Version: (using KDE 4.0.2) Installed from: SuSE RPMs As with all traditional taskbars, the plasma taskbar shows two things for each program: the icon of the program, and text showing the title of the program (the same text shown in the titlebar). However, it would be nice if you could hide one of these. So for instance just show the text without the icon, or just show the icon without the text. Just showing the icon could has several potential uses. For one, it saves a lot of space. We already have mouse-over that gives us a label, and grouping of related programs will be implemented at some point which would eliminate the ambiguity of having of multiple copies of the same program open. So for many people it may be redundant and it would be better to just have the icon. Second, it has many advantages for vertical panels. You could have a panel that is the normal size without needing to make the text vertical. Making the panel really wide to make the labels look decent is good for some people, but may take up too much space for others. Third, it maintains consistency with the other panel icons like quick launchers, none of which have labels. To be honest I see no reason anyone would want to remove the icon for the tasks and leave only the label. It is easier for the eye to interpret images than text. But I figured if you are going to give one option you might as well give both. Somebody may have a use for it. Obviously hiding both the label and the icon should not be an option since then there would be nothing but a small outline. Hmm, I guess someone may want that as well for an "ultra-clean" taskbar. Stranger things have happened. I might add, some people have been asking for a dock-style panel. I figure that rather than making an entirely new panel from scratch, the handful of features (ignoring eye-candy) that docks have but the current panel does not could easily be implemented in a traditional panel with just a few additional options. Rather than making people pick either a dock or a panel people could pick which specific features of each that they want. There is not really a fundamental difference between a dock and a panel, the two really represent independent features that have traditionally been used together. There is no reason different combinations of those features cannot be used instead, though. If people want a dock, they should be able to easily turn their panel into a dock with just a few checkboxes. If they want a traditional panel they can use the panel as-is. If they want some dock features and some panel features they can do that as well.
> their panel into a dock with just a few checkboxes this does trivialize a bit the difference between the two approaches and it also rather violates the idea of preventing configuration overload by having separate object types. so i really hope this doesn't happen. creating a different kind of taskbar should not be so difficult. unfortunately, the current one is just as much of a mess as we've always had due to a rather poor internalization at the time of the plasma concepts on the part of the original author. at some point we'll find time to address that issue and then creating alternative taskbars should be quite trivial.
The main functional differences, at least as far as I can see, are: 1. No labels 2. Programs that have shortcuts on the dock do not appear a second time in the taskbar, having an indicator on them instead 3. Windows and folders only appear when minimized 4. Open programs can be added as shortcuts easily 5. Open programs can have their current state saved to the hard drive The last one is out of the scope of the panel I would suspect. 4 can be implemented by a right-click item on the icon for open programs ("add shortcut to panel" or something), which is probably a good feature to have. You are planning to implement grouping, I assume. At least in KDE 3, if I remember correctly, there were 3 grouping options in a drop-down selector: no grouping, keep related programs together, and group when over a certain number of items. Adding a fourth item to the drop-down: group except when minimized would handle 3 and is also a useful feature. I've already covered hiding the label and why I think that is a useful feature on its own and can be implemented as a single checkbox or dropdown selector. 2 could be a single checkbox in the panel options or containment options (since it would probably be a per-panel or per-containment option). This one is the only one I could reasonably see making a seperate widget to implement since it alters the scope of how the taskbar is used substantially, but a single checkbox in either the panel or the containment options might be easier. So to implement 4 of the 5 things docks can do we are looking at one additional dropdown menu (or just a checkbox) and one additional checkbox. The other two can be implemented by adding one item each to an existing dropdown or popup menus. The real issue is that each of these is a useful feature in and of itself, and people might want them independently. There obviously has to be a limit to the number of options, but forcing people to use unrelated options as one block limits the versatility of the software especially when those options deal with different aspects of the user experience like these do. Forcing people to pick largely unrelated options as a package instead of picking options as individual options seems inefficient to me. I can understand having an advanced file browser and a basic one, for instance. But forcing you to pick you grouping options, how you add shortcuts to the panel, and taskbar label settings together as a single unit seems fairly arbitrary. Those options really have nothing at all to do with each other. There is of course eye candy like zooming and automatic resizing. Those are different matters entirely and I was not suggesting implementing those. Other things can be done in a traditional panel. For instance "stacks" are really just folders that can be expanded from within the dock, or at least they could be easily implemented that way. KDE 3 could do this, so I assume KDE 4 will eventually. I assume dragging and dropping of items will be implemented in the panel eventually as well.
Personally, I'd like to see grouping for the plasma panel. I'm not sure when or if that's on the agent, though.
