2:16 PM
Air and KDE 4.3.
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by Pinheiro
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Air was the wallpaper we introduced in KDE 4.2, but that is just the beginning of something larger. Air is supposed to be different than what Oxygen is, something that tries to appeal to a user base looking for a more "sexy" experience than Oxygen (yeah I know you are out there :) ), but to still have the capability of merging nicely with what we have now.
The first thing we started working on was a Plasma theme. Plasma, with it's immense plasticity and a fantastic coder team, allows us to try to push for new ideas.
Another extremely cool thing about Plasma is it's ability to become anything you want it to be. So a user in KDE 4.3 might have a desktop that looks like this, if that is his wish, without having to use external software:
(click for fullscreen mode)
This is an example of how simple one can make a desktop in the 4.3 Plasma once we all manage to get all of our plans working. The new systray speck will help, the work being done on the task bar will allow you for different ways to sort your running/ruanbe apps, etc etc...
KDE will very shortly become the desktop you need and not the desktop we think you need.
And I find that very very exciting.
The first thing we started working on was a Plasma theme. Plasma, with it's immense plasticity and a fantastic coder team, allows us to try to push for new ideas.
Another extremely cool thing about Plasma is it's ability to become anything you want it to be. So a user in KDE 4.3 might have a desktop that looks like this, if that is his wish, without having to use external software:
(click for fullscreen mode)This is an example of how simple one can make a desktop in the 4.3 Plasma once we all manage to get all of our plans working. The new systray speck will help, the work being done on the task bar will allow you for different ways to sort your running/ruanbe apps, etc etc...
KDE will very shortly become the desktop you need and not the desktop we think you need.
And I find that very very exciting.
84 comments:
I find it very exciting too :D!!!
With the exception of the clock (too minimalistic for my taste) I really like that mockup, especially the dock. I'm looking forward to this great work.
I want one of thoooose!!! *crying*
Wow. I saw a preview of this of a slide of tokamak which was posted on planetkde some days ago. You could see on a crappy picture which direction it would go. Since that day I wondered when we will see the first real images.
And now is the time. Simply beautiful.
KDE4 matures and i cannot wait to see the future.
I wish a new widget theme/style will come along with that which would have these qualities: compact or slightly compact--current themes have overly large widgets(e.g. navigation and menu toolbars are too tall etc) that they take so much space, better alignment(e.g. Dolphin's widgets), more defined--subtle lines and borders would help but not as cluttered KDE3's, and it must compliment well with plasma themes and not as dull as Oxyen. Yeah I know there's Bespin, but I would be nice to have other slick themes for competition..
Wow!
This looks awesome! I love the direction and I love the clock :)
Very nice! (plasma now needs a more sophisticated logo)
That got to be the most elegant looking clock I have seen. Very nice.
So it will be possible to get rid of the cashews? :-)
Wow!!!!!!!
Wow! This is great and I cannot wait to see more progress on 4.3! KDE really is the future of Linux. (Unless GNOME 3 does something amazing)
Of course, I still very much want to see a _lot_ of work done on desktop integration as that would eliminate a lot of internal separation within Linux and allow it to grow quicker.
You're my favorite artist!
Nice... keep good work
Those mockups are simply awesome.
Please keep working in that direction and make it happen!!!
Hmm... I don't know why, but 1st screen looks like a new feature in Windows 7
I could easily see that mockup-clock becoming the "Akonadi clock":
http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3647
How about it, coders and artists?
Really nice!
Although it is missing the normal (digital) clock in the taskbar or top bar.
Is that plasma theme background animated? or will it have just a set of different background images to be used/combined?
I suppose those larger icons are running apps (in the bottom panel). Does this mean they unify with any system tray icon?
I hope something like this makes it to default just to show how flexible KDE4 can be.
Well my idea was not to show anithing defoult, but somthing possible, possible in a non geeky "change this and that line in the config".
It might be interesting to be able to export setups like this over the GHNS from kde-look or kde-apps.
