I don't consider myself in the position to ask for such changes but seeing Mark Shuttleworth talking about how he'd like having Gnome based on QT and the uncertainty in the gnome camp about the future of gtk 3.0 I was starting to ask myself if it was possible to have a Gnome-ish KDE.
As a warning I'm an extreme advocate of the hole Gnome KISS philosophy so some of my mock ups could be a bit too simplistic for you KDE guys. I'm just modifying existing applications based on some design philosophies from the gnome camp.
There are going to be several articles that will (hopefully) cover all of the (my) important applications.
Kate
What's with this session chooser thing.
Do i really need to select a session ?
I mean how often do you really need different sessions for an application
Wouldn't it be better to be a window after the Kate window is shown ? Or not to be displayed at all ?
Tip of the day is pretty decent and i don't have any cons about it. It can be disabled and it may show you some interesting options
from a beginner standpoint
Not from my standpoint it starts to get a bit messy.
Why do i need the Find in files and terminal buttons on the bottom of the screen ?
Also why is that filter system needed. Wouldn't it be better to have
something like Gedit "filter" system but improved. ?
Look at the screen shot for a better illustration of what i mean
and maybe it can do the real filtering as in Kate.
Also wouldn't it be better that the hole file system browser / documents sidebar to be more like the one from dolphin ? It's very configurable you can have
the views one under another or with tabs ( this could solve the problem of Kate
of not having a tab system and you constantly have to switch between the file browser and the documents).
Also wouldn't it be better that the file system browser would be the one used by the folder sidebar from Dolphin ? It's very slick and it's exactly what you need in an editor IMHO
a tree view of the file system.
Also the drop down from the top of the file system browser: wouldn't it be better to be similar to the one from dolphin such as in displays the current folder and when you click it it shows the sub folders and if you want to you can switch it to text mode and
enter your own.
Also just a small "hiccup" but i think that the top menu should be something like
File Edit View (so it's like all the other programs). The bookmark one should be made a side widget
The document one i think should be more like the one from gnome or it should dissapear completely. It doesn't provide a lot of functionality (as i said it would be nice if it would have the save-all / close all options.
Also the Back Forward is a bit strange. I wouldn't think from the start
that it actually goes trough the different opened documents.
Maybe this is because of the lack of tabs from Kate.
Also the window and the view menus should be merged together and some of their options should be moved into the settings manager. (after thinking about it for a while i think that it's prefectly fine to leave them as they are now).
Also please compare the following settings manager
The dolphin's one is on the left and Kate's is on the right.
As you can see it's an huge blank area on Kate's settings manager
The one from dolphin is better organized
Also all the subcategories from a specific topic are arranged in their own tab. Kate could use a better organization.
And now for the real torture. You're going to see my mock-up for a newer Kate editor. It is using elements from dolphin because I'm a really really bad graphic designer :D.
As you can see a bunch of my complaints are "fixed" very nicely in Dolphin.
In the next few days I'll add another mock-up with the settings manager.
/le
Damn i just saw that Dolphin has some nice tabs. I think the habit of trying to ctrl-shift-t for a new tab prevented me from seeing this earlier. Please use your imagination and replace my stupid little close tab icons with the ones from dolphin :P.
/le x2
I'm now on kde and hoping for a new driver from nvidia. X_x
Update: Read the comments below please for additional explanations
First of all, Kate isn't a
First of all, Kate isn't a simple text editor, that what Kwrite is for.. If you notice well, Kate is on the Kde SDK module, so basically is a tool for development.
Considering this, many of your proposals, are futile, because removing the filter system, the embebbed console you pratically have Kwrite, not kate..
Well, and probably you didn't use it the suficient to know that embebbed konsole and file browser are just plugins, and they can be easily disabled, as you can also easily enable plugins like the tabs you put on your mockup.
I don't disagree with you that the interface can get better, but when you are designing a app, you have to see who will use it, and to do what.
Kate is used for develops to program, so it needs features for developers, project panel for example, would be much better than yours bookmarks and tree flie browser..
That said, that already exists:
http://batiste.dosimple.ch/blog/posts/2007-12-21-1/kate-treeview-plugin.png
Kate Terminal + Find and Filter System
Yes i know that Kate is more than a simple text editor.
The matter of fact is that this article was corrected in Kwrite not in Kate.
I apologize if in my post it was understood that the terminal and the find should be removed. I just asked myself why were they positioned this way.
And for the filter system, i agree. As you can see i said that i would like the filter system to be a bit different. I find a bit redundant to have yet another input box. Just clicking on an empty space in the browser and then starting to type should start the filtering system IMHO.
/le
The tree view browser is perfect.
Not so sure
I prefer Kate to Gedit. Remember that KDE is made up of Kparts such as Konsole, Konqueror, Kate etc. Any other app can embed Kparts in themselves.
Kate therefore has a lot of options, as it's likely that it will be embedded somewhere else.
KWrite for instance embeds Kate with a slightly different toolbar.
As with all of KDE, everything is optional, so you can have tabs, get rid of the Konsole or whatever you like.
I agree about the sessions
I agree about the sessions dialog. It's annoying. It should be tucked away under File -> Open session.
Actually, I really dont know
Actually, I really dont know what kate you are using, but default Kate doesn't have a find dialog like that you showed. That's the expanded find dialog. The normal one, is just like Firefox's one, a single bar with a single input that find stuff as you type, man that's far ahead gedit in usability.
That filter of gedit you are talking about is only for the file browser, that one you are showing in kate is for Search and Replace on the text.. That's very different for me..
I think that you're a bit
I think that you're a bit confused and that my phrase conception sucks.
I was talking about two different input boxes in the article:
1. The one from the Filesystem Browser that has the botton left input field in it that does the filtering. That i was comparing with Gedit's filter from the file browser that you can see in the screenshot.
2. I wasn't criticizing find system I was talking about Find in files and the Terminal buttons only. I'll update the picture to make it a bit clearer. Also gedit has a similar find feature if you pres ctrl-k.
/le Updated the image http://alexandrubucur.com/files/gnomish-kde/kate/find_files_terminal.png ctrl-f5 please :)
Gnome's KISS is the whole
Gnome's KISS is the whole reason I avoid it, please don't start having KDE act like this. I am not stupid, don't treat me like I am.
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