ALI Menus Proposal

I should be doing alot of things, prepare Curriculum vitaes and thing like that for next year, but or the moment being I can't think of anything else than Plasma. I'm really enthousiastic about it.

I though alot about task menu organisation, and I think we could organize three main menus :

[b]File[/b]

-create
--[list of filetypes the user can create]

-print
--[list of recent printable documents] (rencent texts, spreadsheets, pdfs and pictures)
--Select a file to open (opens a Print dialog box, which only displays texts, spreadsheets, pdfs and pictures)

-open
--[list of recent documents]
--Select a file to open (opens a Open dialog box)

-send
--[list of recent documents]
--Select a file to send (opens a Send dialog box)

-delete
--Select a file to delete (opens a Delete dialog box)

-filetypes associations (opens the filetype association configuration dialog)


[b]Communication[/b]

-Browse the web
--Open Browser (if only one is installed) / [list of browser apps] (if more than one is installed)
--Web Search (opens a browser window on you default online search engine page)
---[list of browser apps] (if more than one is installed)
--[list of bookmarks sorted by categories] (selecting one opens a browser window on the selected bookmark page)
--Manage bookmarks (opens keditbookmarks)

-Contacts
--[list of contacts sorted by categories]
---possible actions with selected contact
---edit contact informations
--open adress book

-Chat
--[list of chat apps] (if more than one is installed)

-Open mail client
--[list of mail apps] (if more than one is installed)


[b]Multimedia[/b]

-Music
--Open Player (if only one is installed) / [list of music player apps] (if more than one is installed)
--Create playlist

-Sound
--Configure
--Add sound control applet to the systray

-Video
--Watch (opens a Open dialog box) (filters movie files)
--Watch DVD (appears only if a movie DVD is inserted)

-Picture
--View
--Organize
--Import (appears only if a camera is connected)

-Devices
--See content of a device
---[list of connected devices] (cliking on one of the entries opens a browser)
--Burn
---Image file (opens a Burn dialog box)
--CD
---See content (opens a browser) (appears only if a CD is inserted)
---Erase (opens a confirmation box) (appears only if the CD is rewritable)
--DVD
---Watch (appears only if a movie DVD is inserted)
---See content (opens a browser) (appears only if a DVD (movie or data) is inserted)
---Erase (opens a confirmation box) (appears only if the DVD is rewritable)
--Floppy
---See content (opens a browser) (appears only if a Floppy is inserted)
---Format (opens a confirmation box) (appears only if a non protected Floppy is inserted)

-Games
--One player
---[list of games sorted by categories]
--Local multiplayer
---[list of games sorted by categories]
--Networkplay
---[list of games sorted by categories]

-Edutainment
--[list of Apps sorted by categories]

The dialog boxes I mentioned are not the ones you now from KDE3.4 and need mockups, which I'll do as soon as possible.

Now the problem is : How to put Configuration and Programmation tasks ?
I'm wondering if there could be an arrow at the side of the menus applet wich would make it expand and reveal less often used menus.

ALI ?

For Plasma, Aaron wish seems to get rid of the traditional Kmenu with tons of apps in as many categories.
Dimitri Rizek on kde-artists.org proposed a task-based approach dividing the menu into three different menus directly reachable in the panel.
These menus according to Dimitri would be :

Create
-Document
--Spreadsheet
--Text
--Presentation
--etc.
-Image
--Bitmap
--Vector
-Disk
--Data
--Audio
--Movie
--Photo
-Contact
-Playlist
-Movie
-Basket

etc...

Communicate
-List of Contacts
--Send Mail
--Text Chat
--Voice Chat
--Video Chat
-Browse the web
-Chat on IRC

Configure
-Desktop Settings
--Appearance and Themes
--Desktop
--rest of kcontrol...
-Video Settings
--Nvidia/ATI Control panel
--Monitor settings(some sort of xorg.conf GUI config app)
-Audio Settings(something like kmix)
-Drive Settings(some sort of fstab GUI config app)
-Printer Settings

As suggested on the forum, configuring you desktop is a thing you only do once in a while and doesn't deserve to get its own menu.
But wait ! What if I want to listen to my music ? What if I want to edit a document ? How do I play a game ?
Categories as they're shown here are a proposal for us to get started.

The Communicate menu though seems to be quite mature, and my take is that it could stay the way it is (with minor changes since there always are some)
So here's the way I think it could look like :





At least, the general look and feel seems to be appreciated ;)

For the other menus, I think we should start working on the various scenarios a user could follow to accomplish common tasks.
I think I'll soon post a draft of them.

For the moment being I see :

-creating (files, birning media)
-editing (files, birning media)
-reading
-listening
-watching
-communicating
-organizing
-sharing
-configure (network, system, look and feel)
-searching
-browsing
-playing

follow the whole topic on kde-artists.org here : http://kde-artists.org/main/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,48/expv,0/topic,19.0

Plasma Powa !

I've been working for some weeks now on Plasma art on kde-artists.org, the new kicker for KDE4.
I'm only designing early mockups, nothing official.

Kicker Is meant to be a breathtaking piece of artwork. It will use Composite to render real transparency. But more than icker, it will merge tree element together : kicker, the desktop and SuperKaramba, in order to provide a very consistent and immersive desktop experience.

Panels will be able to dock to each other like this (click on the "no thumbnail" thing):



New elements should appear like the extender. It's a "growth" of the panel which brings the user various informations.



Any applet could be dragged off of its panel and dropped an the desktop (like a SuperKaramba theme). Aaron Seigo, kicker maintainer calls them "plasmoids. So plasmoids will be able to take place on the desktop or on a "third layer" appearing above the desktop and the widows it contains.
Here's what it could look like :



This last picture is a mockup I made for showing a popup displaying informations about the applications when you hover them in the taskbar. It's not sure wether it will be included or not.



Anyway, kde-artists.org is a great place with a young and yet very involved community. It's a very pleasing experience to work with it.

Hi all !

Let me introduce myself.

I'm Adrien Facélina, 18 years old, (from France, and my english is still not perfect so don't hesitate to correct me), and I'm also a proud KDE user for three years now.
I enjoy making graphics and I feel really concerned about the look and feel of my desktop. I enjoy making icons and mockups, but it never led to something real. Until www.kde-artists.com opened. For those who don't already know, it's a forum where artists, coders but also usability people meet to design projects.
I made some mockups (among them some are animated) in reply to Aaron Seigo post about Kicker4 (now renamed to Plasma), which will anyway be a killer application. And I though I was dreaming when I saw one of my mockups on Aaron's blog (www.aseigo.blogspot.com). I thank you Aaron for having helped me realize that dreamers could really be of help in the open source creative process.
That's what motivated me to start blogging.

I'll release my mockups, my thoughts and my works in progress here.
Unless special notice, all works will follow the LGPL licence.

Introducing Lanthys

I quickly got bored of blue aqua thingies you know ?
And instead of just complaining about it, I begun to work. I never studied graphics, but just worked with tools like photoshop then GIMP and now Inkscape, and one fine day, I felt like I could not just do something good but also consistent from the begining to the end, and then started (more than a year ago) my very own iconset.

It's codenamed "Lanthys", and is aimed to be a clean, fresh and professionnal iconset for KDE. I Begun to work with PNG files and about a month ago with SVGs. It was easier than I though, and I'm actually converting what's allready done to SVG. But I'm very concerned about hand optimization for little sizes.

Well some days ago, I took a deep breath and send this teasers of my iconset to kde-artists mailing list :





Hope you like it.
And I also hope it will be ready right on time to be included in KDE4. ;)