The theme itself not the desktp configuration might be defoult there are some talks about it.
I still think that QtCurve with its Silk style looks way better than every other theme. Especially combined with the Aya plasma theme. The best is, it is way faster than the oxygen widget style. Resizing a window with oxygen is all the hell slaggy, but with QtCurve, it's really fluently for most windows.
anyway, apart from the widget style, i like that air stuff. Just not the clock - it's too minimalistic and does look somehow weird (well, the hole in the middle while it has a thin frame, it's confusing me).
I'd like to have a combination of Dock/Krunner as a replacement of Panel and Menu (Kickoff or anything else) without loosing functionalities. The Dock should be used as a launcher and to control tasks and running applications while Krunner should be used for tasks, searches and for launching applications that are not showed in the Dock.
Well, maybe it is the time to think about a new desktop layout for KDE. I hope you developers and artists set this to your agenda. There is always space for improvement and soon we have the possibilities for testing some new stuff.
Let us know about each step in your thinking and you get good feedback;)
i like it! very nice clock (less is more) and finally a shiny and friendly theme for plasma. no more black is beautiful!!
thanks
Great theme :)
Btw, I'd love to have some kind of "meta theme" for new user. These themes could set panels positions, wallpaper, color theme, fonts... and they could be published with a screenshot.
A lot of users don't want or don't know how to set all these settings but if they see a screenshot that fit their needs and they just have to click on a button to have exactly the same, this would be great :)
So we could have a dialog box in Settings wich show only a kind of gallery with these metathemes, the user can choose one in one click and if he wants, he can just modify some settings (there could be some buttons in this dialog to go to fonts, colors... settings)
@DanaKil yeap using Get Hot New Stuf engine. I think we can do that sure.
Love KDE 4.2. Keep up the good work
Looking at the second screenshot: Is it possible to implement shadows of icons? Looking at the "ABC-Book"-think in your lower panel it looks almost like it left some traces onto the panel, If you know what I mean. That would be cool for icons in general since it would make the desktop more 3D.
Inctive, no such word. It ruins it all, learn to spell.
Hey, nice work! 4.3 might make me switch back to KDE, will see...
And I hope the word "inctive" is just a mistype on a mickup, ant not really the part of new KDE...
ok ok yeah inctive is obviously a visual bug coused by working late :) very late. INACTIVE repeat 300 times INACTIVE!
Below is my attempt to "translate" to more native-sounding english. I can't speak another language as fluently as you speak english, so please don't interpret this comment as such (I really appreciate what you are doing):
Air was the wallpaper we introduced in KDE 4.2, but that is just the beginning of something larger. Air is supposed to be different than what Oxygen is, something that tries to appeal to a user base looking for a more "sexy" experience than Oxygen (yeah I know you are out there :) ), but to still have the capability of merging nicely with what we have now.
The first thing we started working on was a Plasma theme. Plasma, with it's immense plasticity and a fantastic coder team, allows us to try to push for new ideas.
Another extremely cool thing about Plasma is it's ability to become anything you want it to be. So a user in KDE 4.3 might have a desktop that looks like this, if that is his wish, without having to use external software:
(click for fullscreen mode)
This is an example of how simple one can make a desktop in the 4.3 Plasma once we all manage to get all of our plans working. The new systray speck will help, the work being done on the task bar will allow you for different ways to sort your running/ruanbe apps, etc etc...
KDE will very shortly become the desktop you need and not the desktop we think you need.
And I find that very very exciting.
@ Nuno: You Once said in IRC you did not choose a transparent panel because of the low readability and contrast of white text in such a panel on certain wallpapers (or something similar).
Have you changed your opinion or do you have a solution or something?
@M. Barron thanks alot
@Burke its all about making users happy and oxygen black obviously docent make every user happy. As I'm sure air wont make all of them happy but... we can't should try
That's great, but will I finally be able to freely arrange the placement of things on the panel?
