A pink desktop.

During the release event in Mountain View, there was also a distro BoF where upstream told some KDE people about things they'd like to see in KDE. One of those things is that the desktop should be easy to brand. It should be easy to create a product out of KDE (which is really a raw product). Themability makes it easier to brand KDE in a way that reflects the Corporate or Community Identity of distributors.
In the screenshot you can see how far we've come along that way. Since the Fluffy Bunny theme has developed into some kind of running gag, I decided to make my desktop something that would make Mira say "I want KDE!". The result can be seen in the above screenshot. I've been using this setup for some days now, and I must say that, even while I'm not a huge fan of pink, it looks very slick and calm. It's definitely something I can work with.

So what can be seen in the screenshot? There's the Aya plasma theme which changes its look based on the system colors. We can hint SVG files used in the Plasma widgets and tell them something about the colorscheme in use. You see, the panel is also nicely pink, it just picks up the colorscheme that's setup in System Settings. Also, the first Plasma themes start to turn up so you already have some choice in creating the looks you want. Jeremy has just very recently added Get Hot New Stuff support to the "Configure Desktop" dialogue, so installing new themes is now very easy. The grumpy guy can see on the bottom left of the screenshot is Chuck Norris. While I'm also not particularly into Chuck Norris, it's actually very cool that Mr Norris made his way onto my desktop. It's not a Plasma applet, it's an OSX Dashboard widget. Yes, we can already load dashboard widgets onto our desktop, thanks to Zack and Aaron spending a couple of days (nights?) together hacking.
Then, not exactly Plasma, but still very cool is the hovering selection that's new in Dolphin (or more technical in KFileItemDelegate). On the screenshot you see that a few directories are selected. That would need to be done either by dragging a rubberband around them selecting, or by holding CTRL pressed and then clicking. "Desktop" is hovered when the screenshot has been taken. You see a small green + in the top left corner, click on that + and the directory is not opened, but selected. Click anywhere else on it, and it's opened. That makes it really easy to make and edit a selection.
A couple of days ago, a folder plasmoid has been started in KDE's playground in SVN. Fredrik Höglund is working on that. This plasmoid will probably make it possible to have multiple folders on the desktop. Plasma people don't like the idea of having the desktop only represent one directory on your system when you can have multiple of them.

And all that (and much, much more) has happened in just 2.5 months. In April, there will be a Plasma sprint in Milano where more coolness will be planned and implemented. Plasma is quickly catching up with the functionality people have been used to in KDE 3.5 and has surely exceeded that in some areas already. Even for those strange individuals that don't like pink, or Chuck Norris, or combinations of those two, this just has to be impressive. :-)

[ Wed, 19 Mar 2008 19:52:10 +0100 ] permanent link

This weblog does currently not offer the option to comment. I would be happy to receive an email with your thoughts.

Weblog Archive