Plasma icons!
Hello folks! =)
I’m really glad to announce that finally I finished implementing the icons for Plasma.
I initially got inspired by one of the David’s mockups: he was showing it to me to see if I could implement something similar: he knew I was already working on icons for Plasma.
What he showed me was essentially this flash animation that shows the concept live, and this other PDF that actually explains in detail what the animation does. (I really suggest looking at them, they’ll make you do a big ‘WOW’)
I immediately loved his idea, and I told him that I would immediately begin to implement it. This morning, I proudly showed the results of my work to Nuno, and he refined the look of those Plasma icons. And a screenshot is a must.
Download the screencast (6.1 Mb)
I would like also to thank Siraj Razick very much for the initial code and efforts he put in the icons.
Take care, and see you in the next post! =)
P.S. Today I’m going to go on holiday for a few days, so if you don’t see your comment approved for some time, you know why. Sorry, I have to keep this “each user must have at least one approved comment” restriction because else the blog would become full of spam (I’m already handling a lot of it). Your comment hasn’t been lost, just.. will take some more time to appear! =)
UPDATE: added an antispam filter. For this reason now all the comments are immediately accepted by default.
Comment by nuno pinheiro — June 17, 2007 @ 11:46 pm
Has i said before we rule
Comment by David Vignoni — June 18, 2007 @ 12:11 am
You have no idea how cool is too see this idea finally implemented :)
Comment by TeeZee — June 18, 2007 @ 12:20 am
wow! extreme cool!!
Comment by kwilliam — June 18, 2007 @ 12:31 am
This would be even cooler in Konqueror and Dolphin! Imagine, instead of three clicks to extract an archive (right-click, Extract, Extract Here), it could be done with one!
(A big deal if you are using a laptop touch pad.)
Comment by George — June 18, 2007 @ 12:40 am
WOW…. just WOW .
This is indeed a mind-blowing feature, and if implemented well, it would really make KDE more appealing.
Thanks for all the work guys !
Comment by xavier — June 18, 2007 @ 12:50 am
WOW! That’s a so great idea!
Thanks for all the work guys !
Comment by Lans — June 18, 2007 @ 1:12 am
What? They’re just icons – I have them on my Win95 to…
;)
No, enough trolling; those icons are just way too cool. When I saw the screenshot I just felt “WOW”. Now I’ve seen the screencast, and… damn it’s really making me excited.
OK, now I’ve calmed down a bit so let’s give some feedback:
- I don’t like the border when they are in “normal” state. A small detail, just wanted you to know.
- It would be really cool if you could preview files this way. A small “play” icon for audio/video, once pressed icon turns into a visualization/the video. With a smooth fade or something similar of course.
(I like the current hover-to-preview in Konqueror (just hear the sound), but it’s maybe not desirable for the desktop)
- What happens if you select, let’s say, two different files? Will they show actions like “Compress as…” then? Where will the action icons be placed?
- What happens if you /double/click the icon? Does it execute the default application for the mimetype of the icon?
Thanks a lot for showing this, I look forward seeing more of Plasma coolness (heh, isn’t that a little bit contradictory given what Plasma originally means? ;)
Comment by bsander — June 18, 2007 @ 1:17 am
Wow, I remember seeing something like this on Aarons blog a year or so back. Never heard about it anymore so I feared it was forgotten. Great to see this concept revitalized!
Awesome to see the coolness now that can be done thanks to the hard work of many of you guys in the previous months on the libs!
Comment by Lans — June 18, 2007 @ 1:19 am
Edit:
- Is here a possibility to add text underneath the icons? (Or rather, will it be in the future?)
Thanks again, and sorry for all troublesome questions. But you just awakened the kid inside me.
Comment by Nobbe — June 18, 2007 @ 1:49 am
Plasma == the new hotness. You guys rock.
Comment by JoaquimLeiteiro — June 18, 2007 @ 2:39 am
Hey,
This is really hot stuff!
It’s really impressive all the work that has been put into building kde 4.
Another idea:
An icon that “packs” an application with predefined options to be applied to any icon that it’s dragged into it.
Examples:
– Image a simple open box in the desktop, then you select some files and drag then to the box it plays some compacting animation and pop’s out a smaller box linking to the compressed file. There could even be an output stack where all these boxes would be stacked (something similar in OS X 10.5?).
