It is not immediately apparent that Kickoff's search field can be selected and that a search can be made. Most other applications make the search field clear (like Kicker does). New users looking for a place to search within the menu might not immediately recognise it.
Agreed. I've heard the same point from a few others too.
The textfield where it says "type to search" ?
That's the one. But it doesn't actually look like a text field until you click on it; until then, it just looks like a label. The behavior is unlike every other text field, which as we can see triggers bug reports. :)
Here's a patch: https://phabricator.kde.org/D15011
Git commit 47fe8aa347a71759a548f95eb24dee6ba78ad308 by Nathaniel Graham. Committed on 03/10/2018 at 21:51. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'. [Kickoff] Make the search field always look like a search field Summary: This patch makes Kickoff's search field always look like a search field, instead of only after you start typing. Functionality remains the same (with the exception of the hidden info display, which moves to underneath the user name) Related: bug 398276, bug 398278 FIXED-IN: 5.15.0 Test Plan: {F6211118} All functionality still works: {F6211072} Reviewers: #plasma, #vdg, davidedmundson, abetts Reviewed By: #plasma, #vdg, abetts Subscribers: cfeck, acrouthamel, fabianr, huftis, rooty, sharvey, romangg, broulik, safaalfulaij, oysteins, filipf, abetts, davidedmundson, michaeltunnell, plasma-devel Tags: #plasma Differential Revision: https://phabricator.kde.org/D15011 M +72 -131 applets/kickoff/package/contents/ui/Header.qml https://commits.kde.org/plasma-desktop/47fe8aa347a71759a548f95eb24dee6ba78ad308
Well done, but... how can I revert this patch? I prefer previous look and feel of kicker that was - for me - perfect. There isn't any problem to me to build plasma-desktop from source, but I try to reverse this patch and it's not possible.