[arch-general] kde4 tip - quicklaunch in your panel -- convenience at your fingertips!

[David C. Rankin]

On Monday 26 October 2009 13:34:43 and regarding:
> I disagree.  The problems (at least from my perspective) stems from the 
> KDE devs' decision to "start fresh" with all their apps in order to 
> "simplify" them and/or apply their new philosophy/approach of desktop 
> GUI design to them.
> 
> That decision resulted in them dumping loads of features from out of 
> their apps - features that many KDE3 users liked and relied on.  The 
> result has been a less-useful and less-productive GUI.
> 
> So really more of a problem with fundamental design decisions, IMO, than 
> with their programming framework.
> 

From that perspective I completely agree. Konqueror is the perfect example. An 
elegant, very functional file manager (wannabe browser) that was packed with 
tons of advanced features with a -->very<-- efficient UI (from a minimal 
mouse-click/keystroke standpoint) with proper focus control that was 
completely thrown out and redone based on the new untried and untested dolphin 
engine. That has been a complete fiasco and left kde with a substandard file 
manager that has no ability to place focus without using a 2-part ctrl+click 
(with the cutsie green plus markers turned off)

The fish fiasco followed, and we could go on and on (162 bugs filed in the 
past 4 months alone...) My purpose of commenting on the framework comes from 
all of the problems the one-size-fits-all primary widget has caused getting 
things working correctly. Probably 1/4 of the bugs above are from 
misconfigured parts of the window widget that wipe out data if a change is 
made to a dialog, or those that don't retain path settings, etc.

So I guess when you take a working desktop and throw it out the window and 
then start over with an overly complex framework -- you have probably just 
signed up to shoot yourself in the foot :p

-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
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