On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 10:03 PM, Robert Xu
<robxu9@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 08:15, Ilya Chernykh <
neptunia@mail.ru> wrote:
> Hi! Is it possible to return some behavior of KDE 3.1 and KDE 2?
>
> My impression that some things became much worser with later versions of KDE.
>
> Namely,
>
> - They removed the 3D appearance of Kicker. First from KDE 3.2 they removed
> the frame around the taskbar buttons and make the buttons larger (I would
> say, too large). Next, from some later release they removed 3D appearance
> from taskbar buttons, so they are not pushed like other buttons any more,
> only the bold font shows which application is currently selected.
Well, I personally love the "elegant" button style. The bolding of names or shading of icons and letters to indicate which apps are open, in background or foreground is unmatched by most DE:
Active - Bold font, icons not shaded
Background - Regular font, icons not shaded
Minimized - Regular font, icons and font shaded
This makes it very easy to know the apps state at a slight glance, which is more than I can say for Gnome/XFCE:
Active - Regular font, icons not shaded, pressed button (is ok)
Background - Regular font, icons not shaded, no button, which is what I think you mean by "2D" (also ok)
Minimized - Regular font, title between [ ], icon shaded (this, to me needs work on their part)
This makes it harder to identify which apps are minimized at a glance, since you have to actually read the names to look for the [ ]s.
Still, in KDE 3.5 you have the "classic" option which gives it some 3D look, although I admit it is not great and the select app button should not be slightly darker but:
Active - Look pressed, non bold folt, slightly darker button.
Background - Normal button, normal font
Minimized - Normal button, icon and font shaded.
To me this is suboptimal and there's no feedback when you're hovering the mouse icon over the buttons. Transparency is not optimal, to me, but some people like that mode and it is kind of decent in 3.5.
I guess the look you describe can be made very nice with some work and may be worth pursuing sometime.
May only complaint with elegant is that perhaps there's a way to make the active button standout without using bold font, which is not so easy to read, but it still is so functional that it doesn't feel worth changing. Perhaps because the dark font stands out so much on the light theme I use, compared to a pressed button or a colored one. What makes elegant even better is the feedback of something happening in a background app is first shown by blinking a colored button and then by having it stay fixed at that color after a short time - this to me is remarkably well done. This would probably conflict with the use of a colored button for the active app.
I have tried many themes in KDE 4, while pondering a migration to that but have been left disappointed not just by the taskbar but by the overall DE. One or two themes did a good job of transmit the state of the apps but they were far and few.
Please see the screenshots for details on my current config. I use a left vertical icon sidebar, for years now, which is similar to Ubuntu's unity. That is also something I miss in KDE 4, since you can't configure panels with such flexibility. With screens now having grown a lot in width, it is probably something work exploring.
>
> - Is it possible to make an option to remove the thick separators from the K
> menu, like it was in KDE 3.1?
Again, an option.
>
> - In KDE2 when you press K button and then launch another application, the
> menu does not disappear, this makes easy making screenshots
Could you not just launch the application, hit the K Menu, then use
the print screen button?
>
> - In KDE2 when you hover over the quick launch items, the icons are enlarged.
Never used KDE2, but that doesn't sound like a bad idea.
You have an option to launch an elegant tooltip, similar to what is shown in the kickerElegant.png when I have the mouse over one of the taskbar's buttons. I would like to see that though, do you have any screenshot? I have only been a KDE user since 3.1
>
> - In KDE2 when you press "minimize all windows" button and then klick on a
> folder on desktop, only that folder opens in a window. In KDE 3.5 all windows
> restored.
That's basically what Windows does with the "Show Desktop", and it's a
good idea.
That should actually be default, it's easier. (make an option again?)
>
> - In KDE2 the frames around names of items on the desktop are dotted like in
> Windows and shown reliably: do not twinkle when you press mouse on another
> place on the desktop and always shown completely. In KDE3 they twinkle and
> sometimes shown only by half. The names of items in KDE2 shown exactly in the
> center relative to icon while in KDE 3.5 the names often shifted from the
> middle.
>
> - The K menu in KDE 3.5.10 is often shifted when displayed first time after
> reboot or changing settings. This depends on the icon theme used: all OK with
> Crystalsvg but problems with Slick, KDE Classic and others
Never had this problem?
>
> - I would also want see more exciting icon themes and Qt styles which one can
> see on the old 200-2005 screenshots.
>
>
I'd rather have the new Qt4 styles, frankly.
I still find plastic kind of great and knifty for the windows, but they do show their age. As someone who wrote just a few lines of Qt3 code, what are the odds of porting some KDE4 styles to KDE3?
Best regards,
Tiago
--
later, Robert Xu