In my case I would keep both but for users I admin I would delete icon -- because for people who are focused on real life and with access to computer twice a week (read some stuff from www, get mail, send mail, print one doc from OOo) icons are meaningless. Related report: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=164136
Maciej: I am working about 12h a day on my computer and I am focussing the icons...probably I am the only one but I just wanted to say that. It takes much longer for me to read instead of seeing the icon. For me it is like reading a analog clock or a digital one. I don't need to read something on a analog clock so for me it is faster than a digital one. But I know from my brother that he reads faster digital clocks, so....users are different.
Created attachment 30779 [details] Screenshot of a nice looking 3D panel Added Screenshot of a nice looking 3D panel, showing the wheater forecast plugin.
*** Bug 171679 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Bug #171679 was reachable searching "icons only taskbar". Maybe it's better to tweak this bug's title in order to appear in that search to avoid more duplicates.
I vote for an icons only option
A patch (and some discussions on it) are here: http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2009-January/003339.html Don't know if it has already being committed.
@ Diego: Perhaps this but should be renamed "show only icons or only labels in taskbar"
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
*** Bug 183786 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 186432 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I want to make shout here about one important thing... THIS IS NOT A SUGGESTION FOR A DOCK!!! Somebody posted screenshot of a dock here. This is not the thing I want here and I belive most people whom have voted for this do not want it either. My original suggestion which is now marked as a duplicate of this bug was following: "Show only icons in taskbar, aka. ability to drop full name of the running program from taskbar. I am running lots of programs usually the same time and they are all different from each other. I think it would be great to have this small feature which takes the text out of those tasks sinked into bar. It makes taskbar a lot more clean looking and speeds up things at least for me since I can just pick the tasks with only their icon in my mind. I'd also get a lot more programs sinked into taskbar. There is no point in having program icon and it's title both shown in taskbar. Title just wastes space." KDE already has preview windows functionality which helps to sort multiple windows from same programs. When mouse is over the icon it could show also the name at the same time and number in case there are multiple windows of the same program. Having accesslists of same program's different windows could also be pretty handy. I think that there should be only one icon per program and when there are multiple windows for same program those appear in a accesslist over the icon where from you can select them. Only running programs are shown in taskbar. I don't like that some closed programs are shown as a icons in taskbar or if they are then those should be black/white=grey indicating their "off" status and with colors when they are "powered on" and running. I don't understand how a simple thing like putting toggle somewhere to turn text on and off from running tasks icons has turned out so complicated issue. It's a good that there is a working patch already. I was able to test it out few days ago.
As I am currently working on maximizing the efficiency while keeping the smooth look of kde4.2+ I too would find it very useful if I were able to reduce task-manager entries to "icon only" mode. Actually I was a little surprised not to find the same options as for "text alongside icons" "icons only" "text below icons" "text only". Perfect place for these options - as far as my intuition goes - would be: Right-Click on taskbar -> Task-Manager Settings (Ctrl+S) You get the dialog "Task Manager Settings". And right below "Maximum rows" I would place the dropdown-menu for the Appearance option. (See also: KDE-Menu -> Computer -> System Settings -> Appearance -> Style -> Fine-Tuning: Text Position.) Thank you very much for this great product.
*** Bug 182076 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I also vote for this.
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/STasks?content=99739 This might actually be something you guys are looking for.
Actually, yes - that one is nice! Except that I like the way the traditional taskbar shows grouped programs when you click on the grouped icon. There, they are shown vertically; in STasks, they are shown horizontally which I don't really like.
I think we should include this in basic widgets instead of reinventing the wheel. Enhancements can be done to this widget instead of redesigning taskbar. I just installed it and looks great. However window screenshots can be shown instead of just task labels to make it more usable. (In reply to comment #19) > http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/STasks?content=99739 > > This might actually be something you guys are looking for.
yes, icons only. I prefer a vertical panel to get the maximum vertical screen space for documents. There it would be cool to have either a rotated Task Manager (like if you rotate it outside the panel) or to have icons only to have maximum space usage.
Here is patch (even two) to resolve this bug. Any chance it will be included in official sources? http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/plasma-devel/2009-April/005182.html
... please read the whole thread you linked to. all the answers are in there.