As it is, when I put things on a panel, it automatically divides the panel up into spaces for each of the things and then puts each thing in the center of that space. So you can tell it the order you want them in in, but you don't have complete control over where it sits on the panel. It's such a simple thing that
I was surprised I didn't see it in 4.1, and then I was really surprised that I still couldn't do it in 4.2. Anyway, KDE now has everything I need EXCEPT for that one thing. Being able to make the desktop I want without needing third party tools kind of depends on that, so I'm hoping you'll put a word in somewhere. :)
Every time, a little after a release of KDE, just when we think we have the most beautiful desktop, you post a screenshot that makes us excited about the next release. Great work!
I call this theme Aero.
Some one else than me called the wallpaper air, I just copied the name to use in this plasma theme.
It looks awsome! and it really does remind me of the windows 7 also (I think something todo with that color of blue and all the translucency) . it'l be nice to have a theme that looks similer to windows 7 and os X simultaneously.
Nice to see that my Glassified-theme becomes finally part of KDE ;-).
I can remember the discussion on plasma-devel months ago that themes like Glassified will never become the default theme, because it doesn't "work" with every user-configuration.
I'm finally glad to see that times and statements change.
I really like the Air-theme and your work at all is really awesome!
Keep it up!
The Oxygen icon set is shitty, no offense, just don't like it... There's quite a few icons which didn't change and the ones that changed either look like OS X (From one point of view it's good that it looks like OS X, but from another it's bad... originality!) or just look too simplistic and plain, no eye candy. So if there's going to be a whole official theme like oxygen but for people who want an awesome desktop :) Anyway, cool ^_^
To the commenter above when you say to one of the main artists of Oxygen that it is shitty no offense you are actually being about as offensive as you can be. Your comment was not constructive and quite rude. Pinheiro, keep up the good work as always it looks amazing.
@Painkiller101
Thats exactly the point. Some of the dev's stated somethink like "wont be possible, because..." or similar and some time later they seem to have changed their mind. That makes developement some kind of unpredictable and the oxygen-guys some kind of unreliable. On the other hand they made a good job designing oxygen-black (apart from the color) and the icons.
Another thing: It was also thanks to your work that many people compared KDE4 to the Win7 screenshots and stated "Win looks like KDE". You are a good example of a single user changing a hole little world. Thank you:)
Well I'm really sorry, if I could be as honest as possible, i'd say the same, that it's shitty. I know that I'm telling that to one of the main developers but that doesn't mean that I can't be honest. A little bit of criticism doesn't hurt anyone.
Regarding the comment above, the one who said that people compare KDE with Windows 7... Well that's exactly the point, I want to use KDE 4, not Windows 7, if I'd want to use Windows 7, I'd either buy it or download it depending on how much I'm interested in it. But since Microsoft is such an aweful company, I'd never give them my money anymore. last PC I bought without a copy of windows.
Anyhow, just my 2cents, and if you want a more constructive answer, then here it is: Don't try to be like someone else, try to be yourself.
@Merlin of Chaos
then I'm interested in what you can do, you seam to want somthing difrent.
I have been working on this for 3-4 years now, and diferent is somthing anyone can say but few can do, its a bit like the weel, sure is an outdated design and I would like to see rolling squares 2 but.. the weels seam to work fine and most people like the fact that the car dosent bump all the time, bt yeah those square weels look tham sexy to bad they dont roll.
About the icon set it may be shitty, I gess its your opinion but most people find it prety and consistent and mature, can you point me at a complete set of around 1200 difrent icons that you find beter??
I've never heard of square wheels. Never heard of anyone dumb enough to try this...
But It's not the point of "Reinventing the wheel" It's being UNIQUE. If you took the wheel as a sample of a metaphor, maybe we should take the saying "The best thing since sliced bread" so what it means is, There was bread before sliced bread, right? Now, anyone can make bread... anyone can also slice it... but the point is to make a better bread than others. Not the same bread, just figure out how to serve it better. Or you could always figure out to make a better sandwich out of the same bread if you want.
