Hello, everyone!
It’s been a while since I don’t post anything, and very sorry for that. You soon will find out my possible reasons (or maybe some excuses).
This week the GSoC season ended and I am here with my first of the last posts about the GSoC 
First of all, I’d like to thanks everyone that made it possible and made it beautifully – including gsoc team, kde/plasma community, the qt labs america guys and, of course, Ivan, my dear, patient mentor. Thanks you all.
This was, and I really mean it, one of the most significant experiences I had – I managed to overrun myself in several aspects, since the first day I joined the kde community. Besides all the technical learning, I managed to keep a nice long-distance relationship with lots of people, and find a perfect virtual environment to work. It’s being just great.
Well, as you must know, I am working with the New Widgets Explorer, and this particular project also brought me lots of learning.
One of the most difficult tasks I had to deal with was to conceive the new UI & funcionalities of the project, and that started even before coding time began.
The Widget’s Explorer is an everyday tool for plasma users, so almost everyone that uses it has a strong opinion about it – likes, dislikes, how things should or shouldn’t be. It is obviously very hard to please everyone, since we’re all so different. I had to be prepared to hear lots of criticizes!
My first attempt to do the right thing was to arrange a virtual focus group session with plasma users – I tried my best to gather different kinds of users: developers, designers and purely users. There were 12 people in the room, and the results were great! I could analyze a huge material and came out with some nice conclusions (you can see it in previous post).
My second step was to try to express the conclusions into mockups. I drew several ones, and finally published 2 options of mockups, which you can also see in previous post (the last one). The response to those was great. I heard a lot of criticizes, got a lot of help, lots of private e-mails and blog comments with suggestions. The final choice was to use one of the mockups and embrace some helpful criticizes.
So we were done for now with the mocks. Coding time begun! Yey!
Everything was going great and I was able to create a functional mockup-like (not so much alike) version of the project. I was very excited with that, mostly because of the huge learning.
But, as we know, it is hard to please everyone – the whole idea of the project (the UI aspect) was questioned and we decided to take it to another path.
First of all, this is a screeshot I took before changing paths (not the most up-to-date one, I had more stuff done – but this was a screenshot I luckly found here ) :
The new idea, though, was to make it a long and linear list, horizontally attached to the panel – basically. So, after developing a great part of the project, I had to stop and make some other mocks.
This is one that could sketch, with the help of some community friends – the horizontal and vertical versions (yeah, vertical ’cause we needed to think about the case when the panel is on the right/left sides of the screen):
Some work was lost, and lots of hours of work were lost – more hours than code lines (those I could reuse), ’cause, as a begginer, I didn’t have the experience to code so many lines in few hours. But this whole re-working thing made me learn much more
The new idea/mockup for the project didn’t came out to public due a decision I made: I had to be able finish GSoC in time and I couldn’t be doing any back and forth work all the time (designing – coding – re-designing – re-coding) and I knew that there would be a long time of discussion over it if I did. I find this kind of discussion very productive, but I really had to finish GSoC. And, yey!, I did it!
I finally finished what we agreed to do after the whole scenario changing, and these are the screenshots of the final result
(screencasts later:)) :
There are both vertical and horizontal versions implemented. The categories are always visible, and tooltips holds more information about the applet, and also moves with animation like the plasma tooltips. The list moves with the arrows buttons and also with mouse wheel (faster with the mouse wheel). These tooltips were great idea – it can be a place for lots of stuff, like the screeshot of the applet, the number of running applets and its position in desktop…
Hopefully you’ll like it
But I am actually here to open up a space for every of you opine over it. Now that GSoC is over, I don’t mind doing back-and-forth job (for as much as it is better for the application ).
Of course there is still a lot of work to do, and I’m thrilled to raise our new child together with you!
The day after tomorrow we’re heading to Tokamak and I’m absolutely sure that the New Widgets Explorer will mature much more with those terrific guys (and girl 
)
Well, later I’ll have another post with screescasts and some other details
August 25th, 2009 at 2:48 am
Wow! I love how you designed it and thank you for changing to the new look in the middle of your project. Im sure it took alot of time to change everything after you’d already done some coding but the end result is fantastic. As ideas for how you could extend/improve on your design I would make a configuration button or section in KDE’s config so that you could change the location of the explorer so that its not dependent on the panel, as well as changing the icon size, increase the number of rows, customize the widget list, etc.. Thanks for all of your hard work and good luck!
August 25th, 2009 at 3:18 am
First of all: You did it. You finished GSoC and created a new widget explorer. You did most of the KDE4 users a big favour, which affects our lives and jobs in a positive and productive way. Thank you!
Coming to your results in particular so far the difference between the mockups and the current state so far becomes very obvious. I remember the version of a stretched panel-like explorer was broadly discussed and highly controversial. I was quite excited to see your mockups after that because they were quite innovative and seem to close the gab between adding widgets to a panel and to the destop.
However, for me personally your current approach looks like a step backwards in usability compared to the mockups. I explain my reasons.
