Comments on: Battery Applet – The Sequel

By: Kap4Lin

Kap4Lin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 04:37:26 +0000

Do, change the icon on a desktop (non-battery) setup. I do understand that this is a “battery” applet, but I find the “Power profile” very useful in on a desktop as well, where there are no batteries. So, change the icon to, say, a power cord, when in a desktop environment.

By: cosmocat

cosmocat — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:41:16 +0000

Good work but I use this post to ask something…

Is it possible to add the functionality to modify the screen brightness just by scrolling the mouse button while the mouse pointer is just over the battery applet (like it’s done with the kmix panel icon)?

It would be great (especially because my brightness fn-keys didn’t work)!!

By: seele

seele — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:33:13 +0000

Nice improvements, but three comments/questions:

* Regarding the AC adapter status, you might want to consider bolding the data rather than the label. There has been some research to show that bolding self explanatory data (”Plugged In” is pretty self explanatory) increases comprehension over bolding the data label.

* The screen brightness widget does not have redundancy (i.e. it doesnt have a text label stating what percent the bar is at). Are there any accessibility issues with this?

* Does the configure button still lead to opening the PM UI, or does it specifically open to the PM profiles page? By changing the location, you imply a relationship with the power profile data where before it was independent and implied a general link to the PM UI

By: Fri13

Fri13 — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:44:13 +0000

Yes and it is a good indicatior. But it’s position is not good. The battery size always stays same. So when you add the widget to the panel, it has lots of empty space on left side. Only because you need the flash when you have the AC connected.

What I would suggest more for the Oxygen/Air styles, is that the battery icon bars get changed by color. Like green when running in battery and yellow when recharing.

Of course I could make similar widget myself and just use it (and share it trough kde-looks) but this just would be better for the default KDE plasma desktop installation

By: Fri13

Fri13 — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:18:56 +0000

Now it looks much better than the current one. I would polish the sleep/hibernation buttons position or size. I would make the to use whole width so they are separated from middle. And I would think the “Hibernate to RAM/DISK” thing twice. I like more about the “sleep” and “hibernate” but it would mean we need to change that on the KickOff to correct one. Even they are more informative, but normal user does not know what is “RAM” and what is “DISK”. On Unix-likes OS’s like LInux, we do not have actually way to show drives like NT. But we only show as such the removable medias.

So what if KickOff would get “fixed”?

By: sebas

sebas — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:21:14 +0000

We’re already using constistent wording, it’s some distros that think they know better and change it.

By: sebas

sebas — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:19:57 +0000

The text indicates the charging state and is unrelated to the percentage. 0% (charged) means that the battery won’t go higher than 0%, 98% (charging) means that the battery is still being charged.

By: sebas

sebas — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:18:38 +0000

I can’t change the strings right now since we’re in string freeze.

By: sebas

sebas — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:18:03 +0000

The yellow flash indicates that the power adaptor is plugged in.

By: dcrabs

dcrabs — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:40:39 +0000

Well, for me it looks a bit worse than the first design even though it follows some FormLayout. The old one looked more even. It appeals kind of restless for my eyes. Not that I don’t appreciate the work! But I like the latest version better than the one before. Isn’t it possible to add icons instead of text for “Screen Brightness” and “Power Profile”? That would make it more consistent with the buttons/icons for “Sleep” and “Hibernate” and at the same time narrower.