Alright so there are a lot of icon sets already and the "best" ones are considered as the ones in mac OS X, and Windows Vista. It's true they are great, but why copy? Why not make better ones? It's a subject to think about, you don't just start designing an icon from what you remember in other icon sets and maybe just scale it better, add a few improvements and call it Oxygen. I guess for a non artist (An amateur/enthusiast) it is the best thing to do maybe, but a real artist would get inspiration not by designing the same icons, but by just drawing icons, until he thinks it's the best match for what he wants.
To be honest, Oxygen is a decent icon theme, there are not many that are better or at least equal to it, but I just thought that a little bit of originality wouldn't kill anyone.
Also I'd like to add that sometimes in Oxygen I _feel_ some sort of lack of consistency. It's as if you took several different icon themes and made 1 out of the collection.
Sorry just trying to give some pointers, not trying to be rude or anything.
It's like going to work, no matter what you do, say it's in production of something, now your boss tells you to work faster, although you're already trying fairly hard to get everything done as fast and efficient as possible. So your boss doesn't try to discourage you and humiliate you, likewise, he tries to encourage you to work faster, there's always something you can do better/more efficient if you think about it.
So basically what I'm saying, I gave you my advice, I'm at least completely sure I am not the only person in the world who thinks like that, act as you wish.
@ Merlin of Chaos
:) you in alot of words basacly resumed the reson I will only do the 4.x series. specialy as icons goes. :)
Being orginal with icons is somthing that I would love to do and do somtimes, but you need to remember that this is a defoult icon set of a very big project that wants to have a realy low entery bar, that meens that the icons should use well established methafores and imagery so that new comer feals a bit at home, with the touch of new.
You noted the lack of inconsistency at times, I agrea with you some times this is coused by external icons forced in by distros and applications, other by the fact that the icon set has several years now and is constantly evolving, other times subset icons being used outside of the socope of their usage....
A OSS icon set is a huge huge task, systems like windows ship arround 200 and OSX 120 a truly complete OSS icon set is in the area of 3000. we are only half way there
In the future I would like to do more artistic icon set that dosent have to care about being defoult and all the fredesktop issues, but for now I think that oxygen is much more important, than my personal feeling about art.
So I do the best I can/know to make the most people I can happy.
Very nice stuff, keep the work up :)
The oxygen plasma theme was too black, but the oxygen kwin style is always too gray.
For instance, add blue circle on the windows background (like on the panels you show) would make it colorful.
Thanks you for your great work!!
Wonderful work..
It is great that we can look forward to even more customization in KDE 4.3. Keep up the great work!
> KDE will very shortly become the
> desktop you need and not the
> desktop we think you need.
Is that a joke? Usability and accessibility have been largely ignored in KDE 4, and feature requests for improving the desktop get closed with no consideration for their advantages and benefits.
does this mean that running applications will be able to be shown by only their icon in the Task Manager? With vertical taskbars it looks a bit silly having a small icon and a few letters of text
Sorry, but I really, really don't like this. The dock looks like a cheap copy of OS X and has no room for any other panel applets (so you're throwing away functionality) and the analog clock is a really bad default (takes longer to read, especially for digital watch users like me who are not even used to the physical object you're trying to imitate, takes more room, placing it on the desktop means it's covered by windows).
some times you guys realy...
please read what I wrote, dont just look at the pictures, it never passed my mind that as defoult, (personaly im not a huge fan of dock like ansers), I said that several times, the post is about, what you can have if you want to, not what kde will be.
"The desktop you need and not the desktop we think you need".
Think off all the difrent desktops out there in the world, all difrent use cases, up untill now most desktops tried a one fits all anser, kde will soon deliver a fexible desktop that can fit a much wider scope of use cases.
The picture was aimed at showing that. And the coments prove just that there is no one fits all rigid desktop. there are alot of them and kde can be just that.
I love the Icons, they're really amazing, and so the "air" wallpaper. But, with no offense, the widgets style and the window theme need more improve. The ALL *put_your_color_here* background in the window reminds wind98 :( Dolphin have a LOT of space that is just gray. I'm not trying to offense.
