Are there any plans to add any sort of animations or effects to the panels as docks in Plasma?
After upgrading finally to Plasma6, I found latte-dock didn’t seem to want to work, but rather than figure out why, I instead went with the native plasma floating panels, and they’re actually awesome (and don’t crash like latte), but I do miss having mouse-over animations in the panels as a dock, ala Latte-Dock, Cairo-Dock, or a Mac even…
I for one would love to see this when some added glitz like these! My fav was really Cairo-Dock and miss it greatly for icon bouncing, little flame effects, sparkles, whatever, just a ton of options.
Purely selfish eyecandy as visual stylized effects, a mouse hover or click emphasizes the icon by changing it with an animation and effect, such as lifting up the icon, scaling it to make bigger, bouncing/spinning/flames on the icon, different effects like that.
Cairo(glx)-dock for example had a number of effects you could apply to the icons, themes (outside the DE themes), different styles/sizes of backgrounds, different views with a mouseover that would expand to show open applications or sub-menus. As well it had it’s own widgets, but with plasma already having a good selection has that covered, but I dare say I still liked some of cairo-dock’s more.
Another nice thing with cairo was being able to add sub-docks to create some logical groupings in layers of widgets or applications, similar to plasma showing thumbnails of apps with multiple windows, but more flexible.
Best example I can say is install and try out cairo-dock and play with its effects some, and just apply the same features to the panels as docks. Macs too were probably the original in this sort of visual effects with their dock, but eww apple.
Yes, I’m sure everyone has something better to work on or fix, but someone added wobbly windows too, so I’ll at least ask and hope as a feature request.
Just a suggestion - KDE is quite pretty as is, but adding some more effects beyond just a simple highlight as a mouse hover event as other docks do would look really nice with the new floating panel style. It’s about the only thing really missing for me vs. going back to something like latte or cairo docks, and hopefully far less glitchy than they were.
Really dude it has always been one of the biggest appeals of plasma, hence why so many push hard for you guys to fix the panels and adopt all that was Latte.
I’m not “many” and I couldn’t care less for jumping, rotating, turning, do a little dance, make me a sandwich…whatever panel items…dude. And I’m fairly sure there are as “many” who aren’t pushing anything.
It’s just creature comforts. I don’t ask for a lot usual, but I got used to pretty features in using Cairo-dock before any other linux really did a dock-style approach, and the jumping, rotating, and turning was just… there. And it was glorious. I really didn’t miss it until it was gone after years in various distribution malfeasance that broke it along the way.
Cairo-dock didn’t behave well last I tried it in kde 5.x, but in replying to Nate, I checked it out, and it seems fairly functional again in 6 to the point I might try it again even, as I miss the glam.
Otherwise, I like the integrated plasma panels now, where I really didn’t in 5.x, I kept it there more in case Latte or before that Cairo would freak out as a fallback. I really like the floating and transparencies of the new panels that they 95% replace cairo or latte, but goddamnit I miss eyecandy even if I’m just weird like that. It’s the small things in life…
Do or don’t, I’ll live. Again, just a suggestion for some fringe appeal.
Some people like crafting those widgets to do what they are supposed to do and explore them.
When I accidentally found Cairo I practically tripped over it, it was winding down but still had dedicated pages for it. I spent a lot of time cramming in all the different widgets I thought I could use, and looked for new ways of using them.
They are a lot of fun.
For me they create focus and keep my attention on task. Like running YouTube on 2x because the voice over is speaking in slow mo putting me to sleep . Besides being eye candy and not putting people to sleep, for me they can be a first alert system that something may be awry with the computer that someone else would never notice.
They might be a little touchy, but not so much if you work with them and know their settings. Like working on an old car but not as messy. A Goldfarbian pet that lets you know if someone is in your yard If one is into personalizing their operating system it makes sense, subtle and interesting.
If Icon Animations are useful, such as making the icon larger when the mouse passes over it if it is small or on two lines, it is a great idea, it avoids tiring your eyes.
I actually wouldn’t mind seeing task manager animation where the icons get zoomed out a bit when hovered. It would be nice in small panels at least.
It’s something i miss from Rocketdock of all things, when I still used windows.
The magnification on hover would be nice (with a slider for size) as a accessibility feature for bad eyesite. Yes you can make it flat out big but you might want it normal. Yes auto hide but you might want it on screen especially if you come to kde from mac.
I have my dock vanish when i have no apps open but it grows as I open more. Since i’m on a ultrawide.
But I personally am in no rush for this but it would be nice down the line.
