I am on Plasma 6 beta 1 and have noticed that when the panel is not floating and is set to full height it still has a large gap before the application launcher (see screenshot). Fitt's Law lets users take into account the advantages of being near the screen edges to easy click with the mouse, but having gaps like this not only wastes space, it makes the user not as aware that they can use the screen edge to click. (Then again if this latter consideration was taken into account we would have sensible defaults and not a silly floating panel!)
Created attachment 163996 [details] Annotation marking excessively large gap before the application launcher
This is to avoid the applets shifting vertically when the panel de-floats (or horizontally, for a horizontal panel). If they did, then the relative locations of the click targets would shift and your muscle memory would be impaired. If you don't like the mechanics of the floating panel, you're welcome to turn it off.
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #2) > This is to avoid the applets shifting vertically when the panel de-floats > (or horizontally, for a horizontal panel). If they did, then the relative > locations of the click targets would shift and your muscle memory would be > impaired. > > If you don't like the mechanics of the floating panel, you're welcome to > turn it off. I have turned off the floating panel. This is with a non-floating panel. Why should excess space be wasted for a useless feature that will never be used when off?
Ah, when you sayd "not floating" you actually meant "not floating" as opposed to "normally floating but currently de-floated." Sorry about that. Can reproduce.
Created attachment 164014 [details] 5.27 5.27 doesn't look much different from 6 when comparing screenshots (1x scale 1080p). This might not be a Plasma 6 regression but a pre-existing thing.
If you compare the two, you can see that there's a bit more in 6 compared to 5. It's *sort of* a pre-existing issue, but it's worsened in 6.
To be fully clear on the nature of this bug, I intentionally added some margins on the two sides of the panel some time ago since some configurations e.g. the right-hand side of the above screenshot seemed to have too little. I'll revisit the choice, though.
A possibly relevant merge request was started @ https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/merge_requests/1997
Git commit a676c682488b4633bf15dadb85e3c9cdec3f13e6 by Nate Graham, on behalf of Niccolò Venerandi. Committed on 23/01/2024 at 23:47. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'master'. Use preferred sizes instead of minimum/maximum and only use iconSize as fallback M +11 -17 applets/kickoff/package/contents/ui/main.qml https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/a676c682488b4633bf15dadb85e3c9cdec3f13e6
Git commit 58be9b90d0a6942f86789de80400ea6cb12ac029 by Nate Graham, on behalf of Niccolò Venerandi. Committed on 23/01/2024 at 23:54. Pushed by ngraham into branch 'Plasma/6.0'. Use preferred sizes instead of minimum/maximum and only use iconSize as fallback (cherry picked from commit a676c682488b4633bf15dadb85e3c9cdec3f13e6) M +11 -17 applets/kickoff/package/contents/ui/main.qml https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/commit/58be9b90d0a6942f86789de80400ea6cb12ac029
This does not appear to have been fixed, Plasma 6.0.4 still places substantially more space at the start/end of a non-floating panel than Plasma 5 did. It doesn't affect the functionality of the panel - the items are still clickable from the edge - but it is visually obnoxious.
Created attachment 169063 [details] Plasma 5 vs Plasma 6 panel margins
The space change that you're showing there is intentional (the original one in this MR was not, hence why it was marked as fixed). To me, the bottom screenshot looks significantly better compared to the top one, which is why I have made the change in the first place. The spacing between the elements is more even.
To me, the "before" image in the above screenshot looks better on the left side, but worse on the right side. Are we 100% sure that this extra padding isn't a workaround for widgets with inappropriate internal sizing and padding metrics?
Created attachment 169151 [details] Excessive side padding with two well-behaving widgets In other words, did we find a real issue but fix it at the wrong level? It kind of looks like it to me. When I look at my own panel, the left side has Kickoff and the right side has Sticky Notes, and both include an appropriate amount of internal side padding such that the extra padding provided by the panel isn't necessary and looks bad. See attached screenshot. Re-opening for discussion.
Created attachment 169152 [details] With non-floating panel, still there, just less so That's with a de-floated floating panel. With a non-floating panel, it's still there and less visible, but still unnecessary IMO. See this screenshot.
(In reply to Nate Graham from comment #14) > To me, the "before" image in the above screenshot looks better on the left > side, but worse on the right side. > > Are we 100% sure that this extra padding isn't a workaround for widgets with > inappropriate internal sizing and padding metrics? (I thought I had replied to this already, maybe the message was not sent? Let me try again) It's 100% a workaround! I raised the issue, which is quite systemic, here: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/plasma-desktop/-/issues/116 When that issue is fixed we can remove the workaround
OK great, if we know it's a workaround we can remove when other things are fixed, that's an acceptable current state of affairs. So let's move towards fixing the issues so we can remove the workaround. For anyone CCd on this bug report who's interested in this issue, assistance would be appreciated, and help drive it to completion sooner.