Bug 165198

Created attachment 25666 [details]
Screenshot of KDE3 vertical taskbar with 2 items visible

Created attachment 25945 [details]
KDE4 vertical panel

This is what the current KDE4 vertical panel looks like.

Created attachment 25946 [details]
Proposed change to KDE4 vertical taskbar

This is my proposed mockup for a change to the KDE4 vertical taskbar. You can
see that the mockup is similar to the KDE3 implementation. It is cleaner and
easier to find the needed application at a glance. It also takes up less space.


I believe that the KDE3 vertical taskbar retains the same vertical height of
each item as the horizontal taskbar does. In KDE4, the taskbar sets each items'
vertical height to the maximum possible. Please change this so that the
vertical height is fixed (constant) at the same height that it would be had the
taskbar been horizontal.

Thanks. It's amazing watching the Plasma team build this desktop. Kudos to you
guys for all the hard work!

*** Bug 171290 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Created attachment 27637 [details]
full task manager, icons too small, erase name of application to have bigger icons

Vítězslav, could you please explain how your screenshot is relevant to this bug? I think that you need to open a new bug for your suggestion.

From dupe bug #171290, a screenshot showing the vertical task bar in Windows Vista, which follows the KDE 3 behaviour:
http://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=27473

The large items in the vertical KDE 4 task bar make it very unwieldy to use. Please bring it in line with KDE 3 behaviour.

can you try with the taskbar in current svn please? the buttons are a bit taller, but they are what you'd get in a horizontal panel as well. they seem reasonable, however, as they adapt to the space available. i don't see why they should use less space when more is available, though certainly an upper limit makes sense (which they currently already have)

From my panel settings (width 36, vertical) what bugs me mostly is the spacing of text and icon - compare Dotan's second screenshot.
(https://bugs.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=25945) Most of the width of the taskbar button is taken up by the text, so the icon is considerably scaled down and hardly recognisable in a rather slim task bar. Horizontal text in a vertical button is difficult to read in any but very wide side panels anyway, and I tend to identify programs by their icon in that case. Maybe one could emphasize the icon more by assigning to it more of the available button width in slim panels - or, if the height is sufficient, put the text below the icon? The icon size handling in KDE 3.5.x works quite well there.

KDE 4.1.3 on openSuSE 11.

Thanks, CM

> can you try with the taskbar in current
> svn please?

It will take a while, but I will try to get to it.

> i don't see why they should use less space when
> more is available, though certainly an upper limit
> makes sense (which they currently already have) 

The reason is that instead of having all the icons in one place, I have to go looking for them all spread out. This is annoying when one has to work between four different windows and switch often (my workflow is like this). Much better when there is a concise list of windows, as is in KDE 3.x (and Vista, apparently).

Thanks, Aaron. The new look is much better, but each task is still way too tall at ~58 pixels. The two disadavtages are:
1) On 1024x768 monitors there is not enough room for for all the tasks and other items.
2) On larger monitors the eye must scan too large a space for the correct item. Furthermore the eye's natural tendency to locate items based on spacial reference to other items is diminished in the open space.

I would say that 30-40 pixels would be best if you want it to be large enough for a nice icon and 45 pixels is really pushing it. 32px (icon) + 6px (2 * 3px border) + 5px between items = 43px and in my mockup it looks great, is easy to read, and does not waste space.

Created attachment 28810 [details]
Mockup of thinner tasks in taskbar

Aaron, any chance that you can make the final tweak here? Limiting the icon size to 32 pixels and ensuring that the Titlebar text does not wrap should be enough to keep the Taskbar Items' height to a reasonable limit. If you _insist_ on having a larger icon then might I suggest having the icon size configuable? Truth is that I personally would limit it to 24 pixels for my own system. Thanks!

> can you try with the taskbar in current
> svn please?

Now that the icon is a reasonable size, all that remains is to prevent the Title Bar text from wrapping. Thanks.

For my taste the icons are still way to large in KDE 4.2.0. Why does the icon size have to be hardcoded? Please make it configurable.

