ShtylmansPapercuts

This is a page of Papercuts for Kubuntu and the KDE environment. This page exists mostly for discussion purposes and to address some of the "smaller" issues with the Kubuntu releases. I love Kubuntu and have been using it for years and only want to see it get better so I provide these highly opinionated notes to think about. Feel free to add comments and tag with your name Smile :)

The general idea is that the desktop should not get in my way when I want to work. It should be there to manage some basic system tasks cleanly. We don't need another flowerpot or clock widget... we just need to polish out some of the details in existing things.

KDE

  • When I login and an app immediately needs to use passwords (like connect to a wifi network... very common use case), I am again asked for my kwallet password.
  • Why does the notification icon stick around when there are no notifications? This is a waste of space and my mindshare. I only want to see the icons that matter at a given time. If there are no notification, hide the icon.
  • What is with the arrow in the systray area. When I click on it, a menu opens up with more items (message indicator, printer, etc) clicking on some of these things does nothing and for others opens up dialogs. Why does this even exist? you either need to be showing the icon cause it is relevant or hiding it cause it doesn't matter. I would tend towards hiding until it matters. The general policy I am advocating here is that the user doesn't want to waste time exploring their desktop to no end when various things don't even do anything.
  • I can't even begin on the notifications. I think they deserve their own wiki page. The kde notifications would probly drive me to uninstall kde if I didn't like the other features. Honestly, who provides a notification for "locked screen" or other nonsense. Who caches up tons of these things and then dumps them all on the user when a new one comes. Who makes me take an action right away. I am working!! Tell me something and go away. Leave an icon if you need it (for the individual item that came up) but don't make notifications into an entire OS ... please!!
  • The wifi plasma widget /config is a usability disaster.. how can we still not get this right? Make it more simple!! Less == more.

Look

  • The battery icon is too damn complicated. Looks like a stack of cd's or something else. What is hard about making a simple battery icon that looks nice without too much overthinking.
  • The default wallpaper isn't very nice. It doesn't compliment the default plasma theme, which is nice and clean. It also doesn't "convey" the image of kde or kubuntu. We should pick something unique to us or work with upstream to get a better image.

KWin

  • Do we really need the app icon image? What about the "on all desktops"
    • - TODO blog post about menus in the title bar.

      - the title bar is a waste of space vertically and serves no real purpose... we can do better for society Smile :)

ShtylmansPapercuts (last edited 2010-10-26 16:51:37 by rrcs-184-75-2-170)