KDE SC 4.7.0 Officially Released

[V!NCENT]

As far as I know, there is now a usability chick on KDE's UI, but according the her, the first step was consistency all across the board.

[Luke_Wolf]

Basically kde is going to shit, when they ignore basic UX design principles and make users scramble to find how to go up a menu in the kickoff launcher, pure suckage for accustomed users. I'll be sticking to 4.6 for a long while a guess; the performance of 4.7 is nice, but the trade-off is too big.

Well the nice thing about KDE is you don't have to stick with the defaults. For 4.7 I'm going to stick with Lancelot, I'll see what the situation is going forward on whether I decide to stick with it or not. As far as the defaults go, yeah there was definitely some idiocy done with defaults and the Kickoff menu this time around. But you know, the nice thing about KDE is even if the developers screw the defaults all to hell, because of the Plasma design you don't have to deal with any of it because you can replace it.

[AnonymousCoward]

Basically kde is going to shit, when they ignore basic UX design principles and make users scramble to find how to go up a menu in the kickoff launcher, pure suckage for accustomed users. I'll be sticking to 4.6 for a long while a guess; the performance of 4.7 is nice, but the trade-off is too big.

And does it not bother anyone how the blur and slide on virtual desktop change is so disturbing? The cube gets it right with the blurring constantly on, but the slide animation turns blur off then on after the slide is complete. And they cover it up by defaulting to a blurred wallpaper..

[Alejandro Nova]

A warning.

I tested more, and concluded that what I thought was a giant memory leak was a giant packaging error on my part. In short, if there are any packagers here, please compile Soprano against Raptor 2 (2.0.4), the latest Rasqal, and the latest Redland. Also, if you don't want botched search results, install Strigi 0.7.5.

That will KILL any memory leak with NEPOMUK, with fire.

So, NEPOMUK seems to be fixed at last with KDE 4.7.0. Hurray!

[Luke_Wolf]

After playing with lancelot some more and configuring it how I like it, you are right and wrong about the crumbtrail thing in it's regard, yes it has the crumbtrail but it also has cascading menus, which are naturally to the left, though I've settled on the two column configuration for now, but it has both and that's how it should be.

[Luke_Wolf]

I think the target actually has a larger size in the direction the mouse is moving, that back strip was very thin. So from that perspective it is easier to hit.

The Backstrip may have been thin but it was tall and under default configurations the kickoff menu was on the far left and so it's width in that configuration is less meaningful than otherwise, obviously if you move the kickoff menu elsewhere it becomes more difficult. And while I'm not going to argue against having the other.. I want both

It is a plasmoid called quickaccess. It lets you browser folders. It was one of the first third-party plasmoids.

ah, well I'm more inclined to start dolphin if I'm going to browse files, so I probably overlooked it on that basis.

As I sad, the kickoff menu is different than practically every other menu out there. The only other menu out there much like it is lancelot, and lancelot is more like the new version of kickoff than the old version. It uses the breadcrumbs and has no back strip or back button. It is possible to click the previouw menu, but it iinconsistently placed and small as a target.

Fair enough, both are definitely very unique, still... I want my backbar on the kickoff, it disrupts my workflow not to have it with how the kickoff is designed.

[TheBlackCat]

yes I mean movement, If I have this bar it takes maybe half an inch of movement to hit a rather big target, whereas I have to move the pointer up to 5 inches or more If I'm at the bottom of the list to go back up the list and hit a relatively small target.

I think the target actually has a larger size in the direction the mouse is moving, that back strip was very thin. So from that perspective it is easier to hit.

as far as quickaccess I'm not sure what plasmoid you're talking about.. There's a quick launch in the default set but I seriously doubt that's what you're referring to.

It is a plasmoid called quickaccess. It lets you browser folders. It was one of the first third-party plasmoids.

And okay, but the windows 7 launcher lands more into the application picker dialog style which you can see with the how do you want to open this file dialog. Which is really a different paradigm onto it's own. However, this paradigm is more aligned with the cascading tree style than the breadcrumb style, so it really doesn't work in your favor in terms of this discussion.

As I sad, the kickoff menu is different than practically every other menu out there. The only other menu out there much like it is lancelot, and lancelot is more like the new version of kickoff than the old version. It uses the breadcrumbs and has no back strip or back button. It is possible to click the previouw menu, but it iinconsistently placed and small as a target.

[Luke_Wolf]

First, what scroll work do you mean? Do you mean mouse movement? Second, it seem much less natural to me, in fact I am constantly getting the back button (very similar to kickoff's old one) and return-to-start button in quickaccess mixed up. Third, there isn't really any application launcher like kickoff in many respects, so this feature is hardly unique in that respect.

But to answer your question: the windows 7 application launcher.

yes I mean movement, If I have this bar it takes maybe half an inch of movement to hit a rather big target, whereas I have to move the pointer up to 5 inches or more If I'm at the bottom of the list to go back up the list and hit a relatively small target.

as far as quickaccess I'm not sure what plasmoid you're talking about.. There's a quick launch in the default set but I seriously doubt that's what you're referring to.

And okay, but the windows 7 launcher lands more into the application picker dialog style which you can see with the how do you want to open this file dialog. Which is really a different paradigm onto it's own. However, this paradigm is more aligned with the cascading tree style than the breadcrumb style, so it really doesn't work in your favor in terms of this discussion.

[TheBlackCat]

Step Multiple steps back faster yes, but not single steps, not only is the bar being there less scroll work, but it's also more natural. In what other start menu/kick off (assuming based in a L-to-R society) do you not move left to go back a step?

First, what scroll work do you mean? Do you mean mouse movement? Second, it seem much less natural to me, in fact I am constantly getting the back button (very similar to kickoff's old one) and return-to-start button in quickaccess mixed up. Third, there isn't really any application launcher like kickoff in many respects, so this feature is hardly unique in that respect.

But to answer your question: the windows 7 application launcher.

[Luke_Wolf]

As far as the back button being "natural" goes. I have to say that a big vertical strip that acts as a back button suddenly appear on the side always looked very out of place for me. The current solution is neater and although I?m generally in favour of configuration options it hardly seems like a significant enough feature to bother maintaining it as an option.

It never looked out of place to me, but I meant natural in terms of movement and usability more than looks.