Ivan Čukić

dr Ivan Čukić

Author of "Functional Programming in C++", KDE developer and Free/Libre software enthusiast

For inquiries about KDE projects (requesting features, submitting bugs, asking general questions etc.), you can use:

KDE Community Forum
Bug reporting site
#plasma IRC channel

You need to contact me directly?

KDE related:
ivan.cukic [at] kde.org

Non KDE related things:
ivan [at] this domain

IRC Network: libera.chat
Nick: ivan|home
Channel: #plasma

Projects

Blog categories

Functional Programming in C++

If you like C++, you might be interested in my book. It contains quite a few gems of modern C++ programming.

It is available for purchase at:

Patronage

Activities - coming soon to your system settings, again

Published by Ivan Čukić in the KDE development: Activities section, on 9 August 2015

As I have written previously, the activities manager service now supports creating private activities.

But it is not exposed in the UI at the moment.

Now, that is not the only problem that the current settings module for Activities has. A few things have improved in the previous few versions, but there is always more room for improvement.

One of the common complaints was that the activities settings module does not actually allow you to create, modify or delete activities.

Both issues will be fixed in the next release of KActivities framework.

Comments:

AGui
Nice to have these features and this KCM module.
In our discussion on the Visual Design Group forum [1], we proposed to group every setting which can be activity specific in the same place, to improve discoverability of the possibilities of activities. This KCM could be the basis for it.
For instance, for power management profiles, you would define in the appropriate KCM the default profile. Then, in the activity manager, you can choose either to use the default, or to overide it with an activity specific setting. If you open the power management KCM in an activity which as an overriden setting, then a warning would be displayed and would link you to the activity manager.
For the UI, I would rather use a List-Detail pattern [2], with Activities in a list on the left, and every setting (including privacy) on the right.
[1] https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=285&t=126253 [2]https://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Patterns/NavigationPatterns#Patterns_for_a_flat_content_structure
Ivan Čukić
I've been following the discussions in that topic, but only as a spectator.
Honestly, the things there are moving too slow and the discussion is all but focussed. I couldn't really wait for the things to crystalize before implementing this (waiting is the reason why the underlying stuff in the activities service have existed for more than a few years now, but never got exposed in the UI).
Now, with that said, the current UI can still be changed in the future, when we get a clear picture of what is important and what is not.
I'm doubtful that the cram-everything-into-activities-settings idea can work, but I'm willing to be persuaded otherwise.
As for the 'list-detail' pattern, I see it more as a solution for the situations (1) where the configuration options are vast and need a lot of space, (2) and where it is common to configure many items at one point. Here, there are not many configuration options (at this moment) and it is not expected that you want to configure all the activities at once, though you are not inhibited to do so. The UI follows a couple of other places in the system settings like plugin configuration for kwin (and others), shortcuts definition etc.

Write a new comment...