Ok, how about the following patch then. It fixes this bug, and it makes decision based on item geometry and does not add options to configuration dialog ----------------------------- --- abstracttaskitem-orig.cpp 2009-01-17 05:00:26.000000000 -0600 +++ abstracttaskitem.cpp 2009-05-14 19:19:17.000000000 -0500 @@ -720,7 +720,8 @@ QRectF bounds(b); const int right = bounds.right(); //leave enough space for the text. useful in vertical panel - bounds.setWidth(qMax(bounds.width() / 3, qMin(minimumSize().height(), bounds.width()))); + if (bounds.width() > bounds.height()*2) + bounds.setWidth(qMax(bounds.width() / 3, qMin(minimumSize().height(), bounds.width()))); //restore right position if the layout is RTL if (QApplication::layoutDirection() == Qt::RightToLeft) {
In this case options are required -- basing entirely on geometry is repeating the decision from KDE3 when number of rows where based on the height of the panel. The proportion ratio is artificial and simply user does not fully control the desktop -- this is frustrating UI.
The only decision the proposed patch makes based on geometry is about the size of the icon, so that it will fill the whole item area when there is not enough space to reasonably display both icon and text. Configuration of number of rows or anything else is not affected
> it will fill the > whole item area when there is not enough space to reasonably > display both icon and text. Putting it into reverse, it will display also text if there is reasonable enough space. > Configuration of number of rows or anything else is not affected I know, it was analogy of UI lacking options.
I agree, this shall be configurable. More configurable options is better in my view, that is one of main reasons I used to choose kde over gnome. But if you check back in this thread, there was already a patch proposed that provides requested functionality, and looks like it is not going to be accepted into main source. What I am more concerned at the moment is fixing the striking ugliness of current kde desktop look with a vertical task bar. Now that there are fixes proposed with and without config, I hope this will be fixed in main source, one way or the other.
I vote for this also
Bug #203508 suggest a way to do the configuration settings
Bug #203508 suggests a way to do the configuration settings
*** Bug 203508 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Is this planned to be implemented? When?
*** Bug 113765 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Is there any update on this?
You might want to take a look at this: "Smooth Tasks" by Panzi. It's working very very well for me. Actually it is getting to the point where I think it should be the kde default. ;) http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Smooth+Tasks?content=101586
WindowPeeking is another feature and not the one requested here. We want something similar to Windows NT 6.1 SuperBar's way to organize tasks _which was possible_ to emulate with KDE3's Kicker but it of course didn't work just like the SuperBar. With KDE4 and Plasma making plasmoid which would only show icons of currently running applications in taskbar is not so hard to do that it would take years to complete. What's the problem, KDE Community? We of course don't want to copy or mimic functionality of Windows Seven's SuperBar but the way it works actually makes sense. And what's the problem understanding what this feature is about? _This is not a request for a dock functionality_, it never was, since there are out there tens of different plasmoid docks already. This is a simple request to improve KDE4 taskbar which purpose is to keep up with latest technologies and designs. And yes, we can do it properly and we will do it properly. And yes it will be included with KDE4 main sources someday.
>With KDE4 and Plasma making plasmoid which would only show icons of currently running applications in taskbar is not so hard to do that it would take years to complete. Well, now you can just use Smooth Tasks: http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/Smooth+Tasks?content=101586
>Well, now you can just use Smooth Tasks Well, it also does punch of other things which I don't need. Besides it's broken. This should be strictly minimalistic.
>Besides it's broken. In what place, btw? >Well, it also does punch of other things which I don't need. This should be strictly minimalistic. You can disable other things. "Do you need a Сhecker cab or do you need a ride?"
I actually don't think it needs to be minimalistic. Actually I love the Smooth Tasks Plasmoid, since it is highly configurable to ones needs and you can simply switch off any feature you don't need. It isn't broken for me, but ask your questions in the proper thread on the kde-look pages. I would prefer one of these solutions: * include smooth tasks in the default kde sources. * improve the window list to provide the features.
>In what place, btw? I'm sorry. I though Smooth Tasks was at fault (icon scaling/rendering error) but it was actually problem in my distro and kde sources. I verified it just minute ago and it now works like it's supposed to apart from the known issues. This plasmoid really didn't make good first impression but I think I can like it. :) ... But I still would only like to see something like just a simple on/off toggle for names...
> But I still would only like to see something like just a simple on/off toggle for names... This is what I'm voting for, at least. I do not want to maintain a widget from sources on my machine with potential breakage every time I update KDE just to be able to get rid of the text.
Btw, there is already a patch in reviewboard: "Additional style options for TaskManager e.g. "Icon only"" http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/1342/
In 4.4 the taskbar displays the only icon when the text wouldn't fit.
I would not consider this FIXED if the behavior is to stop displaying text just when it wouldn't fit. This is about having the ability to never show either the text or the icon (just like how toolbars work).
The display problem is indeed fixed. If you want an "icons only no matter what" taskbar, there are other plasmoids that do this very well ("Smooth Tasks", for example). The taskbar won't get any better cramping all kinds of features in, it's no fun to debug already, adding more rendering modes will make it impossible to maintain.
