KDE Pinheiro

"brought a flood of treasure seekers...in 1848 " To San Francisco.... in 2011 people are still flooding to the valley in search of .... treasures....  or, well something like that :).  (end of silly introductory text) I'm not going to try to go against the wave, so I will be attending the  Qt Developer Days San Francisco were we will be giving a training on Designing UIs with Qt Quick I like to call this training Qml for designers as it is IMO the main focus of this training. This will be the second time I'm doing this training in just one day, First time was in devdays Munich just a few weeks ago.., and the feed back was good. Given that I expect that just like in Munich most of the attendees are Developers, and that the full training is over 4 days, we will try to focus a bit on the social/management aspects of dealing with designers that try to do code, we will also do some examples of design techniques that can be used in QML to provide the users wit...

In a couple of weeks, I will need to deliver yet another default wallpaper for KDE's 4.8-49 desktop editions. So my brain wile starting to go in to “crazy” mode to try to find that specif edge, design pattern, blue, that will make me happy and hopefully our users happy as well... decided to have a look at what we have done over that 4.x series and, I saw a pattern alright. The most common element in all of them is.... some guy named Nuno... This must stop NOW!!.... Please help-me....but how?? So I had this idea.... what if some one else can create something better??? We are starting a contest to be ended 4 of December to create a new default wallpaper for 4.8-4.9. The rules..... Send it to nuno@oxygen-icons.org subject wallpaper2011 (please use this) The license for the chosen ones will be LGPL In case they are not selected, they will remain sole property of its creator (I will not publish them). Minimum size is 1920x1200Bonus points for creating other screen ratios. Ph...

Lets keep it short and to the point! If we managed to to do all of this in 15 imagine what we can in 15 more?

So I'm back from the desktop summit, were like usual I had good fun meeting up with all my old and new friends. Had the chance to give a talk about QML, and how I think it can be a major "game changer" for the way we work together and how Designers can be part of the processes and not some one you ask for "this is my app its great, now make it pretty". Also noted that QML olds lots of dangers, and its not trivial at all to create final polished integrated applications, aka takes more than a decent designer to make it work, ( I repeat coders are designers 2). Apparently (I have been told) I talk to much and should show more demos :) next year I promise I will tray not to talk ;), (evil idea in the making) Any way the videos of the talks should be up soon so :) Also participated in a couple of Bof's about some new exiting stuff Björn Blazazs is hading to his great platform and another called UI clinic were me Björn and Aurelian served as general ...

In a couple of hours I will be entering a slightly modified version of the example up above in direction to Not so Sunny Berlin, Hoping I will meet some old friends and recent friends, and make quite a few more along the way. I will be giving a talk about a very Hot topic also involving paper planes.. QtQuick and its language QML, how I feel about it and how i think its a great thing but also a terrible one, if in the wrong hands. O BTW have you noticed that 4.7 is out of the door including some new folder icons ??? :) more interested to know if you hate them I'm interested in all the people that after a period of disliking them now think they are better than the old ones.

After mostly finishing the great folder redo in oxygen, and wile trying to achieve an effect in QML (trying to do a shutter like open/close animated effect), I ended up with a to fancy svg to let it rot on my hard drive, so, and if you have the shutter part done you can do the remaining bits, and that gives you..... A icon, tadaaaaa! instant Fun :D.... or should I say instant DSLR fun :)...

Been wanting to do this post for some time now, but mostly because I never did got decent recordings of the desktop I postponed it, until today.... First the video... Ok so its fairly simple demos of what you can do with QML one kinda of a design cliché, but in this case they serve the propose...note# they run way faster/smoother than this its just that the screen capture program is not perfect.. the first one is really an example of how easy it is to create a OSX like thing... the core logic of the demo is around 80 lines of code :). wen I actually made it the first time, the way I implemented had each of the icons having its how independent and overlapping hit area just to see if it was possible, It is, but I don't recommend :). The second is something I'm working on with Sergio to replace the diary view in Kontact. Bottom line.... I love QML and By "love" I mean I LOOOOOVE it :D. Its the freedom it gives-me to create completely new interface and interactions, (yes...

I ts safe to say that the 4.6 release was great. Overall the impression and feedback I received was that this is our "best release ever", I agree with that... Kudos to every one involved.. So I'm back to work and right about now I been sorting out stuff that I had on my HUGE to-do list in oxygen icons.... for example the Digikam face recognition feature for which the icons above belong to. Other than the same old stuff that I do, I have been spending allot of time playing with Qt Quick qml, tool that I simply love by now, and that enables me to start doing stuff directly for apps... and doing the UI experience without a middle man... Qml is simple great but is not to be used lightly its in essence a designers tool that gives you incredible control over the UI but with great power comes great responsibility, its incredibly easy to create absolute terribly bad UI with it, so if you plan on using qml for your app be sure to find a designer to help you. Try to motivate him...

A new version of our desktop experience is out :), as usual I'm extremely proud to be a part of it, I hope all of you enjoy it as much as we enjoy making it :) Now its Party time :) I will be attending the KDE Release party in Porto , hope to see you there ;).

This post, is short but its about something that started out as something that should be very quick to do, (replacement of the paper in the mime-types), into a complete remake of all of the mime-types this time in all sizes. Representing something like, +/-244 icons, over 3200 files, many hours of work, this is a work I'm proud to have done, but I hope I don't have to do any time soon.... Overall I'm very pleased with them. And tomorrow, I should start to fix some minor bugs in the set. And get back to action icons doing, applications, etc etc. The new 4,6 desktop release from KDE is coming in very soon, and we are very happy with all the improvements we made into it.... I hope you all enjoy it as much as we enjoy making it.... I leave you the last icon I did for the set...... Its the news mime type in glorious 16x16 pixels very different from the 256x256