Keep doing a nice work. Thanks a lot.. your icons are really cool :D
It's good know that you're proving wrong the "who does the work decides" impression towards KDE. I hope everyone follows... It's always good to hear the voice of the users.. After all, we all need each other. Who would use your project if most of the users don't like...:)
BTW, widget themes need some love. None of current themes like Dolphin, Kopete, Okular, Gwenview, etc.. In Dolphin's case, there are too many broken lines and the worst case is that they don't align... Face it, you gotta from Gnome's way of implementing widgets. Don't focus too much on flexibility and features. Don't leave beauty and usability behind...
As for Plasma, I couldn't say anything. It's truly beautiful...:)
reading some of the comments makes me sooo sad :'(
looking at the kde 4.2 desktop i often get that "wow" feeling, even after i used it for some time now. probably it's because i know all the small improvements, the immense amount of time that went into all of this, the pixel correctness and the perfection that is laid into it.
i cannot believe people really want their widget theme to be more colorful? for me the gray is good as it is, at least for oxygen theme. more colors is more clutter and in the end people will want to revert back.
i think oxygen has pretty stable defaults currently, really.
almost all kde4 applications look very well in this suit!
the only (major) problem i see currently is the borderless content areas of some apps like konqueror, but i think this will be addressed some time soon (and i know it's hard to fix because of technical limitations).
even if my judgment only counts 1/100th of each of the people moaning here you should know that there are people on this world that really respect and enjoy the visual pleasure that you and the whole oxygen team have given to us.
Beautiful, but I still would love to see Plasma being able to render videos in real time on the background ;-)
Please tell the devs to work on the Plasma-phonon stuff :D
I wouldn't like the inactive windows have that circles by default, or if they are static, please don't make them static, that will make it look lame...
Instead I would recommend to use some GL shader techniques that blur the borders or create some kind of shadow/reflection/refraction on real time... use the power of GL and the GPU.
And if the card doesn't support GL acceleration make it fall back with to normal Kwin that we all know in KDE 4.2.x.
Correction:
I wouldn't like the active windows to have that circles by default, or if they are static, please don't make them static, that will make it look lame...
I wouldn't like the active windows to have that circles by default, or if they are static, please don't make them static, that will make it look lame...
Instead I would recommend to use some GL shader techniques that blur the borders or create some kind of shadow/reflection/refraction on real time... use the power of GL and the GPU.
And if the video card doesn't support GL acceleration make it fall back to the normal Kwin that we all know in KDE 4.2.x.
And please work on Plasma-phonon, we need videos on background.
你的博客在中国被数百网站抄袭 却没有著名原作者 我替他们感到羞耻
o tema tá 5*
e a barra de cima também está muito boa, mas precisa de uns retoques
bom trabalho =)
I like Oxygen (save for the folder icons).
I really like Air.
However, what I like the best were your very early mock-ups of Oxygen with interesting tabs, scrollbars and progress bars. Oxygen is often just too bland and too white. Air is more attractive, but I'd like to see a theme with some bold splashes of color.
Is there any chance you'll ever work on an Oxygen-variant closer to your early mock-ups?
This is exactly what nice eye candy desktop should look like ;)
And I really like the bottom dock.
is this a plasma/qt4 theme that's actually being developed or just a nicely drawn mock-up ? ....
OOOOOOOYYYYY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!! this is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!
OMG, this looks pretty cooool...
that dock looks so nice...
PLEASE GIVE US KDE 4.3
I really like the air wallpaper. However, is there a png 1920x1080 or svg version anywhere? Because the jpg versions have banding issues. Yes, you can see this on my new monitor! :)
Why does anyone use jpgs for wallpapers anyway? pngs are not that much bigger. For something I stare against all day long I'd like perfect quality. I don't care if it takes 3sec longer to download it.
You are great I hope this will become the real kde 4.3 theme.
That's a really amazing mockup!
I like the idea of transparent, light borders, it lets your desktop look so lightweight, a breeze to work with it.