(In reply to comment #48) > The display problem is indeed fixed. Fair enough. Didn't think this ticket touched that. :-) >If you want an "icons only no matter what" taskbar, there are other plasmoids that do this very well [...] > The taskbar won't get any better cramping all kinds of features in [...] Sounds like a WONTFIX instead of a FIXED in that case. Unless the display issue point still stands. Sorry for being so nitpicky.
Please advise on this issue. After more than 1 1/2 years after being opened, is marked as FIXED and the WORKAROUND (not the SOLUTION) is to use something else. Look guys, IMHO if this small piece of functionality which seems so desired by so many poses such a big problem I would say that the whole thing has a poor design and should be rethought. I worked on some changes which from the functional point of view seemed like one hour of work, but in fact they were one month of work. But that was because the overall design was a mess.
*** Bug 232101 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Requesting reopen: I'd like to see this, too.
(In reply to comment #52) > Requesting reopen: I'd like to see this, too. Me too. I am also requesting reopening.
I'm on KDE 4.5. When I open more than 8 different applications, taskbar automatically removes text and just shows icons for task buttons. This can be made configurable so that setting this to 1 it will always display just icons.
I'm a little confused because this feature is still not there - although there have been patches for this and I didn't see objections against them. But the feature is still missing, so I reopen this. Actually there have been changes in the code, that made implementing an icon-only option very easy. I posted a small patch on reviewboard: http://reviewboard.kde.org/r/5078/
Tasks applet maintainers have rejected adding the option "show icon only" to the taskbar. I forked the task applet and provide it as an extra applet. See here: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Flexible+Tasks?content=129291
I decided i would install Kubuntu into my laptop, for a number of reasons, not that i hate windows or OSX, as i use both. The first thing i noticed was the taskbar and the ugly look of the taskbar with the icon and app name beside it... So after not finding any settings in KDE to change it, i went looking for how to just set the taskbar to just show icon and not the app name, which is how i came to be here. I read above posts and went to the Stask/Fancytasks, so i downloaded fancy tasks. And for a non programmer/systems person i get an error, you cmake not found, and just give up, because it shouldnt be hard. This is the thing that really pisses me off with linux, unless you are a programmer or nerd how the hell do you expect non-technical people to move to it when such a simple thing like a request to "hide icon labels", which seems to have alot of support is rejected by the programmers who maintain KDE as a "we dont think its needed" response. Do these people have any idea of what looks good or not, what is user friendly ???
(In reply to comment #57) I understand your frustration, tahunasky, but venting out here won't help you. Being unfriendly to developers that are doing this in their free time is not nice.
(In reply to comment #57) > This is the thing that really pisses me off with linux, unless you are a > programmer or nerd how the hell do you expect non-technical people to move to > it when such a simple thing like a request to "hide icon labels", which seems > to have a lot of support is rejected by the programmers who maintain KDE as a > "we dont think its needed" response. I guess you didn't read why the maintainers don't want to support it. We all know that this is about esthetics and windows-like-functionality. And as a third reason I would also add improving/extending taskbar's functionality. And there are reasonable reasons behind why maintainers don't want it. I suggest you to read... • http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
> Being unfriendly to developers that are doing this in their free time is not > nice. You right. Been rude to developers that create software, we use and like, in their free time - is not good idea. But KDE is not only developers that make decisions, it's community. Community that checking for bugs (and filling bug reports), making wish request (ideas to make KDE better), promoting their favourite environment, trying to write patches and participate in other way. So being rude to community, that trying to help in their free time too - is not good idea neither. And here we have situation, when program (taskbar) have behaviour "a" by default (show labels) and behaviour "b" in few cases (when too many open windows). A lot of people like behaviour "b" more than "a", and like to use only it. Not to change default behaviour to everyone, not to add something new and complex, just to be able to switch already existent behaviour. They're even created patch. And what they got ? Answers like: 1. "Contribute nothing to me"/"Not enough value" - Sorry, but a lot of people thinks otherwise. And with all due respect, maybe you're missing something. Other people vision of nice/usable maybe different from yours. 2. "Linux is not Windows/OSX" - You really think that nice features, that can help improve usability/design (at least for a part of community) should be abandoned only because you saw it in Windows/OSX ? Or it's just a way to say "we're unique" ? I really mean no offence, i grateful for developing my favourite desktop. But if people ask about something, maybe they find it good idea and you shouldn't scrap it only cause you personally don't like it ?
