains that I still want a kicker replacement!
If you are planning to write a YAKR (expansion obvious :)) here are the thing that would get me excited ...
1. Should be lightweight. You just cannot have a kicker that freezes as soon as you move your mouse over it.
- Please use executeInteractive() instead of directly running apps. Too many themes are too slow because they run external apps directly
2. It should have a simple way to add submenus other than the ones in application menu. Let me explain:
- I had a bunch of shell profiles and wanted to have a icon on my kicker, which, when I click should provide entries for each of my shell profiles. The only way I could do it was by creating a subdir under .kde/share/apps and then adding that as an application menu
What would be cool would be to be able to say 'add a submenu' and then in the submenu say ' add a new app' and enter the command line for the app.
3. Probably the most limiting feature is the fact that standard kicker applets not working in the kicker replacements. Atleast the Pager, the taskmanager, klipper, klaptop etc. should be able to dock into it.
4. Another cool feature would be if the YAKR vanishes and appears whenever you press a particular shortcut and then it should appear close to the cursor.
5. Bravo on not going after a OSX bar. Gives me some hope :)
6. Here is the real thing. A kicker is just too lame. Come up with a killer new paradigm ;) (Yah yah easy to say ... ) But how about this .. if a mini kicker is always present on the active window's title bar, wouldnt that save the desktop reasl-estate and make it easily accessible ?
Probably not possible with karamba, but the best way is to have a kicker which is usually invisible and a particular mouse gesture should pop it up in front of the mouse ...
Okay, that should be enough for now to make you pull your hair! Looking forward for the YAKR. Good luck
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me likes the menu idea. not something i had specifically considered, but ill try to put it into the app. probably by having the ability to make an application launch icon into a menu launch icon instead. this is honestly something really easy to do with superkaramba, anyways. i had already planned on making a bookmarks menu on the bar (i HATE not having my bookmarks menu on my kicker replacement, which is currently dynbar). i also have been working on making the task management area of the app do a scrolling menu grouping effect for when there area multiple instances of the app running (think konqueror or kwrite), so i should honestly already have a lot of the code to make the addition you mentioned.
btw...thanks for the support, man. look forward to the 0.1 release hitting sometime on wednesday.
-patrick
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Actually I decided to think for a few days. My concept here is that a replacement for kicker may not be a bar. What I mean here is this. Watching people I keep noticing that people don't launch from the little "K" or "start" in the lower left. Most lauch by drawing circles on thier desktop until they find the icon. Whether it is an application or data which invokes an application (aka mime types) So what I've been toying with in my own inept fashion. ( I'm an old programmer who walked away years ago to do systems and I'm just coming back so OO programing like python can be is not automatic... shell on the other hand is very straightforward to me.) So my concept I've been toying with is this. Mutiple catagories of icons on the desktop click configure theme and add a new catagory. Uses standard .desktop files from KDE, follows your icon theme (as a fallout of using .desktop files) I've gotten so far as to get a prototype up. Still going loopy trying to get drag and drop working. But I hope you understand where I'm thinking. I've gotten auto resize working stuff like that (it sizes itself by desktop size) But the point is, it fits what most people seem to want to do. Launch from an icon on the desktop. But adds the ability to catagorize them in as many catagories as they would like to have.
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so basically you're looking at multiple applications launchers, placed on the desktop. each would be of a certain category (such as internet, multimedia, editors, etc.), and would draw out some sort of menu or something from each category to display said icons....
here's my question though:
isn't the reason that people do the circling searching on desktop thing that they are trying to locate the icon right there? if it's categorized in a menu or something doesn't that hide it from the average user just as much as, say, the start button would? i can envision what you're describing (i think), but it sounds as if it would look really cool, but would do little to raise productivity.... perhaps i'm missing the point?
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I think what nightwriter says makes sense. But basically I think there are two types of people. Make it three. Those who use desktop icons, those who use the taskbar menu and those who use 'Alt-F2' or a ever open terminal.
You may want to make your applet cater to both the desktop icon users and menu users. Personally I find using desktop icons difficult because all my desktops are always cluttered with windows. But kicker takes up valuable desktop space.
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BTW, if you want someone to try your applet before you release you can send it to my sf email id.
Remember the old saying: release early and release often!
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you'll get something that better shows what I'm talking about with the concept of a categorized set of desktop icons. I understand that the words don't work so well, I'm hoping a visual plus an answered question or two will. If ya'll think I'm way of base let me know. Thanks.....
-James
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so....
i wasnt able to meet my own deadline.
that doesnt mean i'm not working, just that i had some issues with getting my local webserver and ftp server runnin just right.
all is well now, and am back to work on the kielleas project.
hopefully (and god knows i've already fallen behind once), i'll be able to get the 0.1 release posted on the new site (which i'm writing from work right now) within the next couple days.
thanks for all the ideas so far....have been reading and doing my best to come up with ways to implement.
-patrick
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
am considering starting up a new theme that functions as a complete replacement for kicker. would be using a bit of code from various other themes, trying to consolidate all of the various veins that have been created by the community. anybody got any ideas on what would be popular with the karamba kids? note: no, i'm not gonna be doing the osx bar dealy. that's severely unoriginal (IMHO), and i'd prefer to not rip off the hard work of the denizens of jobs. have already written a large amount of code, and should be releasing it to kde-look by wednesday. anybody got any input?
hmmm....
not a lot of replies.
guess the community is overwhelmed by how many kicker replacements have come out.
honeslty, it annoys me to no end how many there are.
which is actually why i'm making one......
one ring to bind them all.
though i cant actually show anything till i do my first release (in a very SCO way, im sure), hopefully this thing will get some love from the community....
first release will be ready on wednesday.
if anyone has any ideas, PLEASE drop me a message.