This kind of icon would simplify common actions just by drag and drop to this plasmoid.
The handles in the icon could be used to change the compressing format or any other option.
Comment by Asker — June 18, 2007 @ 3:30 am
This is a killer feature, and one that actually increases productivity. I take my hat off to you and the plasma team!
Two comments regarding usability.
1: Have you thought about disabling this feature when icon size shrinks to a too-low level. I imagine the corner animation will become too small to see at one point.
2: Also, If you keep hovering over a corner animation for two seconds or so, it might be an idea to make some explanatory text appear, e.g. “Open with Text-editor” or “Play with Amarok” etc.
Thanks!
Comment by jobezone — June 18, 2007 @ 5:12 am
“- It would be really cool if you could preview files this way. A small “play” icon for audio/video, once pressed icon turns into a visualization/the video. With a smooth fade or something similar of course.”
Yep, this would be totally cool. I imagine being able to make the static picture of a video file icon start moving, and an audio file icon start playing (with some audio visualization on front of it?).
On another thought, perhaps Plasma developers could set a specific maximum amount of action “halos”.
Or make them dependent on the size of the icon, and thus space available: As the icon changes size, the more or fewer of the halos appear.
Anyway, lot’s of ideas, but which ones are good? I don’t know, but I can wish you good luck with finding out new ways of interacting with our information!
Comment by Fuffo — June 18, 2007 @ 9:39 am
Sooooo coooool!!!
You guys rock!!!!!!!!
GO GO GO!
I need October&&KDE4! I absolutely need it!
Riccardo… se è vero che hai solo 16 anni, sei TROPPO AVANTI!!!
I miei più sinceri complimenti.
Comment by Bryan Elliott — June 18, 2007 @ 10:14 am
Hmm.
How is it implemented? Where are all the mimetype translations stored? Is this done in a way that is cross-desktop? (ie: one day, Gnome or XFCE could utilize the same data to whatever their correct results would be?) Is it just the basic four right-click options, with a little prioritization to determine what gets on and what doesn’t get on the icon?
Comment by ruphy — June 18, 2007 @ 10:14 am
Answering to the many questions that come from many of you aksing “hey, can you make this in that way? and this other? can you do that other thing?”:
hey, I did this just in a couple of days, there is a very vaste space for many other improvements! ;-)
Comment by Vide — June 18, 2007 @ 10:31 am
Riccardo, hai 16 anni?
/me si suicida
Riccardo, are you sixteen???
/me suicides
Comment by nuno pinheiro — June 18, 2007 @ 11:40 am
snip, snif i was 16 once, :( long time ago ….
congrats riccardo
Comment by Peter White — June 18, 2007 @ 12:18 pm
Very nice concept, cant wait to see this find its way into KDE.
Pingback by Cocoia Blog » When everyone starts designing interfaces… — June 18, 2007 @ 12:37 pm
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Comment by Paul Giannaros — June 18, 2007 @ 12:43 pm
Very suave — looking very good! The preview idea also seems interesting and fairly feasible with phonon. I agree with Lans about not having the border when the icon is not hovered over / focused.
I have some nitpicks with the widget theme, however. Obviously it’s still pre-alpha and I appreciate there hasn’t been too much time to hack on it, but I think I should voice my concerns just in case. Some of these you may have heard elsewhere, I’m just repeating with my opinion:
– The default window grey seems a little too dark. It looks like it belongs to a Java/Swing app and doesn’t make for good contrast with the darker-but-still-light grey text. I am definitely in favour of using a slightly lighter text color instead of black, however, for a smoother feel.
– Way too much empty space. I appreciate that the tacky, overused 3d frames of KDE3 need to go, but there really is too much emptiness. More focus should be placed on the content of the application, so less space should be given to the window chrome. The whole interface also seems to blur together — the menu into the toolbar into the location bar.
Comment by Philip Withnall — June 18, 2007 @ 2:06 pm
Those action icons look a little small to be able to easily click, and what happens if you click them instead of the actual icon?
It’s an interesting idea, though.
Comment by gatug — June 18, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
Awesome, gentlemen. Keep up the good work.