One of those things to criticize is the tooltip because the information provided there is not always visible but only on mousehover. Imagine systems with no mouse at all(i.e.Touchscreens). Also it is shorter to have a permanent display of those information because this allows faster searching for a certain applet on the basis of those information.
Secondly, it would like to point out the size of those icons, which seem to be wuite huge. Imagine environments with a huge amount of widgets and the time to skip thruough all of them. Of couse you could use the categories or the search but there are usecases which do not support those, I guess. Also keep in mind that small (Netbook)screens are quite common nowadays. I see no need to waste to much space on those.
Moreover, I miss some features introduced in your mockups. No more pages but permanent scrolling which means one does not know how many widgets a category contains. Also it would be nice to have a “install to location” button somewhere because sometimes the user does not want to drag&drop the widgets, for instance when he wants to add them to a panel.
I also miss the indicator which indicates the number of the certain applet already loaded.
Also I think scroll buttons are a relic from old times. They can be confortable as a fallback but I would like to switch between the widgets/pages in a more Apple iPhone style. That means just click&hold a mousebutton and drag the mouse(or just use your finger to scroll).
And consider the fact that a widget explorer should IMO do more than just reveal the installed widgets. It should make widget management possible like adding/removing them and alter some of their stats like location, style, settings and so on. The latter things are a more complex thing for the future, however.
All in all I consider your new explorer a nice first step towards the next way of managing widgets, but I think this is far from beeing final. I appreciate your work and accordind to the blog entry you seems to be very motivated and talented. But I hope that now that GSoc is over, more developers help that project to succeed in time for 4.4.
Also I thing more communication is vital in the future. I understand your reasons why you do not publish your progress and thoughts while the GSoc was going on. But I think that the excange between developers and the community is vital to this because that projects affects almost every KDE4 user. So they should be an active part of that development. Many user a unable to code in order to contribute to KDE. But they can share their opinions and user experience with those who can code. This is their contribution to the project and this contribution can be very helpful.
All in all I am very excited about that thing and I am thankful for the work so far. I hope that the GSoC results are not the end, but the real beginning of that project in terms of feedback and support.
Keep rocking!
August 25th, 2009 at 3:19 am
Wow! That’s a huge improvement over the current plasmoid chooser.
Looking forward to using this in the next snapshot
August 25th, 2009 at 3:23 am
Just read the first comment – the icon sizes I agree with, perhaps they could just be a tad bit smaller, but as for the scrolling, no, iPhone-flicking is definitely not very intuitive at all.
What I would really prefer for scrolling is an automatic kinetic scroller. For example if my mouse moves towards the left the whole thing automatically starts scrolling to show more of the left side. It’s also quite nice eyecandy and allows you to easily sift through huge lists very quickly.
August 25th, 2009 at 3:34 am
I disagree with almost everything Burke says. the new design *is* better. I’m not in the mood to refute the individual points though.
that said, having the count back would be nice. just don’t bring back my icky remove-applet code.
oh, and I totally understand about ending the UI conversation: the UI for my project ended up taking a week longer than planned and I’m *still* going to have to rewrite it again. I didn’t mind redoing it a few times ’cause I learnt a lot, but there is a limit to this thing. and people are much more eager to offer mockups than code ;P some of the mockups people gave me would’ve taken a lot longer to do and been very hard to extend…
August 25th, 2009 at 3:42 am
It looks great, congratulations.
Just one suggestions, when it’s being seen horizontally, the user can clearly see the difference between the categories and the plasmoids, while it’s a little bit harder vertically, maybe you could add some kind of distinction?
Anyway, again, congratulations it looks miles ahead of the current implementations (specially with the new tooltips!)
August 25th, 2009 at 4:52 am
Looks nice. congratulations.
I have to see it in action to judge it, right now i’m happy with the current method, so i cannot really judge what the new one gives me (well, it’s prettier for sure). I hope this gets into 4.4 or so, at least as an option.
keep up the great work
August 25th, 2009 at 4:57 am
I love what you’ve done here!
I have a small question on the toolbar Widget UI – would the icons scroll or page across when hitting the arrows?
August 25th, 2009 at 6:22 am
Well, to be honest, Burke makes good points : try to use the explorer without a mouse and you’ll probably agree with most of his points. But I think it doesn’t need a complete redesign, but rather little improvements : just turn the scroll buttons into a scrollbar and the tooltip into a “about…” menu entry in the context menu (right click). Not a real big deal.
But I wish you could be able to install widgets from kde-apps with the explorer. Maybe it’s still possible, but your mockups doesn’t make it obvious. What would be nice is having the same interface to install local and on-line widgets and be able to explore them the same way !
August 25th, 2009 at 6:46 am
Hi Ana
First I have to say Great job! Can you tell me when it’ll be in the KDE’s SVN? I want to try it 
August 25th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Wow Ana this looks great! Thanks for all your hard work in the SoC and I hope to see you next year at Akademy!
