Plasma idea: Sliding containment

written on Sunday, June 15, 2008

I have been playing with Plasma lately, trying to figure out how it could improve my computer experience. I came to the conclusion that I do not like having plasmoids over my wallpaper. It's not a critic, just my very own taste.

Still I would like to be able to use widgets, some of them are very tempting. I gave activities a try, but I find it cumbersome to have to zoom in and out. So I thought about an alternative solution: a sliding containment.

The idea would be to have a containment which would behave like Yakuake: you press a shortcut key and it slides from the top of the screen. Press the shortcut key again and it slides out. I can easily see myself filling this containment with various plasmoids without the feeling that my desktop is crowded.

If we get a Konsole plasmoid one day, then this solution could even replace Yakuake.

One could even go a step further and add tabs support to this containment so that you could arrange your plasmoids in different sets. Sort of like a desktop Netvibes (I am a big Netvibes fan). I can easily see myself with a "Monitor" tab showing various cpu and network plasmoids, a "Notes" tab full of post-it and of course a "Fun" tab containing a few rss feeds and the Comics plasmoid.

Now back to reality: I do not know Plasma API (at least for now) and my plate is quite full, so I am not going to write this myself. If any of you feel like it's a good idea and have the necessary Plasma knowledge to implement this, it would be great!