| Summary: | Easy ability to remove icon widgets without entering edit mode | ||
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| Product: | [Plasma] plasmashell | Reporter: | Domenico <heromine> |
| Component: | Icon widget | Assignee: | Plasma Bugs List <plasma-bugs-null> |
| Status: | RESOLVED FIXED | ||
| Severity: | wishlist | CC: | cwo.kde, fernandommuniz, kde, nate, qydwhotmail |
| Priority: | NOR | Keywords: | usability |
| Version First Reported In: | 6.3.4 | ||
| Target Milestone: | 1.0 | ||
| Platform: | Other | ||
| OS: | Linux | ||
| Latest Commit: | https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/commit/3505576023b106f607878a5b05b0e10800feb14f | Version Fixed In: | 6.4.4 |
| Sentry Crash Report: | |||
| Attachments: | Showing of how I pin files to the panel | ||
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Description
Domenico
2025-05-06 08:36:54 UTC
How are you pinning files to the Task Manager? I think you're actually adding them as panel launcher items, right? I just drag and drop the file in the Icon-Only Task Manager, without entering edit mode. Created attachment 181017 [details]
Showing of how I pin files to the panel
This is how I pin files to the panel
I see now. So you're not actually pinning the file to the Task Manager; you're adding it to the panel as a widget, which explains why removing it requires using the normal "removing a widget" workflow. In that sense this is intentional, though I see how it's awkward. It seems we need to actually add a feature to allow files to be pinned to Task Manager widgets as well, if we want to improve the UX here. >. It seems we need to actually add a feature to allow files to be pinned to Task Manager widgets as well, if we want to improve the UX here.
That wouldn't fix the original issue as an Icon could be added to the panel.
We would just end up with the task manager getting major feature creep *and* the user now having two paths to drag files to the panel that behave differently.
There is a legitimate UI issue here in that we have two nearby UIs for the same thing: add icons to the panel directly, and pin apps to a Task Manager widget. It's two ways to do the same thing, each with additional features the other lacks, but no visual differentiation between which one you're doing. We've gotten bug reports about various angles of this UX issue for years. It's a bit unclear to me how this would work. Say I pin a text file to the task manager. Then I click it, and Kate opens. What should happen then? If it's an app, the window takes over for the pinned launcher, so there's some continuity there - if it's already open, I can click there to get to the window. But with files I don't think this works, what if I then open a new tab? Does it suddenly jump to become its own entry? (I also don't know if that's even generally possible or if each app would need to implement some interface so we can see if that file is open right now). But having the window then as a separate entry also breaks how things usually work, and what would happen if the user clicks the original icon again? There would be subtleties and nuances, yes. I imagine pinned files and folders would basically just be launchers, with the behavior left up to the app that opens them. *** Bug 504862 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. *** A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/merge_requests/5544 Ok, re-phrasing this to be about what it was originally reported as. :) Git commit f232d9adf3d28afad3c89bc522bb1902d62e8cbd by Niccolò Venerandi. Committed on 31/07/2025 at 09:05. Pushed by niccolove into branch 'master'. Allow to remove icon widgets from context menu This solves the original complaint of the bug report; I'm not sure we want to add files to the task manager specifically, I think this is where the icon widget makes a bit more sense. IMO we could close the bug M +14 -6 applets/icon/iconapplet.cpp M +2 -1 applets/icon/iconapplet.h https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/commit/f232d9adf3d28afad3c89bc522bb1902d62e8cbd Git commit 3505576023b106f607878a5b05b0e10800feb14f by Niccolò Venerandi. Committed on 31/07/2025 at 09:06. Pushed by niccolove into branch 'Plasma/6.4'. Allow to remove icon widgets from context menu This solves the original complaint of the bug report; I'm not sure we want to add files to the task manager specifically, I think this is where the icon widget makes a bit more sense. IMO we could close the bug (cherry picked from commit f232d9adf3d28afad3c89bc522bb1902d62e8cbd) 9787d4b8 Allow to remove icon widgets from context menu Co-authored-by: Niccolò Venerandi <niccolo@venerandi.com> M +14 -6 applets/icon/iconapplet.cpp M +2 -1 applets/icon/iconapplet.h https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-workspace/-/commit/3505576023b106f607878a5b05b0e10800feb14f |