Ivan Čukić

dr Ivan Čukić

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Splashed across plasma

Published by Ivan Čukić in the KDE development: Plasma section, on 23 June 2013

In order to have an elegant way of switching plasma shells at runtime, we need to hide the process from the user. Is there a nicer way of doing that than showing a pretty splash screen on top of everything? (this is a rhetoric question - don’t answer, it has already been decided)

This is aimed at Plasma Workspaces 2 and is pure Qt5/QML2 thingie. It will also be used as a base for the future versions of KSplashQML (aka TSP).

Here’s the obligatory looped gif showing what it looks like.

Comments:

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[...] Splashed across plasma [...]
Wolfgang
Can this also be used to smooth over the "transition" when the number or physical screens changes? This would mean integration into kscreen these days I think.
Ivan Čukić
@Burke That is a nice question - it should probably be discussed on plasma-devel mailing list.
Martin Bříza
Wolfgang, this was addressed in kde-workspace commit 7d7a5b1c7 (just in master). It's still not perfect - at least on my system, it just turns the screens off for a while, but at least when they kick in again, the splash is still covering the whole desktop, not just the parts as they were before KScreen changed the layout. :)
Thales
You take that "Loading" text and any other text out and you're ready to go, just my designer opinion here :)
Beautiful tho'
Yohann
yeah! very nice
Aurélien Gâteau
Beautiful! Reminds me of your KDE splash screen.
Ivan Čukić
@Aurélien Gâteau
Thanks. It started as a qt5 rewrite of the splash system. So I decided to use the same theme elements.
Burke
Quite Offtopic: I am afraid.
Not becase of the splash screen itself- that is a nice way of transition- but of the form factor switch. Imagine i have a small notes plasmoid on my desktop with some vital informations on it. If I change the form factor, I lose those informations because of a lack of a desktop. In order to have those informations available on my other form factor, I need to manually copy&paste the content of the notes plasmoid.
So, are you dealing with such a scenario in some convenient way? I mean, shouldn't a certain information (kept in a notes plasmoid for example) be bound to the activity instead of the form factor used?
Ivan Čukić
@Wolfgang
Might be. When kscreen becomes a part of the default installation, this might get integrated with it. From my POV, it has a few miles more to go before that happens.
Korbel Daniel
It will be greate to have that kind of animation as the animated wallpaper. I will be waiting for :D
Aaron Seigo
<div class="comment-good">@kboite: That video is not showing any form factor switching at all, just screen resizing. Note that it retains the exact same home screen, the exact same touch oriented workflow, etc, etc.
Think more like switching from Ubuntu Phone to the Unity desktop.
There are a number of things that must happen: different desktop layout (panels, e.g.), start/stop of certain processes (krunner on desktop, but not on tablet), kwin reconfiguration (different effects, different window titlebars), adjusting applications that are form factor aware (e.g. calligra, marble, etc may switch to their desktop UI).
As usual, what is shown in the video you linked is trivial features that one gets for free by using QML .. and has nothing to do with form factor switching.</div>
Ivan Čukić
@kboite
That is only resizing. Imagine the switch from the plasma active to the plasma desktop.
@Markus S.
As I said, that part is not debatable. Bringing the wallpaper is IMO wrong for two reasons - gives no information about what is going on, visual or explicit; you don't need to have the same wallpaper on different shells.
@teho
Have no clue about the old ksplashx - I guess it will remain alive on X11 (it is a pure Xlib application). As for KSplashQML, it will be ported to the new system, but I'll keep the theme API the same as in the current one.
It might end up as a part of the LaF packages.
teho
Will the old splash screen engine be completely dropped off in KDE Plasma Workspaces 2.0? Do I presume right that this theme will be part of the look and feel package and the same splash screen will also be used on KDE startup?
In any case it looks cool.
Thanks.
Markus S.
The nicer way is to fade to the background picture and then fade out again after the shell switch.
kboite
When you mean switching plasma shells, do you mean switching shell sessions or shell layouts (e.g: between plasma netbook and plasma desktop)?
Is the splash screen mandatory because the layouts differ a lot?
Because it seems that in UnityNext the switching between different form factors will be kinda "seemless" / just a matter of resizing the screen: http://youtu.be/R4gXaf08GTI?t=11s
(I'm not questionning your rhetoric question, just trying to understand the reasoning behind it)

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