Adding widgets
Posted by nookie in MocksMar 20th, 2009 | 59 responses
Sometimes when i work ideas can just pop up in my head if i see an application
and how it could be done in another way.
Yesterday i started about the dialog for adding widgets dialog.
There is nonthing wrong how it looks today but for some reason i just wanted to come
home from work all day long today to realize an idea i had for it.
Here is how it looks today.
As soon as i came home today i started to mock on my idea and it took me only an hour to
finish it up.
So here is the mocks which i have made. Take a look at the first.
Now let me explain some things.
Icons in the widget window or call it whatever you want are 64×64 used.
You can simply add more widgets in the way you do today.
Widgets could be categorized aswell. I need to make mock with categories to
show it to you. You would be able to drag the widgets to desktop or panel as today so not much changed here.
Those blue dots on top on some widgets is showing what widgets are added and if you press on that dot you will remove
the widget..
It may look little bit strange with the blue panel but it’s just because the things i have mocked are quite sharp
and therefor such difference compared to the panel.
You might ask yourself what will happen to all windows that i have opened?
Well as the panel slides up nicely all windows should go into minimize and therefor
the user will be able to see the desktop clearly and drag the widget where ever he wants to.
To the desktop or to the panel.
Next mock is showing what is happening if you press on manage widgets
As you can see the menu has changed to
- Download widgets
- Install from local file
- and.. uninstall widgets totaly.
Next mockup is showing what is happening if you want to remove the widget totaly
and when you have pressed on the button “Uninstall widget”
As you can see a small dots on each widget has appeared with an x above it.
That mean just press on that “button” or what ever we call it to uninstall the widget totaly.
We don’t want to have a user who accidently removes the widget so we need a confirmation
box. Let me show it aswell with a mock.
As you can see here all widgets and everything behind is gone because i want the user to focus on what he is doing.
He has here an option to regret his choise he made earlier.
If the user presses cancel he will get the default view back.
I hope really that someone of you likes this idea and that one day it could be implemented in KDE.
Leave comments and let us discuss it =)
Have a nice weekend
/Nookie^
59 Responses to “Adding widgets”
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About Me
@Bugsbane
I could not agree more with you… As you said apple & microsoft uses mouse and cursor damn we can not have it…
Everybody is using stuff from everybody.. Take ideas, make them better and implement it.
Ofcourse this thingy should not just popup. The idea is to have cool animations when it pops up, when u scroll for widgets, adding and when it’s being closed.
Looks great, but is not too usable.
IMHO a simple window works better.
@Nookie said: March 21, 2009 at 17:48
I see alot of you wants to have 10 more options..
One of the problems in kde is to just more and more options..I like to keep things simple. It’s easier for the user to get around with fewer options.
————
I absolutely agree with you.
My thoughts was more like applying the functionality to other areas rather than loading everything into one addon/app, and systray management seemed pretty close. Thinking of which apps/activities to be shown in systray…
It is nice, however it is almost a direct copy of Apples interface for adding widgets to the dashboard.
“One of the problems in kde is to just more and more options..I like to keep things simple. It’s easier for the user to get around with fewer options.”
I can not agree with you. Best results for every user is, that the user can customise the features as she/he please.
Developers should not try to force users for few options and say they are best ones because otherwise it is too “complicated”.
There is difference to have lots of features with good options for them with good usability styled way to configure them and have lots of optioons for many features with bad usability. Even worse situation than the later one, is that you have few features and not options at all or very limited such.
It is very important to have lots of features and options for them.
But it is even more important, to make the default settings so that new user/basic user does not need to first go to settings to configure them. This still allows advanced user to modify the settings or the new/basic user to change settings as he gains experience and so on the user interface does not come in her/his way. What would happend if there is as few options as possible.
KDE3 power was the configuration. The bad side was that default settings were very badly choosen. KDE4 has now great default settings, but it has limited options for those who want to set UI as they like to use computer, not how developer use it.
1) Where is scrollbar ? This click-button-to-scroll model only works with low number of items, like 5 tabs in window with enough space only for 4 tabs. Clicking throug big list can be major pain. Search field is only small help.
2) What about small screens ? I’m not sure how current model can handle this, but given it’s freely resizable window, I’m pretty sure any problem could be solved.
I like the idea, but I doubt it’s really more usable then free-floating window.
On other note, hiding app windows is great idea.
Humm, it looks good. But I prefer usual window to do that. It’s easier. Maybe Celestia could talk about this.
I like the idea of a more usable way to add widgets. But would’nt it be better to have this conigutation panel on top of the normal panel? It is quite disturbing in the Mac OSX Dashboard to have all widgets of the desktop being pushed upwards. This could be implemented in the same style as the already-existing panel-config-dialog. Just hit “add widgets” and something similar to what you proposed will slide in.
And how can you mark a widget as ‘favourite’?
[...] Take a look at these mockups and talk about it: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Plasma+-+Add+Widgets+Mockup?content=101423 http://blusrcu.ba/nookie/?p=22 [...]