alediaferia::hackingAround()

They used to work in the darkness… they just did their job and nobody could know about them… all of you are benefiting from their job… they live behind the scenes… but now things have changed! They are “The applets’ makers” and you will know more about them since… revision 881889!!

Ok i’m not so fool as it may seem. I just found some time to implement the feature you’ll see below from the screenshots and i wanted to share it with you =).

author info icon

As you maybe noticed the “info icon” only appears on hovering so that we avoid the UI to become too crowded.

author about

So clicking the icon you’ll get the well known AboutApplicationDialog that will show you some credits about the applet.

So that’s all folks, i just wished to post this. See you soon.

And stay tuned for the almighty 4.2 release!

Cheers.

Hay hackers!

After some time spent restoring my gentoo machine I’m back to KDE stuff… I worked on the must-have-feature “Drag&drop from panel” and tried to polish its behavior as much as possible together with Marco Martin.

Even if there’s still some little weirdness to fix we decided to commit anyway since it does its work! So have a look:

So please test it and let me know about bugs so i’ll try to fix them.

Cheers friends

Hello KDE addicted =)

Finally i’m back to my regular life after a month spent by the sea in the south of Italy at 70km from my city, away from computers and tech in general. Unfortunately i didn’t take so much photos of me, i just found this (a night in a pub =) ):

me in a pub =)

Ok let’s get back talking about the Previewer =).

I restarted with new ideas for the Previewer applet having a look at this by Nuno. So i started reviewing the Previewer keeping in mind this mockup. Here is what i got:

the new previewer

I feel “almost there” but there is still something to polish. Fortunately i could use some of folder view’s code to make that kind of view. But don’t get scared, the good old PreviewDialog is still there, you just have to click on the file you want to preview to get this:

previewDialog

Now the Dialog is cleaner without the file list (no need since the files are in the applet) and without the resize button O.O. Yes, i removed the resize button (awful way of resizing) since i added the setResizeCorners() method to Plasma::Dialog. Now the dialog resizes easily dragging its corners. Really easier and nicer than before, finally!

The trash button has changed its behavior since now it closes and removes the file from the disk.

And last but not least the “run” button. It just executes the right application to open the file =).

I’m quite busy these days for my exams but i’d like to have the previewer ready for kdereview->kdebase so please test it and tell me your suggestions, ideas, critics =).

Cheers.

PS: finally the new planetKDE, and i’m back to blogging =).

Very hard work has been done in these days to improve more and more the Previewer. The first thing i focused on was making a good DBus interface. Helped by Fabrizio Montesi (fmontesi on irc) i made some methods to allow a good integration with JOLIE. So these methods came out:

void openFile(QString filename)

void goToPage(uint page)

QString currentFile()

uint currentPage()

Actually goToPage and currentPage only work when an Okular part is loaded. They allow the client/server communication provided by JOLIE. You can have a look at this screencast made by Fabrizio to show JOLIE+Previewer working together =). http://jolie.sf.net/videos/vision-previewer.ogv

This works for most of you (Thank you Fabrizio): http://jolie.sf.net/videos/vision-previewer.avi

Btw there are also some graphical improvements to talk about =). First of all Nuno Pinheiro made a really nice icon for the Previewer. Currently it looks this way, enjoy:

the Previewer Icon

Now let’s have a look to multiple previews handling. Previewer stores recently opened files in the context menu. Now we have a nicer and faster way to retrieve recently previewed files just by clicking on the left side of the dialog, where a list of recent files is shown. Pictures will talk in place of me =)

multiple previews

I made the list as “Plasmy” (awful term) as possible so that it looks not so alien as other widgets do. It reacts well to theme changing:

previewer glassified

Nice huh? =)

Now, as you (ok, some of you =) ) noticed, there are two more icons near the close button. We got a trash:

the trash icon

As suggested by friedrich| on irc, some of you would need to delete some recently opened files from the history. So here comes that trash: click on it to remove the currently opened file both from the Previewer and from its history. Simple! =)

The second added icon is the resize one =). Since scrolling the wheel to resize the previewer was getting hateful for me i decided to make something different (more like is done for your applets on the desktop).

resize icon

So, as the tooltip suggests, just drag that icon to resize your dialog. =)

Oh! Forgetting.. Some of you asked for an integration with Dolphin/Konqueror. Currently Previewer provides a service menu:

previewer and service menu

“Preview this file” sends the file to Previewer and shows it.. This isn’t a real Dolphin integration. Btw I’m keeping in touch with Peter Penz to integrate this behavior in Dolphin natively. It doesn’t seem so easy to implement but i’m sure that Peter will do a great job for this!! =)

That’s it guys. Of course comments are always welcome!

Cheers

Alessandro.

Hello everybody! This is my first post here and I’d like to show you what I’m hacking on currently. Its amazing name (Previewer “so-obvious” ) suggests what it is supposed to do. It previews your files. Just drag and drop them on it and it will open them in a small dialog to show you the contents. Simple and (hope) useful.

But let there be pictures:

As you can see here, just drag the file on the plasmoid and it will preview:

Simple, huh? =)

Btw I think it’s more useful having some text instead of images previewed on your plasmoid. Then drag your text file and see the result =)

Your text appears (ReadOnly) and you can keep it always visible since the dialog stays always on top!

I’m working on this behavior since someone (friedrich| in #plasma =) ) suggested me to make it optional: choose whether the dialog should be always on top or not.

Ok, moreover, the plasmoid keeps track of your last previewed files. Just right click the icon:

Well, since this plasmoid makes use of KParts technology, you can preview everything which is supposed to be opened by the Part technology. So you can have also a preview for your pdf files =)

And last but not least, this plasmoid becomes more useful if moved in the panel =) You can drag urls on it while you are using your pc and have a small preview dialog at the bottom corners of your screen:

Since the dialog has no borders, the resize was not natively supported. However I hacked around finding a temporary (or maybe definitive) solution and coded allowing its resizing just scrolling your mouse wheel on it. I also added the chance of moving it on the screen! =)

You can have a look at http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/playground/base/plasma/applets/previewer/ for updated sources or even click on www.kde-look.org and look for Previewer plasmoid. Download and test =)

Comments are really really welcome!

Regards

Alessandro.