<3 Celeste
August 25th, 2009 at 10:59 am
@chani: That is too bad, but am looking forward to discuss my points:)
It was just my personal Point of view and it is very likely that you experience this in another way.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:18 am
When you stopped blogging I was a bit worried about the project. It’s just awesome to see that these worries were totally unfounded: nice comeback
@Burke
Your first point could probably be resolved quite simply by making the tooltip appear when the icon is clicked and not on hover. In order to install the widget you would then have to drag it to the desktop, respectivly panel
You’re right about the second point, but I also think that the issue is somewhat intrinsic to netbook, and that a small screen will always mean having to make compromises in one way or another. Still the problem could probably at least be alleviated by using smaller icons and/or stacking several rows of icons to make better use of vertical space
August 25th, 2009 at 11:33 am
That’s some good work, IMHO (since you asked for it).
Maybe a couple more humble O’s if they can help-
1.) That tooltip hover point Burke made in a touchscreen environment; could an option for right-click/double, single-click be added?
2.) This seems minor and only visual, but it jumped out at me when I saw the, (vastly improved), final screenshots. The scroll arrow buttons, rightly, have a background. There seems to be a gap between where the end of the plasmoid icon area is and the button is. Seeing a half-cutoff icon then nothing then the scroll button, seems to me, unnecessarily visually jarring and unnatural, as if the icon area and scroll button are “floating” on the widget explorer “bar” because of this, whereas the negative space elsewhere and borders on the category portion clearly define their space. I wonder if you were to extend the scroll button background to the, (vertical in the case of horizontal widget explorer), edges of the icon area, if it would not help to define the button area better, as well as making it a larger area and easier to use in smaller displays and touch screens, also if it were placed to eliminate the gap between the end of the icon and scroll button it would look more natural.
I’m sorry the comment is so long_hard to describe visual perception
August 25th, 2009 at 11:34 am
Nice work, and big improvement on the old one.
One small thing though, on the horizontal version wouldn’t it make more sense to put the category picker at the bottom so that the tooltip doesn’t overlap… to me it would seem a bit more elegant.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:39 am
not a double post, just saw new comments as I like larger icons when I can use them is an option to scale the icon size a possibility, of not slider a la Dolphin/Digikam in preferences?
August 25th, 2009 at 11:43 am
It shouldn’t be actual plasmoid window explorer replacement. Simple add new plasmoid and data engine and user ca put it horizontally/vertically on panel/desktop/dashboard, etc.
August 25th, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Nice! Can not wait to see that working on screencast (or try it myself!) so horry up with it!
I only found one graphical glitch, shadow for the ends where the icons “slips” when scrolling. Now they are cut right away.
And what was rised on comments, I believe the touchscreen can handle it, by draggin cursor just over them in vertical way and stopping for moment.
What came about panel size, if it is done resizeble, so user can select icon sized from 22-128 and set default what is shown on screenshots, it would make all happy.. (I think)
And then the “amount of widgets” problem. You had nice idea of balls showing “pages” on first mockups. For this it would need to be a scrollbar but it would waste space more (even it would be informative!). That would make the arrows on both ends useless altought.
But because I do not know how that work (does it scroll widget by widget, or go one view-by-time) it remains just question.
I am very happy to see the class selection on horisontal version. On the vertical version I do not like the scrollbar there (why I think I would not like it on the widget amount indicator either).
Oh, and does that follow the font sizes on the KDE4? Like I have font size 7-9 because 1024*600 resolution. The text and other information with that would be smaller too and so would fit to netbook!
The work what you have done is just great… so please just continue!
August 25th, 2009 at 5:23 pm
I don’t want to clog the tubes, but I think I confused myself in my first comment.
As a picture’s worth …
http://dl-client.getdropbox.com/u/69774/expanded_button.png
August 25th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Wonderful work. I am amazed that you were able to keep up the steam the whole time and I hope that having no deadline doesn’t stop you from ironing out any bugs and such.
thanks!
vlad
August 26th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
@Burke: tooltips with touchscreen can be emulated with focus (aka “click”) and icon sizes are easy to make smaller for smaller screens (we don’t hardcode sizes in many places in plasma and things are scalable).
as for adding more features, installing new widgets and removing installed widgets should appear in a different area of the interface. there should be a link to it from the widget explorer, but trying to cram the two things into one place will produce poor results (particularly as installing, and particular removing, is less common an activity than just selecting an already installed widget)
other management issues that are per-widget (like style or settings) need to happen where the widget is, not where its entry in the widget dialog is.
@anna: it’s looking great. congrats on a GSoC success, esp as it was certainly not the easiest of projects!
i can’t wait to sit dwn with you next week at tokamak III and work through another round of refinement on it
)
September 1st, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Maybe a solution for displaying the categories in the horizontal layout is using a combobox?
September 12th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
[...] and writing my tasks, I compiled all the hints, criticism and ideas I’d received with my last post and discussed them with the people at the chalet. Some were incorporated, some were saved, some [...]