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Projects/Plasma/Plasma-Netbook
Plasma-Netbook aims to bring Plasma technology to the world of mobile computing.
Contents |
[edit] Requirements
[edit] Assumptions
Device is
- Highly portable
- Connects via wifi or mobile
- Not necessarily primary computer
- Has hardware with high level of support for OpenGL / compositing window management
[edit] Online
- web (webkit based? widget or full app?)
- akonadi email (lion mail? full-on kmail?)
- akonadi calendaring (plasma calendar? korganizer?)
- chat (kopete)
- online video
[edit] Offline
- Media browser and player (video, photos, music; can we use canola in some way here? how fast the mediacenter gsoc will progress?)
- Games and amusements
- Mapping?
- Basic word/spreadsheet/presentation content creation
[edit] Screen Usage
Panel should be small, unobtrusive, at top of screen (to also house window interaction buttons?); autohide with animation when application shown to give user a hint where it is and how to get it back.
Panel will contain:
- network, power and presence status
- message notification area
- search centered in the middle with a "magnifying glass" icon, searching or clicking on the icon brings up the full screen launcher interface
- running apps displayer (which triggers an expose effect?)
- time
- off/on
Two activities by default: newspaper and launcher.
"Newspaper" mode allows widgets to be arranged in a column centric layout with a widget list to pick from (drop down?). Widgets can be closed, dragged to new locations or "zoomed into" (making them full screen; so an rss reader might turn into the actual web page associated with it, a photo booth would turn into gwenview)
Launching applications would be done using the "launch strip" which will show the top applications (web apps, full fat client apps and widgets) in a horizontal strip with a runner-driven search box above it in the panel. Search results will appear below the strip, and search results can be dragged to the strip of top apps.
[edit] Roadmap
[edit] Deliverables: Existing
- Most of the widgets (RSS, video, power, network manager, power off etc)
- Autohide panel (PanelView, with config stripped out of it?)
- Panel containment
- Runners (apps, services, file search, etc)
[edit] Deliverables: Needed
- Newspaper containment (and default layout)
- Launcher strip interface with integrated search results display
- Plasma shell designed specifically with this in mind
- Running app listing / switcher
- Media browsing widget
[edit] Milestones
- M1: Shell with panel view, mockups
- M2: Newspaper layout and launcher containments
- M3: Default layouts defined for panel, top apps and newspaper widget layout
- M4: Sex and candy
[edit] Implementation Notes
[edit] Newspaper Layout Containment
- Columns resizable (a hbox layout of vboxes?)
- Title bar above each widget with close and "zoom"
- Mapping of widgets to their target "zoom" application
- Grabbing title bar goes into PanelView-ish widget move
- Bottom margin line (shown only on hover to avoid visual noise?) is draggable to increase height of widget (widgets below don't change in size)
[edit] Search and Launch Containment
- Stripwidget: use animate scrolling and clipping like the widgets explorer, initialize the contents with the kikckoff favourites
- icon view: no more hardcoded default categories
- new look: no background, strip widget 100% wide?
[edit] Use cases in a mobile world
To better identify the requirements of the Plasma-Netbook project, we collect little scenarios of how mobile computing devices are used right now or will be used in the near future.
[edit] Look up restaurant information
The user just ended a meeting in a foreign city. He take his nokia n810 out of his pocket. The device is in sleep mode. He open it. Now -decide- to check for a near restoration to eat before going to the hotel. All these thing are done in about 2 minute while he is standing in front of the meeting building.
