Having managed the upgrade to Plasma 6 on Manjaro (Arch) The loss of the panel option to “Allow windows to cover” is an annoyance. The “Dodge Windows” and “Auto-hide” behaviours are no substitute. “Windows go below” has no real use as maximized windows have the window controls hidden if the panel is at the top of the screen.
Allowing windows to cover allows windows to be maximized and the plasma panel bar to appear when the mouse goes to the top edge of the screen. Maybe the design only considers users who use the panel at the screen bottom.
I’d just like to add another explanation/use-case here to understand why dodge is not equivalent to the previous “windows can cover” behavior.
When a window is fully maximized the behavior appears equivalent, however if you tile a window to the left or right, the difference in behavior becomes evident.
If you have a panel that has a typical “windows-like” layout with a clock and system tray in the bottom right. If I tile a window to the left of the screen I want to still be able to see the clock and tray without having to move my mouse. And without wasting vertical pixels across the whole bottom of the screen all the time.
Having a different panel for the clock and tray that’s configured for “windows go below” doesn’t work because that will cover some window content when a window is fully maximized.
I can kind of achieve the desired effect by having another panel that sits on top of the default panel in the bottom right that has a tray and clock that just covers the other panel. with the same content. But this feels incredibly clunky and isn’t a good user experience compared to just using one panel to accomplish the same thing. It would be much better to have the “windows can cover” option back.