Bug 344123

Summary:	Colorize entry background based on icon color
Product:	[Plasma] plasmashell	Reporter:	Mircea Kitsune <sonichedgehog_hyperblast00>
Component:	Icons-only Task Manager	Assignee:	Eike Hein <hein>
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	wishlist	CC:	cyanmystery, nate, sonichedgehog_hyperblast00
Priority:	NOR	Flags:	hein: VisualDesign+
Version First Reported In:	master
Target Milestone:	1.0
Platform:	Other
OS:	Linux
URL:	http://opendesktop.org/CONTENT/content-pre3/168760-3.jpg
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Mircea Kitsune 2015-02-13 15:45:50 UTC

This is a visual effect I've enjoyed using for a while in KDE4, and which Windows 7 users are familiar with in particular; When the style is set to "Use Indicators & Colored Background", the background of each entry is colorized based on the average color of the icon. Apart from having a nicer appearance, this also makes it easier to spot which taskbar entry belongs to which application.

The Icon-Only Task Manager in Framework 5 no longer appears to support this feature. Could colorization based on icon please be re-implemented? See the panel in the linked image, for an example of how this looks like on my desktop.

Reproducible: Always




Note 1: In KDE4, only the icon-only task manager supports this. I suggest porting the feature to both it and the normal task manager if possible, since I see no reason why it wouldn't work for both.

Note 2: I'm not an expert programmer nor familiar with the Plasmashell or QML code. But I'd suggest a common function or library for extracting the average color in an image. That way, any widget or KDE component can colorize specific parts based on the appearance of an icon. A nice use for this could be a KWin script to change the window's background color based on its icon, now that windows support individual color schemes.

Comment 1 Eike Hein 2015-02-13 15:54:07 UTC

This is something for the VDG to ponder.

Comment 2 Christoph Feck 2015-02-13 22:11:20 UTC

> I'd suggest a common function or library for extracting the average color in an image.

image.scaled(QSize(1, 1), Qt::IgnoreAspectRatio, Qt::SmoothTransformation).pixel(0, 0);

Hopefully Qt's scaling algorithm does not skip too many pixels :)

Comment 3 Mircea Kitsune 2015-02-14 00:34:40 UTC

(In reply to Christoph Feck from comment #2)

Nice, a function for the color should already be there in that case. Someone probably just needs to add the feature to the new task managers and use it, which is hopefully easy in QML. Perhaps a developer can try it with the line you mentioned?

Comment 4 Jan 2016-03-06 09:36:56 UTC

There is a problem here. The current background colors indicates the window status (focused, not focused, minimized, not running). There aren't any other indicators anymore, so like these small triangles before.

In which case should the background have the the icon-specific-color?

Comment 5 Nate Graham 2017-09-05 20:11:37 UTC

Yeah, since now the background color indicated status, I don't think we can implement an average background color purely for aesthetics.