Maybe then, KDE should remove the taskbar at all since Windows has a taskbar! An please, remove those horrible desktop applets that came with Windows Vista (and can be found in KDE)! You see, it's nonsense! > • http://linux.oneandoneis2.org/LNW.htm
Reply to comment #60 & comment #61 Why don't you read that page to get my point? All you apparently read was the title and nothing else. Why people cannot read anymore? This is so sad...
No, honestly, I was just making fun of you. (In reply to comment #62) > Reply to comment #60 & comment #61 > > Why don't you read that page to get my point? All you apparently read was the > title and nothing else. Why people cannot read anymore? This is so sad...
(In reply to comment #63) > No, honestly, I was just making fun of you. People are trying to have a serious conversation about feature which makes KDE esthetically better. Please refrain from trolling. It isn't very nice. You're just committing fallacy.
> Why don't you read that page to get my point? All you apparently read was the > title and nothing else. Why people cannot read anymore? This is so sad... Ok. What section you mean exactly ? Linux isn't exactly the same as Windows ? / Linux is too different from Windows ? - I know. I'm using Gentoo as my only OS for almost 4 years. Culture shock ? - I know developers mostly creating KDE in their free time. I wrote my mind about developers - comunity relationship in my upper post. Designed for the designer ?/The myth of "user-friendly"/ Imitation vs. Convergence - non relevant, cause taskbar already have such option. People asking only to be able to set this behaviour by default. Not to be deafult, to set it be default. So what exactly you tryied to tell us, except of blaming us for non reading some article? Please, i wrote a pretty big post explaining my (seems not only mine) opionion by a-z, no need to send us links to big articles, you can say exactly where we wrong. Thank you.
(In reply to comment #57 & comment #65) We know this being about esthetics and windows-like-functionality. And generally improving and extending taskbar's functionality. Current tasks applet hides text when necessary. Usually when there are no more space available so it cuts some text off. That way two things will be archived which are... • "Larger targets to click on." ("Fitts' Law") • "Better disambiguation from other similar items." While I have constantly approx. 20 different applications running, the case where having only icons is actually useful, not everybody probably have that kind of workflow going on. From UI designers point for non-technical people current way is better, at least in theory. And it can be mathematically proven. I think that Microsoft made a mistake when designing Windows 7 "Superbar". What they did there was just to mimic functionality "system docks" offer. While it is really not that bad thing. And being visual is actually a very good thing because... • In my opinion non-technical people using computers usually _don't know/understand how to read text on screen_ but instead operate computers based on visual maps inside their heads which they build/learn as time passes! But the problem there is that Windows doesn't work that way (since it tries to report you everything about everything like a model boy scout) and it creates a contradiction. I think that Microsoft went back to their year 1985 design for few obvious reasons. Making it easier to quickly launch applications, making controlling applications more visual (remember that people think internet connection some think like "big blue E", not actual "Internet browser" which can be anything), and osx-like-functionality people seem to love so much based on hype created by Apple. Aaron Seigo said something nice about this issue... • "There is no point in chasing taillights just to chase taillights. if the idea is a good one, let's do it; if it isn't, let's not." And I agree with him. So KDE tasks applet maintainers have a point here... they want to avoid hype train wreck and want solid evidence that this actually provides useful functionality. They also probably want to avoid Windows and Mac OS X like stuff. I know based on experience of using OSX dock every day that it is not good for everything solution. It's just a dock after all, not a real taskbar. And this bug is not about making it more dock like. This is about having options for hiding icon and or text from listed task in tasks applet in plasma for the sake of making it less cluttered. Since there are reasonable reasons behind why maintainers don't want it. I don't see why they should be forced to accept it. Gnu/Linux is not maintained just by popular vote. This is not a democracy, you know? If this would be a democracy then project would fall apart since pure amount of compromises would practically make everybody to dislike it and force people to seek their own paths and projects. We can talk, negotiate, make our opinion heard and we can do what ever we want as a individual members. But community as whole is lead by "dictators" and "boards consisting of dictators". It is for the greater good. Besides this is Gnu/Linux, not Windows, not Mac OS X, not Solaris, not Amiga OS. If you don't like our thing then feel free to try other systems or other solutions for the same need of software. I mostly wanted just to remind tahunasky that this is Gnu/Linux with KDE and not Windows nor Mac OS X. And since tahunasky clearly is confused (or trolling) about the way tasks applet works I wanted him to read the entire thing. But for rest of us the most relevant part is probably "Problem #6: Imitation vs. Convergence". • "It tells us that developers in both camps looked for ways of improving the GUI, and because there are only a limited number of solutions to a problem, they often used very similar methods. Similarity does not in any way prove or imply imitation." I believe that there is better way of doing this. But in my own thinking process I've come to like CDE's taskbar. Everybody seems to just hate it. And that is why we neither should forget the point about freedom of choice here! I don't think hiding text (or icon) should be "the default" option. But the functionality should come out of the box. That is what KDE has been to me what GNOME is not and can probably never be. Finally I am apologizing for any hurt feelings this post might have cause as well as my spelling (or rails of thought) which at this point of day might not be in sharpest shape. This is shortened version of the message. I hope it is still ok. Fest, my primary system was Gentoo which I used from 2003-2008, at that point I bought Macintosh branded pc and started living with OS X as my primary system.
