KDE and its future “Plasma” for user interaction (source)

T is no secret that I am an avid KDE fan. I would definitely choose it over GNOME for most purposes. I use GNOME as a desktop environment almost every day, but only while at work.
KDE is simply more powerful and appears to have a brighter future ahead.

There recently emerged a commotion due to a message from Linus Torvalds (‘father’ of Linux), wherein he expressed dissatisfaction with GNOME. It seemed as though his outspoken involvement in desktop ‘camps’ stirred a storm in a teacup. Typically, Torvalds not only avoids talking about competing operating systems, but also avoids criticising non-profit initiative such as GNOME, which support his kernel and make it more popular across the globe.

During the holiday I came across an insightful blog post from QDevBlog. It encapsulates many the thoughts among KDE users and the KDEdevelopers. It also includes many valuable facts that I was never aware of.

The recent discussions on KDE versus other Linux desktops – accidentally started by KDE-user Linus Torvalds – showed an interesting new development in the eternal debate. First of all it didn’t come as a surprise that Linus uses KDE, after all Fritz Elfert made it very clear back in 1996 that KDE stands for “Kernel-Hackers’ Desktop Environment”, when Kalle and the German IT press still pushed “Kalle Dalheimer Experience”.

[...]

To be even more explicit: It’s a fairy tale that end users will decide against KDE when given the choice, and it’s a fairy tale that KDE is more difficult to use than any of the alternatives.

[...]

KDE is all about ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design, and we make it better and better with every release, in all three aspects.

The latest among Eric Meyer’s CSS tricks: a pure-CSS vertical bars diagram.

A mouthful? In a separate page resides an example, which was derived from site statistics. The idea of rendering figures, charts, and diagrams using just browser functionality is astounding. With CSS3 on the horizon, Web developers will be able to achieve much more with less bandwidth to spare. No graphics! not even vector graphics.

Wallpaper from Houghi (click image above
to enlarge; non-lossy PNG version)

Below is the summary of an article on user interface revolution. It has motivated me to post links to relevant items of mine.

Will we be stuck with flat rectangles on our desktop forever or will we finally live in a 3D desktop? This article discusses some alternatives and proposes a framework in which future interface designs may be evaluated.

On 3-D desktops, interaction, and display:

• Spherical Desktop
• The Desktop Sphere
• Virtual Desktops in 3-D
• Spherical Display

A few related ‘leftovers’:

• Operating Systems Eye Candy
• KDE Pushed to the Limit
• KDE Plasma
• Next Generation of X

Tabs corresponding to separate E-mail messages in Thunderbird

ABBED views in E-mail applications (also referred to as “mail clients”) are a brand new idea as far as I can gather. Thunderbird developers are now said to be going down this unprecedented route. From the recent article:

A developer has added tabbed browsing of e-mail messages to Mozilla’s Thunderbird e-mail client, mimicking one of the most popular features of the Firefox and Opera Web browsers.

Tabs corresponding to separate RSS feeds in Owl

I have seen tabs in feed readers before, namely in RSSOwl (shown above). Nonetheless, I believe that incorporation of tabs into E-mail/newsreaders would be uncalled for. Much-familiar applications like Thunderbird would prove confusing to many users unless tabs are shrewdly hidden, thereby protecting users from their freedom.

Tabs make the controls finer, maybe unnecessarily so. E-mail, as oppose to feed readers, is used by merely everybody (assuming Webmail is put aside for the sake of the argument). Not everyone who uses Outlook (Express) can handle higher levels of complexity, let alone those who are new to E-mail altogether. Overall, tabs can make the entry barrier even higher. In firefox, tabs do not appear by default until/unless a second one appears. This makes tabbed browsing a function which is easy to enable if/when the user feels confident. Yet, owing to smart UI design, it never contributes to unnecessary clutter.

Thunderbird and RSSOwl are of course Open Source projects that are not bound to desires of large companies. According to Wozniak (AKA Woz), who is co-founder of Apple, the worst applications come from the large companies, Apple included. To quote Woz, “Microsoft, Apple and AOL, they tend to turn out the crappiest products, you know, software-wise”.

A shrunk-down screenshot of Thunderbird
‘dressed’ with the CrossOver theme

KDE (yes, it’s Linux above) can be customised to
look and behave like Jaguar/Tiger (and far beyond)

UITE recently I enabled all shadows, translucency, and fade-in/out effects in KDE. The results are stunning, but they require a real-time demonstration (or animation) to be fully appreciated. The load on the CPU is almost bearable while translucency is the biggest detriment of all.

The progress made by the KDE team is tremendous, so envy (sometimes hatred) among GNOME’rs seems beyond understandable. Admittedly, I am working in GNOME while I compose this item, yet I always long for KDE. I am not mesmerised by a default KDE desktop, which is simple, user-friendly, yet somewhat dull. I am actually thinking about heavily-customised environments and powerful settings enabled as in the example above, which illustrates Mac OS X intersections.

It is also worth checking what shall come up in KDE 4. It is said to incorporate the new component titled Plasma. It’s not just eye candy, but a productivity tool, which gives power to the power users.

External Link: KDE 3.5 Released

Example of globe-like rotation: 30 frames, 63 colours, 200 KB in total

ACK in July, I elaborately described how animated graphics can be created in the GIMP. The GIMP is a free application, which is available for Windows, the Mac and Linux. There is also GIMPShop in the wild, which is a nifty GIMP fork for the photoshop-inclined audience.

I recently decided to change my static favicon.ico image with a dynamic sequence, having discovered that Mozilla Firefox supports icon animations. GIMP was a satisfactory (yet not perfect) tool for this task.

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