Version: unspecified (using KDE 4.4.5) OS: Linux Recently while trying to activate the Web UI in Ktorrent I found what I consider to be a usability issue. Basically, I went into the Settings window and tried to find the configuration for it, with no success. Only after looking all around and even sending an e-mail to debian-kde I found it under the Plugins tab of the main window. After enabling it there, a new tab appeared in the settings window, and this is where the main problem lies, IMO. Enabling/disabling features in the main window should never affect a modal window of the application. If you want to keep the plugins tab in the main window, please move the configuration of each plugin there as well, maybe in the same way that "Desktop Effects" does -- having a setup button next to the information button. IMHO, it would be even better to keep all settings (plugins included) inside the settings window. I see no problem in the settings window modifying itself or the main UI, but I do find it *very* strange to have the main UI modifying the settings window. For reference, here's the e-mail thread in debian-kde that I mentioned: http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2010/08/msg00006.html Reproducible: Always
Let me tell you a story about why this happened: First there was ktorrent, then I added lots of features and new plugins, then the UI got to cluttered, and if you for example wanted to edit the bandwidth schedule, the rest of the UI would get in the way and you would have to click on several other widgets to make them go away. So it occured to me that what several plugins needed, was a way to have the entire window for them self. So the concept of activities was born. And a widget was added to switch between these activities. So you now would have an activity to manage your torrents, one to manage the bandwidth schedule, another one for the media player plugin ... Of course if none of these plugins are loaded, you would only have the torrent management activity, and the switching widget would be useless. So I decided to make the plugin selection widget also an activity. It didn't really fit in the settings dialog, because it didn't support buttons like default and apply, so moving it out of there, made sense. I don't really feel like changing this, it's rather nice to have a quick way to go to the plugins widget, especially when you load and unload plugins all the time like me.
Judging by the way that you tell the story, I believe that you are the (main) developer of Ktorrent. So, in the first place, let me congratulate and thank you for the excellent work. Ktorrent is a fantastic bittorrent client and the one that I chose to use. Nevertheless, I would like you to rethink that UI. You said that you still want to have your plugins handy, in a place where it is really quick and practical to switch any of them on and off at any time. I am fine with that, I actually agree with your approach. Now, the main point of my bug report was that it felt quite awkward to have something that's in the main UI make tabs appear/disappear inside the settings window. With that in mind, why not add a configuration button in the plugins widget itself? See http://imagebin.ca/view/lpJgNO.html for a mock-up. This is based on the Desktop Effects dialog for Kwin and could be carried over to all widgets that have configuration dialogues.