All services are separated into 2 groups : services, that are
usefull for user. E.g. "Strigi" or "Backup" and services, that are not
usefull for user ( Nepomuk system services )
I would let user to decide himself. See star in top corner on mock.
Every plugin has 2 operation modes: 'user' and 'advanced'. These 2
models _only_ differ in exporting extra actions to the menus.
Wasn't regular and advanced modes abandoned within KDE some time ago? if i recall right, the consensus was, either options should be made useful for every users, or it shouldn’t be at all?
And of course, the name and description of the service is available to the GUI.
That is currently all info, that plugin export to GUI. But I am open
for implementing methods if there will be necessity in extra
information.
Currently, applet creates one standard widget for
every service. It is shown on the first picture. If 'Show all services'
is checked, then all widgets are shown, if unchecked - only widges from
first group.
In network manager + More / -Less button looks cleaner option than check box with "show all"
Tooltip prints one of:
"All services running"
"Not running X Running Y", X,Y - numbers
"No service running"
(This is unlocalized strings of course. No idea what they will be after translation )
is it possible to distinguish b/w services who does not run, because they failed and services that was disabled/stopped be esplicit user action?. If so, names of failed services could be showed in the the tooltip.
1. The systray tooltip provides information about the
number
of running services. This is of no interest to the user. The current
systray shows the indexing state. While this is rather random it puts
users at ease when nepomuk uses resources. It might make more sense to
allow the plugins to provide useful information in some way (that is if
you are fixed on the whole plugin design which IMHO is a bit
over-engineered).
Colors could be used to provide useful info: Green - all ok; Red - something failed; Yellow - either resource hungy procces or some user attention is required.
2. The main widget is not very pretty. It shows non-localized
service names and uses a list with buttons that do not fit the rest of
KDE.
That's why i labeled Nepomuk as Search indexing - more understandable
string for the user. Full service name could go under description, if
logo is not enough to identify it
It would be much more helpful to have generic information in there
like the current systray widget does. Seeing the state of services is
not interesting to the user. It is an implementation detail!
Only color indicates state. 24*24 icon takes little space, while the rest of the line could be used for human friendly information.
For the right side of plasmoid.
Try to avoid intermediate dialogs as much as possible.
E.g. to let user create new backup instructions, have big button for that in the UI, instead of having big button to configure global backup settings, and then hide it somewhere under menus in new window. Imho global configuration could be placed next to start/stop/... service buttons below service title.
Also when action buttons makes UI look cluttered, it is allways possible to display/fadein only on hover.
Cheers,
Lukas