I agree with Dotan.
For me and most of my collegues the main reason for using a vertical task bar is that the application icons stay close together in one place with a consistently sized icon and the first part of the text consistently visible.
I think this is one case where you definitely don't want them using up all available space, and allowing the the text to wrap makes them very ugly.

Thanks for listening :)

Created attachment 33420 [details]
Screenshot illustrating current vertical panel taskbar

The current vertical panel taskbar has margins that are much too large, making scanning the taskbar items cumbersome. Please compare the attached screenshot of the current taskbar with my proposal in the next comment.

Created attachment 33421 [details]
Screenshot illustrating improved taskbar

In this proposal I removed 8 px of padding from the top and bottom of each taskbar item, and removed the wrapping of the text. See how quickly you can find the taskbar item that you are looking for, as compared to the current setup (as illustrated in the previous comment's attachment).

Created attachment 39927 [details]
screenshot of vertical panel in 4.3.3

See attached screenshot. Taskbar is completely unusable with thin vertical panel (but there's enought space to place two 16x16 icons!!!), and it's inconvenient with more-or-less thick panel (buttons are too tall). Please, add option to enable kde3-like fixed-height style.

Vasily: try the 4.4 release.

Created attachment 39936 [details]
KDE SC 4.4 RC1 vertical panel's task bar.

The KDE SC 4.4 RC1 release's task bar looks exactly like the 4.3. See attached screenshot.

Please take a look at theses two images:
http://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=33420
http://bugsfiles.kde.org/attachment.cgi?id=33421

In which one can you find, for instance, the Runner dialogue more quickly?

This issue is improved, but certainly not fixed.

Created attachment 39951 [details]
kde 4.4rc1 vertical panel

Aaron, please look at attached screen shot. Buttons is still too tall. And in previous comment you can see that text is still splitted into two lines. Actually, panel, in general, looks awful after resizing, but is seems to be another bug.

"In which one can you find, for instance, the Runner dialogue more quickly?"

what i see there is a problem with RTL layout of the text that makes it quite a bit harder to read the text. the icon could also be sized a bit smaller at smaller widths.

"Buttons is still too tall."

there is room for them to be taller, and that gives a larger hit target. so that's a non-issue.

there will not be a "fixed height" option in 4.4. you can constrain the height of the bar in total, but that's all we plan on doing for that.

getting the icon and text presentation as clear as possible (e.g. optimal icon sizing, proper RTL layout, etc) is something we'll work on. patches welcome, particularly for the RTL things which virtually nobody works on (odd given how many people seem to use RTL desktops?)

Any chance we'll see fixed height option in 4.5?

> what i see there is a problem with RTL layout of the text that makes
> it quite a bit harder to read the text.

No, that is not what I was referring to, and I deliberately asked about an English-language icon that happened to be there. When the task bar is presented as a single-line concise list, things can be found quickly (Whether that single-line is text or even icons only).

The RTL issue is that the end of the text is shown, instead of the beginning. I suppose that Plasma (this is a guess) is configured to show the left side of the text, instead of the beginning, under the false assumption that left==beginning (a common false assumption). I may or may not have filed a bug on that, but it is not the issue here.


> the icon could also be sized
> a bit smaller at smaller widths.

I think that there is an open bug on that as well, though I disagree that that should be the case.


In any case, if the task bar items were to be limited to a single row of text and less padding was used, this issue would be solved. It would be a real improvement. How much beer would it take to convince you of that? :)

(Actually, if/when you do ever stop by Haifa, your first beer is on me whether you fix this or not!)


> there is room for them to be taller, and
> that gives a larger hit target.

Nobody wants a larger hit target, we want an easy to read list. I think that I now understand why you are reluctant to solve this issue: are you worried that the hit target should be as large as possible? While that sounds logical on the surface, what is happening here is that you are making a larger hit target at the expense of readability. The task bar is currently too hard to parse visually quickly, which is a much more critical issue than having yet a larger hit target.

If you are worried about hit targets on the task bar and other areas, I have a few bugs about Fitt's Law being ignored in some terrible places. I won't hijack this bug, if you want the bug numbers email me and I'll get them to you right away.