KDE-Forum.org

This post is a mess of different questions, please forgive me, probably no one will read it all.

I haven't switched to KDE4 yet, I have some reservations but on the whole I am looking forward to doing so.The overall design looks solid and specific design issues will get sorted out by the community. By which I mean the same poor old developers will do the work once they have been bullied sufficiently by everyone else - though I'm sure the interest in KDE4 and the lovely code will attract some more part-time developers.

Things that I don't really like

**> The general trend towards more chunky design: big icons, fat entries in menus, borders around everything. - High resolution displays have made life so much easier just by virtue of being able to fit more on the screen. I have to do less moving windows around and scrolling though lists please don't undo this just for the sake of big glossy buttons.

**> Plasma applets - do they really need that ugly space-consuming white translucent boarders? The analog clock widget in Vista really is circular (from the users point of view) it doesn't do anything unless the you put your cursor inside the circle of the clock-face.

That seems to be only two points and one of them is really only a specific example of the other.

Something else: In Kickof, do you have to click on the tabs "favorites" "applications" etc or can you switch with just a mouse-over? I'd like to see that option.

Compositing: I like the inclusion of compositing, I like my bling but never feel that comfortable running compiz on KDE, it appears to be very efficient but doesn't seem that stable, there always seem to be little niggling issues - I've looked at the code and to be honest I'm not surprised . Everyone has plugins they'd like to see, for me it's "Group&Tab widows" and "Ring Swithcher". If they don't exist before I start using KDE4 I think I will have to write them myself - I should at least be able to write the ring-switcher I'm not so confident about the other.

A general KDE question: Is there a way of setting a key shortcut for "raise active window" - I like to use focus follows mouse with no raise on click so that I can work in different windows without messing with where they are placed but don't like having to find the titlebar to bring a window to the front.