Also the clock mockup looks really nice, but maybe a bit hard to read because of the missing dashes that indicate 1, 2, 3, ... o'clock.
The only thing I don't like with 4.2 and the mockup in this blog entry is the program window itself (the one titled with "Window Inactive" in the mockup).
Nothing against the gray, it's light on the eyes, but the borders and spaces between elements are sooo bulky. Maybe far from a big problem on a 22" Monitor, but sheer horror with my little netbook. Apart from that it looks too heavy to be part of air ;-)
If it were a bit - maybe even a lot - more tiny it would look less heavy.
Like it is now it looks very clumsy in my opinion.
It would be great to see a noticeable improvement on this area.
But nevertheless my respect to all of you contributing to KDE, in this case especially Pinheiro, and hold up the great work!
Something is wrong with your website. I keep trying to drag your designs to a shopping basket, but cannot find one. ;-)
The look apparently is nice...but...why we must to copy Windows Vista\7?
The look is extremely similar if not identical.
http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/4860/airoraerodr9.png
I hope this is only a my first wrong impression about mockup and I hope that the definitive looks of Air will appear differently than first glance.
@ James Ford, I read an article recently which claims that Win 7 is copying KDE and I found the arguments to be quite valid when it comes to the looks of the two desktops but the feel and functionality are a different story.
What I would like the KDE devs to do is what they are already doing, to give us a very beautiful desktop that is functional, powerful and flexible without caring about who will say what looks like what. After all MS and Apple don't care a damn about who accuses whom of copying whom, do they?
@Bobby:
>I read an article recently which claims
>that Win 7 is copying KDE and I found
>the arguments to be quite valid when it
>comes to the looks of the two desktops
>but the feel and functionality are a
>different story.
>
True...but...we're speaking of the look...I haven't write that KDE is a Windows copy but the look (the look that I have see here...perhaps the final look will not be so) is very similar...
I agree with you about the feel and functionality...but no, at the momento, about look.
>What I would like the KDE devs to do
>is what they are already doing, to
>give us a very beautiful desktop that
>is functional, powerful and flexible
>without caring about who will say what
>looks like what.
>
Sure...I have explain only my opinion..otherwise why shows us the mokup?
>After all MS and Apple don't care a
>damn about who accuses whom of copying
>whom, do they?
>
Because are different.
@James Ford
couse? its trasparent and has a dropshadow???
then we cant do trasparent things....
I remember you that the exact same thing was said about oxygen wichis fully opake and is black....
sooo....
trasparency is extremly popular and amy people wantyed me to do somthing tranparent and in the whitish tones to match more the colors of the windeco...
might i reminded you that microsof did not invented the trasparency, in fact theydont use a real trasparency they use a masced blur trasparency that looks quite diferent....
if i could do a real glass look like trasparency I would like to use it but we can't so if the requiement was trasparent theme wid witish looks.
Sad to see we have a lot of Window cleaners on this website - I remember KDE4 getting it's look before Vista coming out, and it's morphing into something better!
I've had some ideas with KDE4 that are very retro - thinking 3D isometric pixellated (though still SVG) icons, a colourful desktop - and a mod to xbar to work similar to Amiga Workbench's menus... I think it's do-able :)
I just wish you also make sure the experience is not flawed by serious interface bugs as was with KRunner in 4.2.0 and 4.2.1, and still is with the Plasma desktop (desktop icons being covered by taskbar or not even appearing on the desktop, and so on).
Very pretty... liking the light look - seems a shame to have fancy hi rez super colorful screens and then just display black :P
Any plans for a window boarder or widget style to go with this? (thinking translucent/air-y windows would be beautiful!)
Yeah, this thing looks great. I am really looking farward to this awsome release! Great work, guys!
Well this is no longer a mockup: plasma is just this awesome in 4.2
http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb47/GoolerES/EOL/captura2.jpg
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Cool post you got here. I'd like to read a bit more about that theme.
By the way look at the design I've made myself Russian escorts
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