Add Widgets scroll bar

[Tahaan]

When one click on "Add Widgets", eg from the desktop context menu, a horizontal list/bar appears along the bottom showing the available ... plasmoids?

When you click on the scroll bar along the bottom the display "jumps" to the position clicked, in stead of advancing a screen-full at a time. This reminds me of how scroll bars sometimes used to work many many years ago. It is not consistent with how I expect them to work nowadays. Is there a good reason for this, or is this a bug?

This is on KDE 4.10.2 on Kubuntu 12.10, but this is not new behaviour.

On a related note: Are those objects actually called widgets? Everything seems to be a "widget" these days. I think KDE has got a policy of being consistent and concice about naming and organizing things related to the user interface.... so the naming should be fixed.

I suspect "Plasmoids" == "Plasma Widgets", though other uses/meaning of Widgets are present under themes, etc.

[Rog131]

Plasma

The KDE 4.10.2 (QML plasmoid explorer)

The plasmoid explorer has a scroll bar:



If you want smooth transition you could grab the bar and move it.
If you want fast move to the end of the plasmoid list you could click the end of bar path.
If you scroll your mouse wheel the bar/view should move.

Older versions of the KDE have the scroll buttons (this seems to be plasma theme option ?):



If you click the scroll button the bar/view should move.

More of the plasma desktop: http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma

Widgets

Plasma supports widgets written specifically for Plasma (also known as Plasmoids) as well as widgets from other sources such as Google Gadgets, Superkaramba and some Dashboard Widgets from Mac OSX...

Edited

Corrected the naming of scroll/slider

[Tahaan]

Hello Rog131,

THank you for your answer, but I don't feel that you have solved my issue.

Fristly my KDE (4.10.3) does have the scroll arrows. That is brand new.

The KDE HIG defines a slider as a widget that a user uses to select a value from a list, not as something used to position a window within a scrollable area.

I now have learned that this "scroll bar/slider" works differently to other scroll bars, but why doesn't it work like other scroll bars? Why is it not consistent? It looks like other scroll bars, so I would expect it to behave like them. I think it is a reasonable expectation that widgets that look the same should work the same, anything else is confusing and frustrating to new users in particular.

http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Slider

[Rog131]

Fristly my KDE (4.10.3) does have the scroll arrows. That is brand new.

I did wrote: ' Older versions of the KDE have...'

But this seems to be a problem with the 'Air' Plasma theme in the KDE SC 4.10 - When using the 'Oxygen' theme the buttons are there:



Maybe it is this ?: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311503

Kai Uwe Broulik 2012-12-11 18:40:11 UTC
It is also a bad thing it doesnt have Up/Down or Left/Right buttons. In Oxygen you can configure this behavior but Plasma just uses its theme and that's it.
...
Aaron J. Seigo 2013-06-03 11:33:41 UTC
@Kai: sorry, arrows won't be appearing in the desktop shell UI scroll bars. try placing them everywhere to see why this is horrible visually and lends little if any benefit in most places in the shell.

Making a backup of the /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/default/widgets/scrollbar.svgz and then copying the scrollbar.svgz from the /usr/share/kde4/apps/desktoptheme/oxygen/widgets/ to the Air (default) and the buttons are there:

The KDE HIG defines a slider as a widget...

Corrected the naming of scroll/slider.

I now have learned that this "scroll bar/slider" works differently to other scroll bars, but why doesn't it work like other scroll bars? Why is it not consistent? It looks like other scroll bars, so I would expect it to behave like them. I think it is a reasonable expectation that widgets that look the same should work the same, anything else is confusing and frustrating to new users in particular.

Now I'm confused ?

Could you tell an example - At here the Dolphin, web browser, Konsole, ... have the scroll bars and the scroll bars are working same way as with the widget explorer:

If you want smooth transition you could grab the bar and move it.
If you want fast move to the end of the view you could click the end of bar path.
If you scroll your mouse wheel the bar/view should move.
If you click the scroll button the bar/view should move.

[Tahaan]

Hi Rog131

Thank you again for taking the time to look into this. I know it is realy trivial, most people would probably not even notice this.

Clicking on the scroll buttons works consistently (some might scroll by different amounts but if so that doesn't bother me - I don't assume that to be consistent, never actually paid it much attention, mostly I ignore them in any case)

Grabing and draging the grip/slider on any of the scroll bars do work consistently, and I'd have a huge issue if this changed. I use this a lot.

Clicking the scroll-bar itself (not the grip on the scroll-bar) in all cases except one cause the visible area to jump by one screenfull. This matches the size of the scroll-bar, and this is the behaviour I expect and which I think most people are used to these days. Even if you click right near one of the scroll buttons, it doesn't jump to the end of the scrollable area, it only progresses a screenful, as if you pressed PgDn/PgUp.

The exception is the one you marked with a "1" in your last screenshot. On my system this specific scrollbar causes the displayed widgets to move to where you clicked on the scroll-bar.

As I said I might just be pedantic, but it bothers me almost as much as the grouping of settings in KDE settings manager. :-)

Now I'm confused ?

Could you tell an example - At here the Dolphin, web browser, Konsole, ... have the scroll bars and the scroll bars are working same way as with the widget explorer:

If you want smooth transition you could grab the bar and move it.
If you want fast move to the end of the view you could click the end of bar path.
If you scroll your mouse wheel the bar/view should move.
If you click the scroll button the bar/view should move.

The second item is where I ahev an issue, this is not how mine works. Referring to your screenshot, on my system only Nr 1 works that way, all the others progress a constant amount that matches a "window full" at a time, such as when you press "PgDn", irrespective of where on the "bar path" I click.

[Rog131]

The inconsistency of the scroll bar behaviour could be that some of the examples are plasma applications and some are desktop applications. A quote from the http://user-prompt.com/style-the-gui...-preparation/:

Until now we have three different guidelines that collect articles about widgets or patterns: the HIG for desktop applications, the Active HIG, and the UI Design Pattern library. But all three have one problem in common: They are very incomplete and lack on visual examples as well as code snippets...

More of the restart of the KDE HIG:

http://planetkde.org/
--> http://sessellift.wordpress.com/2013...ebooted-again/
--> http://aseigo.blogspot.fi/2013/06/polish-all-ui.html