> We know this being about esthetics and windows-like-functionality. And > generally improving and extending taskbar's functionality. It's not about been windows-like. It's about "improving and extending" functionality. For example window snapping to screen border. It's came from Win7. Nice and comfortable. Or you want to call it "windows-like-functionality" too and get rid of it ? > Current tasks applet hides text when necessary. A lot of people thinks that hidding text necessary all the time. > • "Larger targets to click on." ("Fitts' Law") It's really funny to appeal to that "Law". Or you want to propose make menu bar larger too ? or tray icons ? This law been created in 1954, maybe stop to look at it like at dogma ? > • "Better disambiguation from other similar items." What is faster ? To see the icon or read the text ? > From UI designers point for non-technical people > current way is better, at least in theory. And it can be mathematically proven. Designers at Microsoft and Apple thinks otherwise. So as part of community. But still you can address "mathematically proven" facts that we're wrong (as other designers) and don't understand our luck. Please, stop treating people like we're kids playing with matches. > Making it easier to quickly launch applications, making > controlling applications more visual. Exactly ! So why developers insisting on making it harder ? > Aaron Seigo said something nice about this issue... > • "There is no point in chasing taillights just to chase taillights. if the > idea is a good one, let's do it; if it isn't, let's not." With all due respect to Aaron, but large part of comunity is thinking that idea is good. And since it been already implemented, why stubborn to that ? Is that some kind of "on principle" behaviour ? > want solid evidence that this actually provides useful functionality. How exactly you imagine "solid evidence" ? Notarized paper that it's useful to people? Or you want some other "law" that explain why we like this ? > They also probably want to avoid Windows and Mac OS X like stuff. As i already said there's already functionality from other OS (like window-border snap). There is nothing wrong to take useful features. It's really stupid to play "we're different" with good ideas. > Gnu/Linux is not maintained just by popular vote. This is not a democracy, you know? > We can talk, negotiate, make our opinion heard. We're trying to be heard. But for more than 2 years we got answers: WE don't like it. > But community as whole is lead by > "dictators" and "boards consisting of dictators". It is for the greater good. Maybe you right. But in this case, we got: 1) Waste of time in arguing for 2 years. 2) Waste of efforts. Cause instead of taking patch and forget about issue - people forced to make taskmanager forks. Same people could do some improvement to KDE instead of forking taskmanager to add 1(!) feature. 3) Seriously, saying to comunity, that they're zeroes and you don't care about them at all is really bad idea. Without developers wouldn't be KDE. But without comunity who knew about KDE, search for bugs, translate, send patches, donate money, or participate in other ways. How exactly new developers get involved ? It's symbiosis. We need developers, but they need as too. Or you think that KDE is DE only for few developers ? Or "Join the game" campaign is created cause no one care about comunity ? > Besides this is Gnu/Linux, not Windows, not Mac OS X, not Solaris, not Amiga > OS. If you don't like our thing then feel free to try other systems or other > solutions for the same need of software. Thanks for kicking us out only for asking/making patch. It's really nice answer for trying to make KDE better for everyone, not only developers. P.s: And besides it's DE not OS. > I believe that there is better way of doing this. But in my own thinking > process I've come to like CDE's taskbar. Everybody seems to just hate it. And > that is why we neither should forget the point about freedom of choice here! I > don't think hiding text (or icon) should be "the default" option. But the > functionality should come out of the box. That is what KDE has been to me what > GNOME is not and can probably never be. Exactly ! You're saying our words. We don't ask this behaviour to be default. But to "freedom to choice" this option to be default. Not on every KDE instalation, only on our PC's. And again, since this behaviour is already implemented, it's really strange to hear we can't use allways. As allways, no offence to anyone.
Can we please stick to the point and stop trolling? If you want to discuss religions, ideologies, etc. please open a new bug. Oh, and please learn to deal with troll-baits... I still think this is useful on Netbooks with little screen space as I pointed out in bug #232101.
