KDE Plasma 6 Development Progressing Well, Plasma 6 Beta Possible In A Few Months

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE Plasma 6 Development Progressing Well, Plasma 6 Beta Possible In A Few Months

Prominent KDE developer Nate Graham has published a lengthy blog post outlining the current state of the Plasma 6 desktop, what code porting work has wrapped up, and what major tasks remain before Plasma 6.0 can advance onto its beta and then release phase...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Plasma-6-August-Start

[remenic]

Technical changes and improvements aside, I hope they'll also spend some time on the UI. The screenshot shown in the article is probably old, but clearly shows a lack of consistency when it comes to margins and paddings (spacing in general). Having elements misaligned makes for a cluttered look, but when done correctly, can even make the simplest design look professional.

[Nth_man]

No hurry.

[ssokolow]

Plasma 6 Beta Possible In A Few Months

Knowing Canonical's history of refusing to understand the meaning of "beta" or "developer preview", I suppose this means I'll have to upgrade to Kubuntu 22.04 LTS instead of bypassing it for 24.04 LTS and then skip over 24.04 LTS to 26.04 LTS to maintain a stable desktop experience.

[skeevy420]

Technical changes and improvements aside, I hope they'll also spend some time on the UI. The screenshot shown in the article is probably old, but clearly shows a lack of consistency when it comes to margins and paddings (spacing in general). Having elements misaligned makes for a cluttered look, but when done correctly, can even make the simplest design look professional.

Yeah, the overall UI style is my biggest complaint. IMHO, there are four issues to the problem. The 1st is what you said. Margins, padding, and consistency.

The 2nd expands upon consistency since the overall UI is starting to have the Microsoft Windows feel due to different programs using a different versions or styles of the UI. Some programs have done away with the classical styled top bar (File Edit Yada Blah Options Help) and have a GNOME-ish CSD Icony look, some are somewhere in between, others are still the old style, and some have a bit of both. That's a tough one to solve because some kinds of programs are better suited to one look or the other.

The 3rd issue is that there's too much blue. I know that's a Breeze thing, and it's great for OS accent colors and whatnot, but when you open up System Settings, half or more of the icons are some variation of a Blue Circle. When you browse Dolphin, every folder style is blue with a minimalist white icon thingy in the center.

The 4th is that the UI is too flat. Look at the main bar. Nothing differentiates itself from the next outside of task manager windows and the pager. Everything else is just flat on the taskbar. Clock, menu, weather, date, the system tray in general...it's all flat on flat...flat icons on a flat system tray. It makes me miss the 3d phase of the late Nineties and early Aughts. Have any of y'all ever opened Kate with the start screen? Everything uses one of two colors so, outside of a few things in the very center, it's so flat and undefined that it becomes a void with flat, minimalist icons apparating off to the sides. At least it makes a lot more sense when the full Kate UI appears when you actually open something.

[ezst036]

Loading performance when logging in needs some work. That's the only thing I want.

[cl333r]

If Plasma 6 had a visual graph of what is done, what needs to be done, the progress - what API/standard/app would be used to do this?

For example if you wanna do some scripting you'd likely use Python, if a native app - C, but for graphing - ?

[Mario Junior]

Man, Plasma UI gets me so angry...

[Vistaus]

The 4th is that the UI is too flat. Look at the main bar. Nothing differentiates itself from the next outside of task manager windows and the pager. Everything else is just flat on the taskbar. Clock, menu, weather, date, the system tray in general...it's all flat on flat...flat icons on a flat system tray. It makes me miss the 3d phase of the late Nineties and early Aughts. Have any of y'all ever opened Kate with the start screen? Everything uses one of two colors so, outside of a few things in the very center, it's so flat and undefined that it becomes a void with flat, minimalist icons apparating off to the sides. At least it makes a lot more sense when the full Kate UI appears when you actually open something.

I wish we could get the old 3D-style inferfaces from the late 80's/early 90's with 3D shadows back. I know that's not to everyone's taste either, but at least it was very easy to distinguish everything. But even late 90's/early 00's non-flat design would be better. Now don't get me wrong: it doesn't have to look that old, I just mean a modern version of those designs.

Looks like I'll be sticking to Kvantum or Skulpture on Plasma 6, like I do now on Plasma 5. (Yes, good ol' Skulpture has been ported over by someone on GitHub to both Qt 5 and 6.)

[Myownfriend]

Why is there an Applications tab in the Applications menu? Shouldn't everything be application related in the Applications menu? Why is Places in there when places aren't applications? Why have two sections within the Places tab within the Applications menu that list recently and frequently used Files when files are neither applications nor places?

Why have a list of places that are configured by Dolphin in the Applications menu that all launch Dolphin when you click them? Why not just launch Dolphin and select from the same list of Places in its own UI? Or if you want to get to those places even quicker, why not just have those places available in a Jump List for Dolphin?

Looking at some pictures of the History and Recently Used list, I see that they list Applications, too. But why is that in the Places tab and not the Applications tab in the Applications menu?

Also can you disable File and Application history? In that case Places would only have one usable item on its left side and all it would do is give you a bunch of ways to launch Dolphin.

Why not just get rid of Places tab altogether and use the regained space on the left side to add a category for History that shows Recently and Frequently used Applications if History is enabled?