Okay .. I spent a whole evening on kde-look and downloaded almost every recent theme. Most of them were kicker replacements. Okay, in the end I didnt end up using even one of them. But the fact remains that I still want a kicker replacement!
If you are planning to write a YAKR (expansion obvious :)) here are the thing that would get me excited ...
1. Should be lightweight. You just cannot have a kicker that freezes as soon as you move your mouse over it.
- Please use executeInteractive() instead of directly running apps. Too many themes are too slow because they run external apps directly
2. It should have a simple way to add submenus other than the ones in application menu. Let me explain:
- I had a bunch of shell profiles and wanted to have a icon on my kicker, which, when I click should provide entries for each of my shell profiles. The only way I could do it was by creating a subdir under .kde/share/apps and then adding that as an application menu
What would be cool would be to be able to say 'add a submenu' and then in the submenu say ' add a new app' and enter the command line for the app.
3. Probably the most limiting feature is the fact that standard kicker applets not working in the kicker replacements. Atleast the Pager, the taskmanager, klipper, klaptop etc. should be able to dock into it.
4. Another cool feature would be if the YAKR vanishes and appears whenever you press a particular shortcut and then it should appear close to the cursor.
5. Bravo on not going after a OSX bar. Gives me some hope :)
6. Here is the real thing. A kicker is just too lame. Come up with a killer new paradigm ;) (Yah yah easy to say ... ) But how about this .. if a mini kicker is always present on the active window's title bar, wouldnt that save the desktop reasl-estate and make it easily accessible ?
Probably not possible with karamba, but the best way is to have a kicker which is usually invisible and a particular mouse gesture should pop it up in front of the mouse ...
Okay, that should be enough for now to make you pull your hair! Looking forward for the YAKR. Good luck
me likes the menu idea. not something i had specifically considered, but ill try to put it into the app. probably by having the ability to make an application launch icon into a menu launch icon instead. this is honestly something really easy to do with superkaramba, anyways. i had already planned on making a bookmarks menu on the bar (i HATE not having my bookmarks menu on my kicker replacement, which is currently dynbar). i also have been working on making the task management area of the app do a scrolling menu grouping effect for when there area multiple instances of the app running (think konqueror or kwrite), so i should honestly already have a lot of the code to make the addition you mentioned.
btw...thanks for the support, man. look forward to the 0.1 release hitting sometime on wednesday.
-patrick
Actually I decided to think for a few days. My concept here is that a replacement for kicker may not be a bar. What I mean here is this. Watching people I keep noticing that people don't launch from the little "K" or "start" in the lower left. Most lauch by drawing circles on thier desktop until they find the icon. Whether it is an application or data which invokes an application (aka mime types) So what I've been toying with in my own inept fashion. ( I'm an old programmer who walked away years ago to do systems and I'm just coming back so OO programing like python can be is not automatic... shell on the other hand is very straightforward to me.) So my concept I've been toying with is this. Mutiple catagories of icons on the desktop click configure theme and add a new catagory. Uses standard .desktop files from KDE, follows your icon theme (as a fallout of using .desktop files) I've gotten so far as to get a prototype up. Still going loopy trying to get drag and drop working. But I hope you understand where I'm thinking. I've gotten auto resize working stuff like that (it sizes itself by desktop size) But the point is, it fits what most people seem to want to do. Launch from an icon on the desktop. But adds the ability to catagorize them in as many catagories as they would like to have.
so basically you're looking at multiple applications launchers, placed on the desktop. each would be of a certain category (such as internet, multimedia, editors, etc.), and would draw out some sort of menu or something from each category to display said icons....
here's my question though:
isn't the reason that people do the circling searching on desktop thing that they are trying to locate the icon right there? if it's categorized in a menu or something doesn't that hide it from the average user just as much as, say, the start button would? i can envision what you're describing (i think), but it sounds as if it would look really cool, but would do little to raise productivity.... perhaps i'm missing the point?
I think what nightwriter says makes sense. But basically I think there are two types of people. Make it three. Those who use desktop icons, those who use the taskbar menu and those who use 'Alt-F2' or a ever open terminal.
You may want to make your applet cater to both the desktop icon users and menu users. Personally I find using desktop icons difficult because all my desktops are always cluttered with windows. But kicker takes up valuable desktop space.
BTW, if you want someone to try your applet before you release you can send it to my sf email id.
Remember the old saying: release early and release often!
Ok,
Ifigure the easiest way to explain what I mean is to post a "proof of concept type idea. So if you go to
https://oc-dev.opencountry.com/~james/deskmenu.tgz
you'll get something that better shows what I'm talking about with the concept of a categorized set of desktop icons. I understand that the words don't work so well, I'm hoping a visual plus an answered question or two will. If ya'll think I'm way of base let me know. Thanks.....
-James
so....
i wasnt able to meet my own deadline.
that doesnt mean i'm not working, just that i had some issues with getting my local webserver and ftp server runnin just right.
all is well now, and am back to work on the kielleas project.
hopefully (and god knows i've already fallen behind once), i'll be able to get the 0.1 release posted on the new site (which i'm writing from work right now) within the next couple days.
thanks for all the ideas so far....have been reading and doing my best to come up with ways to implement.
-patrick