Its another day, so i have cooled down after stuffing up my linux install (1/2 taskbar icons on bottom of screen 1/2 on top) trying to install applets which are said to enable no labels on taskbar, and then having to reinstall linux again. So sorry if my words upset anyone, as i do understand that the developers give alot of free time to keep this going. But i would like to know why they wont implement something like this which seems to have alot of support. What are the technical reasons ? Or is it just a case of windows 7 and osx dont have labels beside their taskbar icons so we have to be different ? Maybe they have done it for a good reason. For me as a user i installed a kde desktop linux and not ubuntu just because i hate the look of there taskbar.. chau y buen día
so now that everyone has had their chance to share their philosophical ideas and share their reasoning / thoughts, let's try this one more time: this feature will not be included in the default tasks widget. feel free to create / use an alternate widget (someone's already done that, even). for those who are confused as to "why the developers don't just do whatever a random set of N people tell them to", let me offer an explanation by answering this: "But if people ask about something, maybe they find it good idea and you shouldn't scrap it only cause you personally don't like it ?" it has absolutely nothing to do with personally liking it or not. see, i have to create a tasks widget that millions of people use. you aren't my only "customers" when it comes to the tasks widget. so i (and the others who work on this particular component) have to make decisions as to how best to service all of those people. the unsurprising conclusion is that it is absolutely impossible to please everyone. if we put every possible option, or even just every option that more than 5 or 10 or even 50 people asked for into the default tasks widget, the configuration UI would become unusable and the code would become a nightmare to maintain, probably to the point of making stability infeasible. been there, done that. we also have to keep in mind issues of consistency and compliance with the foundational design goals and concepts for plasma-desktop. the tasks widget is already a very complex beast and it already supports a large number of features, each of which have been deemed to have significant enough value to justify the costs. this particular feature doesn't. it may for you, but we're not creating a destkop shell just for you personally. we're creating it for the 10s of millions of KDE users. fortunately, we realize that there will always be those are not happy with things. so we made everything a replaceable component. that includes the tasks widget. you can replace it with something else. if it is too hard to do so, then speak with your distributor to include some alternatives by default in their package repositories. now, i'm closing this once more as had already been done. do not re-open it, as this decision is final. i also think that i've been more than reasonable and patient with everyone on this report and would ask for the same treatment in return. thank you.
(In reply to comment #57) > I read above posts and went to the Stask/Fancytasks, so i downloaded fancy > tasks. And for a non programmer/systems person i get an error, you cmake not > found, and just give up, because it shouldnt be hard. (In reply to comment #70) > fortunately, we realize that there will always be those are not happy with > things. so we made everything a replaceable component. that includes the tasks > widget. you can replace it with something else. if it is too hard to do so, > then speak with your distributor to include some alternatives by default in > their package repositories. For example Ubuntu has fancy-tasks in its repository, you don't need to do all that "cmake stuff": http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/kde/plasma-widget-fancytasks So it's not that hard. You just need to ask the author in kde-apps for a precompiled package (Arch, Suse and Fedora are already there). http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Fancy+Tasks?content=99737
*** Bug 250806 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Now that a year has passed, has this been revisited? I don't want the default changed for everyone, as that would be selfish. But I would hope that maybe a checkbox can be implemented in the settings to allow us to choose whether or not we want the labels? Currently I am using a plasmoid I downloaded that accomplishes this, but from what I've been told it's barely maintained and was very hard to get to function in 4.7. I am hoping an official checkbox could be added just to allow us to pick whether we want the labels or not. I think that is fair. Should I add a new wishlist bug to request such a checkbox?
there is a nice plasmoid for this job: http://kde-look.org/content/show.php/Icon+Tasks?content=144808&PHPSESSID=f83147e44a6b7d0f91f8654c3a904557 nevertheless, i don’t really get aaron’s reasoning, see: using one vertical bar instead of a horizontal one is a pretty common customization in the era of wide screens. i’m surely not the only one who wants to have a slim, non-autohiding vertical bar like the horizontal one provided in the the standard setup. a simple checkbox to hide the taskbar text and maybe some tweaks to ensure nice rendering of the task buttons would neither add visual clutter and complexity to the settings window nor would it result in unmaintainable heaps of code.
