KDE 4.0.3 Released [LWN.net]

KDE 4.0.3 Released

Posted Apr 3, 2008 15:31 UTC (Thu) by aseigo (guest, #18394)
In reply to: KDE 4.0.3 Released by alecs1
Parent article: KDE 4.0.3 Released

This solutions don't have anything to do with accelerated graphics, composition managers,
decent drivers, etc, however. Yes, without subtle shadows provided by a CM then some more
distinct "this is the active window" clues are desirable, and those solutions would exist in
the traditional graphics realm.

> KDE does not have the means to fall back to another theme.

You mean automatically? We do this in Plasma (turn on/off compositing at runtime and watch
things adjust; it's pretty neat), so it is technically very doable. A few lines of code in
kwin and the KApplication class would probably suffice.

The real question is whether Oxygen should be a "CM-only" theme. That would be something of a
shame because it works perfectly without it. The only real quibble is some people (in many
caseee, probably in part due to contrast or gamma settings of their display) have issues
telling active from non-active screens, or where one begins and another ends.

That problem is likely solvable with a little thought and effort. In the meantime, pushing for
various solutions that are little more than work-arounds or which just don't jive with the
artistic L&F of the style is probably non-productive.

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KDE 4.0.3 Released

Posted Apr 3, 2008 17:02 UTC (Thu) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Artistic tastes should take a back seat to providing basic functionality. If I can't
differentiate between active and inactive windows on my desktop, that is a *severe* usability
issue and I don't think wait till we figure out the ideal solution that fits into our grand
artistic vision is a good answer. The good thing about KDE was that it makes practical
compromises to meet real world needs while driving forward and some of the current ideas don't
really fit well into that.

KDE 4.0.3 Released

Posted Apr 4, 2008 15:31 UTC (Fri) by superstoned (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

If you can't differentiate between active and non-active windows, you should:
- begin by fixing your monitor contrast settings
- try to increase the contrast of the color theme
- change the colortheme to change the whole window (INCLUDING decoration) to another color if
focus changes

The current way of differentiating between active and non-active windows might be slightly
less obvious than the previous one, but it's not bad. If you can't see it, you should give
your monitor (or eyes) a checkup.

And there now is a way to let any widget and color change with the focus changes, so the
consistency doesn't have to get worse. The reason they didn't use that is because it makes the
screen seem to 'flash' when switching windows, as the whole window changes color. Apparently,
you can't see the subtle effects, so it might be exactly what you need. Or just a black and
white theme.

KDE 4.0.3 Released

Posted Apr 4, 2008 16:35 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

The current way is just too subtle and not usable. There is nothing wrong with the monitor or
eyes as this has been a problem so many others have noted as seen in the bug report and the
suggestion to change colour scheme or decoration doesn't take into the consideration the very
notable problem with the default which is what we are talking about here.

KDE 4.0.3 Released

Posted Apr 3, 2008 17:25 UTC (Thu) by alecs1 (guest, #46699) [Link]

I hope you will read my answer,  I had no intention of continuing the discussion here. And by
no means I am trashing KDE, which I use everyday. The link to the bug I posted more for its
fun value.

Shadows do need good graphical acceleration, that one of my computers cannot provide. I just
tried it a minute ago.
I edited the xorg.conf and enabled compositing. Restart and go enable desktop effects. 10
seconds with a black screen and back to the normal one, a good thing, developers took care to
fall back to a working configuration. I selected XRender instead of OpenGL and got: no
shadows, extremely slow programs and artifacts as in this picture:
http://img221.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot4xt2.png
You can trust me that everything was slow and that this is not an edited picture.

So saying that the default configuration is having usability problems on many computers is not
a lie, and it may be a few lines of code that solve this, but they are still missing after
many months.