The always-on search bar in the reimplemetation of Present Windows in Plasma 5.25 might improve the discoverability of window search in the effect but it takes vertical space, thus making the window previews a bit smaller than they would be without the search bar. On smaller displays, this is an annoyance. Please provide an option for disabling this this. Apart from that, the search bar is downright broken on my machine. I cannot even click into it. The old effect allowed to just type to filter in the window search, this doesn’t work either now. Additionally, the search bar is appearing without animation. It abruptly starts with the blurry layer and abruptly ends… after the blurry layer fades out? There is no fade-in or fade-out. EXPECTED RESULT • Option for disabling the search bar • Fade-in and -out animations for the search bar • The search bar should even *work* when on screen, currently, at least on my machine, I cannot type into it • Search should also be possible through just-type like in the old implementation Linux/KDE Plasma: KDE Plasma Version: 5.25.3 KDE Frameworks Version: 5.96.0 Qt Version: 5.15.5
I want to add an argument for making the search bar optional: It is visual clutter. The search bar is a distracting element in a window effect that formally has had a magic aura of just all your windows plain in an overview without plasmoids. Now, there is this blurry layer and the bleached-out wallpaper we already talked about in: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/issues/106#note_477699 And on top of all, this search bar mess, unhandily put into this unnecessary layer like Microsoft put the ugly-as-hell Cortana search bar on Windows 10 computers just to generate more Bing searches. My proposal is to change the bar into just a monochrome search icon at the top right corner, whilst not reserving vertical space for it so window preview sizes aren’t reduced anymore through it.
In the upcoming Plasma 5.26 release, the search bar also performs filtering, just like Present Windows does. As such it inherits the logic under which we added a search field to Present Windows: discoverability. A visible search bar exists to communicate that typing to filter or search is a possibility. Without that, there's no reason for the user to know this, so the feature remains hidden. Expert users who are already familiar with the feature may not need the visual clue, but every expert user began life as a beginner user, and so letting expert users disable the search field to save a few pixels of vertical space does not seem like a good use of development and maintenance resources, sorry. Please file additional bug reports to report visual or functional bugs, rather than mentioning them in unrelated bug reports. Thanks!
I’m aware about the discoverability aspect – I have even used this word in the first paragraph of my report. But as my arguing goes, this current implementation is visual clutter. A monochrome icon for search would be enough to signal the ability to search even to novice users. Let’s be honest, searching for windows in Present Windows is an absolute power user feature to begin with, no non-techy person has that many open windows and programs. I even take the position that placing this search bar so prominently like this is confusing to less technical users. Even for power users it’s a feature we only need any other day. Following your argument: Why is there no always-on "filter" search bar to filter files in Dolphin, so beginners would easily discover this feature? – Because it would be visual clutter. Why isn’t there a guided tour for new users when they first start to use Plasma? How would they even find the Kwin settings and new effects to enable and configure without a tour? They certainly need to know about all the power user effects stuff to take full advantage off right from the beginning! /s It’s too prominent, too large, too distracting white, and on top of all, it takes precious screen estate and lowers the resolution of the window previews. I have made the comparison to Windows 10’s forced-upon-users Cortana search bar in the task bar. I stand by my position, this is just bad design and UX, not thought-out.