I agree. A checkbox to remove the labels would solve this. I don't care if it's even checked by default. That way,everyone wins. I'm glad that there are plasmoids to give us this feature, but the problem with third party plasmoids is that they are maintained only as long as the developer wishes too, and a new KDE version could break them. Non-programmers such as me would not be able to fix it. A checkbox in KDE in the taskbar preferences would be awesome. It bothers me that ALL of KDE's competition either has this feature or an option to remove the taskbar labels (such as XFCE). It bothers me even more that because Aaron doesn't like this feature NO ONE can enjoy it without a third party hack. This selfish way of thinking reminds me of the late Steve Jobs.
calling him “selfish” is both rude and counterproductive. what he does is a common mindset of UI designers: because you can arrange all the UI controls in infinitely different ways, they have to put much thought in how to do it. and then we, the users, come along and “demand” it to be done differently. i don’t say that it’s right to say essentially “fuck you”, but you have to understand that there is a reason for his behavior, and it’s not him being selfish. but i have an idea: if the label doesn’t fit, don’t show it, and optimize the appearance of the tasks. and excuse me if this sounds rude, but you can’t tell me that this kind of optimization would make the code messy, complex or unmaintainable, i’m a programmer myself and know better.
My comments weren't meant to sound rude. I felt that Aaron's comments were selfish, I didn't say he himself was a selfish person. Basically what I'm reading from the comments is that this feature will never be considered, despite that the majority want it and it's not an unreasonable request. This is also despite the fact that KDE is now the only interface I'm aware of in existence that doesn't have an option to turn this off. Windows has it, XFCE has it, OSX has it, and I'm pretty sure (though not certain) that GNOME does. Now I understand that there is more than what meets the eye when it comes to programming, but I still don't agree with you. I don't understand why it would be so hard to implement an if statement on whether or not to show the label. If you are saying you can change the label to not show if it is too long, then I know for certain that same effort can be used to create an if statement to not show it at all if the user selects the option to turn it off. If I'm wrong, tell me why. If anything, you're point about not showing it when it gets too long supports my notion that an if statement can be implemented just as easily. The reason why something like this bothers me is because even though a lot of people want it, we can't have it because you guys won't stand outside the box and look at it using our perspective. Linux is about choice. We should have an option to turn something off if we don't want it. And requesting essentially an on/off switch is NOT unreasonable. Aaron's comments seem to be under the impression that we want the default changed for everyone. No, at least in my case Linux is about choice, if anything, I'd say make it an on/off switch somewhere in the settings. How hard can that possibly be? I do appreciate the replaceable components that allow this change. I'm using one right now. But the problem is it's much better for the user to not have to search for a Plasmoid that does this, and the if statement or on/off switch can just be a part of KDE. That way, the people that want this feature can have it, and those that don't, don't have to. In addition, if the developer of the plasmoid I'm using stops caring about it, then I'd be unable to use it unless I took some programming classes. I of course understand the hardwork that goes into KDE and everything. I also understand that there's more to this than a mere mortal such as I can understand. That's why I ask this: Explain to me why an if statement and a tickbox in the settings can't be implemented to turn off the label and why that would be hard to do. I could go on and say that it's extremely sad that with KDE being the most advanced desktop interface of all on the market and is pretty much way ahead of its time (I mean that as a compliment) the task manager still acts and behaves like it does Windows XP. But at this point, if you guys insist on keeping a 2001-era task manager then please at least give us the option of hiding the labels.
> I don't understand why it would be so hard to implement an if statement on > whether or not to show the label. If you are saying you can change the label > to not show if it is too long, then I know for certain that same effort can > be used to create an if statement to not show it at all if the user selects > the option to turn it off. you misunderstood me: it’s not hard, neither what i proposed, nor the checkbox option. i just said that if they want to avoid the checkbox (as we all heared, it would obviously mean immense clutter ;)), they could implement an automatic version. > Aaron's comments seem to be under the impression that we want the default > changed for everyone. you are wrong about that one: he was clearly aware that this feature is proposed as non-default and optional. (but i have seen this deception used by other people in order to be able to deny features -.-)
Aaron's comments on his blog give me the impression that this wish item has been solved: "We are in the middle of merging the improvements to libtaskmanager from Craig Drummond's Icon Tasks Plasmoid. Icon Tasks itself will end up in the Plasma Addons repository (kdeplasma-addons) as well. This means much improved support for launchers, nicer context menus, a few new features and a number of bug fixes. It's a very significant effort as Craig's fork was quite large: 2639 lines covering 30 files. Seeing as the library is only 6,300 LOC, that's a significant set of changes." The only improvement I'd suggest is to make Icon Tasks a pre-included optional plasmoid (kind of like how we can choose between the Kickoff menu and the classic Kmenu) but I won't be a beggar and a chooser at the same time, I'm extremely thrilled at this development!!! If Icon Tasks will be shipped with KDE 4.8, should we mark this as solved?
yes. also it’s funny how we rant at his stubbornness while he apparently has already changed his mind completely and agrees with us :D
There is still no option for "show text only"? I like Timo's suggestion (comment #16) too. But I guess now KDE 4 time is over, and Plasma 5 at least does not hide the text labels when taskbar is full.