Comment by DreamFalcon — June 18, 2007 @ 3:35 pm
very cool and looking good, cant wait for October ;D
Comment by tvh — June 18, 2007 @ 3:49 pm
Hello people,
i’m quite curious when Microsoft and Apple pick up on this revolutionary icon feature…
Greetings
thomas
Comment by Heiko — June 18, 2007 @ 5:11 pm
Soooo cooool!!!
I liked the concept imediately when I first read about it on the ‘apeal’-website, but I thought it was forgotten in the past months. So it’s great to see this already implemented! :-)
Will this work in Konqueror/Dolphin too? I think it would be good to have a commen user-interface for icon-handling…
And I agree with Lans too – no borders for not selected icons would be better.
Comment by Lillipuziano — June 18, 2007 @ 8:36 pm
Really well done, guys! It’s just a so nice feature that I think it will be soon copied by the enemies = M$ / Apple, but that’s ok, we’ll tell everybody where it comes from!!! :-)
KDE ROCKS!!!
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[...] Questa feature era già stata preventivata ma adesso la vediamo in azione. Le potenzialità sono molte e semplicemente mira ad aumentare l’usabilità. Si tratta comunque molto semplicemente di una scorciatoia che ci permette di evitare il tasto destro per le azioni più comuni per ogni mimetype.Così se vorremo guardare un film basta cliccare sul tasto play che appare quando il mouse sta sull’icona del fillm. Potete trovare una semplice animazione qui. Non scordiamoci di ringraziare per tutto questo il nostro Riccardo Iaconelli. [...]
Comment by Daniele — June 19, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
Hey,
this is a really good idea..
Altough you may need to patent it, a Microsoft employee is already on his way to do it :)
Comment by Someone — June 19, 2007 @ 11:00 pm
My idea is to put on one icon that shows for music files a play button with a 30 inside so when you click it a 30 sec preview in the middle of the song starts to play without opening a website so its an instant preview. While it plays it should show a stop button with a coutdown inside. Its something like nowadays flash previews/last.fm like and I think it could be really helpful to some people…
Comment by pagalmes — June 22, 2007 @ 8:35 am
Congratulation!
About accessibility, I wonder if the small bubble will be big enought to click easily on it? This is true for people that can’t click precisely, but also for all users, it is quite annoying if the clicking zone is too small.
Would it be maybe possible that the clickable zone would enlarge as the cursor is nearer?
Comment by Jan — June 22, 2007 @ 11:15 am
Hi, like many others I admire the work you do. Would it be possible that for KDE4 the windeco colour is not a bland Win98-style gray? You guys probably already have something visually stunning in the works, but I just wanted to suggest a gradient red-orange-yellow or green-blue style? Keep up the great work!
Comment by bbbb — June 29, 2007 @ 8:52 am
well it’s nice to have this feature.. but i dont like the ‘glow’…
Actually I liked how it looks in the pdf… just a simple drop shadow behind the action-icon….
Comment by okias — June 29, 2007 @ 2:29 pm
What use matroska with h264 instead MS .avi? :-)
Sorry my english is bad.
0K!AS
Comment by Kostas — July 13, 2007 @ 12:01 pm
This idea is indeed very nice and it looks good too but why dont we take it a step further ?
Instead of displaying four icons on the corner of the icon you could have a ring menu appear around the icon.This would have several advantages.First of all you could fit more options since you could fit 6 or more icons on the ring menu.You could also have “ring submenus” that appear when you hover over the “entries” of the ring menu.Also , these icons wouldnt be on the icon but around it so that you could never click on them by mistake(when for example you are trying to open the file).It would also look cooler and i ve heard microsoft plans to implement something like that in the next version of windows so why should we wait for them to do it first and then copy it from them ?
I dont know if this hard to do but i think its worth thinking about it !
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Comment by costinel — December 14, 2007 @ 2:12 pm
hey, I’ve been thinking about this and I am happy to see someone implemented it! it’s brilliant! however, what do you think about using a drop-down menu that will appear/expand when the mouse is on the right side of the square shape that appears when you pass with the mouse near the icon? that way you are not limited to the four corners, and it’s much easier to use than having to remember what action each corner do. also, a drop-down menu will give the user much more space to click on, than the small spot in the corner. think fitt’s law! i am so unpatient to hear your opinion on this !
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