KDE 4.2.2: Suggestions for Improvements

KDE 4.2 After a Few Months

Since I wrote my previous rant KDE 4.2 has gotten two bugfix updates, and I'm currently running it quite well on the (often maligned) beta of Kubuntu 9.04. I'm now definitely at a point where I could not go back to KDE 3.5 without complaining, which is a milestone in itself. I'm not alone, as the tide of negative opinions about KDE4 have begun to turn with 4.2..... so much that some pundits are saying GNOME is behind ... gotta love those crazy pundits ;-)

As an experiment, I've been pushing KDE's configurability to the limits, including using a desktop that does not have a panel, task manager, or Kmenu (yes it is still fully functional). I will detail more about how you can live (and even excel) without things like a task manager in a future post, but in the interim, here are some screenshots showing my desktop and the widget layer in action:

My Brief Wish-List of Minor Features

So here's my list of improvement suggestions. I will be submitting these to the KDE Brainstorm site and hopefully some or all of these improvements can be made in time for KDE 4.3.

Shortcuts: Mouse + Keyboard Support Needed!

This is already a feature that Compiz supports, and should be added to KDE. I can think of three instances where letting the mouse be used in conjunction with the keyboard will improve the desktop experience, and I'm sure there are others I haven't come across. First, desktop zoom: Instead of requiring only keyboard shortcuts like META+= or META+-, allow for the mousewheel to be used in conjunction with a modifier key, just like how many apps allow CTRL+WHEEL to zoom in & out. Second, the Mouse Mark effect is a nice feature that is unfortunately way too awkward to use right now since it is only activated from the keyboard. Instead, allow for a combination like CTRL+ALT+Left Click to turn on the marking, and then drag the mouse to draw, releasing the button to stop drawing. Last, window transparency. While it is possible to set this by right-clicking the title bar, it would be much easier to use a key combo + mouse wheel to increase/decrease the transparency rapidly. This can be very useful for quickly making a window transparent to see what's underneath, then restoring its opacity.

KWin functionality: Gimme a Shortcut to Restore All Minimized Windows

This recommendation is partially due to the fact that I am not using a task manager at all.. which I know is a little unusual, but actually gives me a unique perspective on how to manage windows without going down to the task manager to click on programs. The biggest issue I've encountered is with minimized windows. With a task manager, you still see the program icon, but without one, do those windows disappear forever? Fortunately, the answer is no. Right now the Present Windows effects will bring up all windows, even minimized ones, giving the chance to restore windows. There are a couple of problems with this solution though. First, if I am on a desktop with only one window that is minimized, the "present windows only on this desktop" effect will not actually engage (see below for my request on that), requiring me to either present windows from all dektops, or to open up a second window so I can get access to the first window... annoying. The second way that this is annoying is that while Present Windows is a great effect, it was never designed to indicate which windows were minimized, so a function designed specifically to restore windows would be useful for its own sake.

Instead, it would be great if a "restore all windows" keyboard shortcut could be added to the "Global Keyboard Shortcuts" under the "Kwin" keyboard shortcuts setting. It may already be possible to make a quick & dirty dbus command that would tell Kwin to restore all the windows on a desktop, but I'm not familiar enough with the Kwin D-Bus interface to pull that off right now.. anyone with more knowledge is welcome to chime in.

Present Windows Effect: Have it activate even when there is only 1 window available

So this is probably done intentionally in KDE right now, but if you run the Present Windows effect and there is only one window to present... nothing happens. Is this the most efficient action to take? Yes. However, from a usability perspective, it might not work too well, since the user may very well be expecting something to happen.. and then nothing does. Even slightly scaling the one window on the desktop to show the effect is working is less disruptive when the user makes a command. Additionally, this is actually inconsistent behavior from how other effects plugins are already operating. For example, the Cover-Switch and other ALT-TAB switch effects will engage when there is only one window on the desktop. See Here:

Re-enabling, or making an option to show only one window when Present Windows is engaged will help give a more consistent experience, and (in my case) is also helpful since it will help in restoring windows when there is only one window on the desktop and that window has been minimized.

Alt-Tab Switching: Option to Show Windows from All Desktops

This is pretty self-explanatory, and unless my memory is failing me I'm pretty sure it used to be an option that has disappeared from the settings in my Jaunty Jackalope build using KDE 4.2.2. Basically, just add an option to "show windows from all desktops" so that the ALT-TAB window switcher is capable of going through all the windows, not just those from the current desktop. You could even have slightly different keyboard shortcuts to have window switching from the current desktop and from all desktops, just like how the Present Windows effect already works.

The Lock/Logout Plasmoid: Improve the Interface!

This is another complaint that comes from the fact that I am not using the regular KMenu or Lancelot at all, but instead tried to just put the Lock/Logout plasmoid directly on my desktop. My system is a desktop system, and in order to save power I like to suspend it to RAM, which allows me to restart it in just a few seconds. Unfortunately, the default lock/logout plasmoid has some major ergonomic issues when it comes to suspending the computer, as seen below:

The pictures don't fully capture how easy it is to accidentally shut the system down entirely instead of doing the action you actually want done. I got frustrated enough that I actually came up with my own hack to put a "suspend to RAM" button on the lower left hand corner. You can see the button in the screenshots posted above. While this solution works for me, it is a real hack: it is not a plasmoid, but instead an app linked to a shell script that invokes the pm-suspend command line, that in turned required me to edit the sudoers file so I don't need to put in a password to suspend the machine... not a long term solution.

Instead, the suspend and hibernate options should be clearly displayed such that it is easy to invoke the correct choice, and the following picture is a (very poorly done) mockup of what it might look like:

A final option might just be to add new plasmoids for each option: shutdown/restart/suspend/hibernate/logout, and then let the user lay out those functions in different ways.

Test Widgets Both in & out of a Panel

Certain widgets do not do well put into a panel and vice-versa. For example, in my case I am not using the Device Notifier because when placed on the desktop it does not go into its normal iconified mode that it takes when added to a panel. I know that some plasmoids are really not designed to operate in a panel, while others don't know what to do outside of a panel. If a plasmoid can only really work in or out of a panel, then it might be smart to alter how the "Add Widgets..." interface operates so that it is contextually aware of where a widget will be added, in order to prevent misbehaving widgets from going in the wrong place.

Final Thoughts

Well so far so good with KDE 4.2. Nothing is perfect, but KDE 4 has reached the point of maturity where the problems I am noting are minor, and the development community has gotten to a point where many problems can be fixed relatively quickly. I will post an in-depth discussion of the heavily-modified KDE 4.2 desktop I'm running right now, and how you can get something similar using the extensive customization support that is already built into KDE!