{"id":1466,"date":"2009-11-28T03:44:33","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T23:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/?p=1466"},"modified":"2009-11-28T04:11:53","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T02:11:53","slug":"battery-applet-the-sequel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/battery-applet-the-sequel\/","title":{"rendered":"Battery Applet &#8211; The Sequel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There have been quite some comments to my <a href=\"http:\/\/vizzzion.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/battery-improvements-in-kde-plasma-4-4\/\" title=\"battery improvements in kde plasma 4.4\">previous blog<\/a>, among them some good points how to further improve the clarity of the battery applet&#8217;s info and control panel. I thought the best way to address this is with a patch, and a bit of explanation of those changes. So here&#8217;s the dialogue after a bit of further hacking on it:<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/vizzzion.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/battery-applet-sequel.png\" title=\"New version on the left, old version on the right\" alt=\"New version on the left, old version on the right\" \/>Let&#8217;s look at the latest changes:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Bigger informational text, bold labels<\/strong> &#8212; Checking the charging state is the primary usecase of the panel, adding a bit of visual weight to the top section makes it easier to spot the information<\/li>\n<li><strong>Separator between info section and controls removed<\/strong> &#8212; As some people pointed out, the separator between the info and the control section resembles the brightness slider a bit too closely, and distracts visually<\/li>\n<li><strong>Configure button moved in line with the profile combobox<\/strong> &#8212; This is actually a very good point. It makes sense to put the configure button next to the profile combobox. The button actually leads to the profile configuration settings. It also makes it possible to &#8230;<\/li>\n<li><strong>Move Sleep and Hibernate buttons in line<\/strong> &#8212; Now we have two instead of three buttons in the lower section of the controls, we can actually put them in line and get rid of the large hole in the lower part of the dialog.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Aligned labels and controls horizontally<\/strong> &#8212; This last one is a label alignment bug in my code notmart quickly fixed after seeing the screenshot. Thanks dude! :)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I think that it works indeed better visually with those changes. The separation between info section and controls are better, the alignment of the widget overall is clearer, and as you can see, we&#8217;ve also saved quite some horizontal space. While it&#8217;s certainly not perfect yet, I think it&#8217;s a really nice improvement. Thanks to those who came up with the suggestions. I&#8217;ve just committed the patches to trunk, so they&#8217;ll be in KDE SC 4.4 beta next week.<\/p>\n<p>On a sidenote, I had to order a new battery today for my beloved Thinkpad T60. The battery I&#8217;m using is, as you can see totally worn out. If you, dear <em>lazyweb<\/em> have suggestions how I can revive my (by now three) worn out accus, I&#8217;d be most grateful. I guess the constant plugging and unplugging of the accu and power cable isn&#8217;t the healthiest diet for this kind of hardware. Ow sacrifices &#8230; ;-)<\/p>\n<p>\n<strong>Update:<\/strong> I&#8217;ve removed the percentage from the battery picture in the dialog, since it&#8217;s redundant (already displayed next to the &#8220;Battery:&#8221; label). Also, the dialog now reacts to font size changes on the fly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There have been quite some comments to my previous blog, among them some good points how to further improve the clarity of the battery applet&#8217;s info and control panel. I thought the best way to address this is with a patch, and a bit of explanation of those changes. So here&#8217;s the dialogue after a&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2009\/11\/battery-applet-the-sequel\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Battery Applet &#8211; The Sequel<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\" aria-hidden=\"true\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kde","category-plasma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1466"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1470,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1466\/revisions\/1470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}