On Sunday 23 August 2009 11:28:09 pm Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* John Andersen
[08-24-09 00:24]: Any way to just get rid of this concept of Activities all together? It was un-needed, a duplication of what already existed and totally confusing.
so was removing rotary dial telephones and replacing them with push button dialers. What a waste of resources! And all these mobile phones when we already had wired ones. The next thing they will be making Dick Tracy's wrist radios for communication. Sheesh....
Patrick,
OK, I get what an "activity" is now. I guess it is something you need if you
have a boss looking over you shoulder and need to "manage" your desktop on the
fly;-) For those still scratching your heads like I have been about what an
activity is or how to use it. Here are a few overviews I found at kde.org
http://userbase.kde.org/Glossary>
Activities
Activities are sets of Plasma widgets that have their own wallpaper. A bit
like Virtual Desktops, but not quite.
For example you have a "work activity" with commit rss feeds, a note with
your TODO, a Folder View with your work related files, and a subtle wallpaper.
Next to it, you have your freetime activity, with previews of family
photos and dogs, rss feeds from your favourite blogs, a Folder View showing
your movie collection, a twitter applet and of course that Iron Maiden
wallpaper you have been loving since the early 80s.
At 1700 hours sharp you switch from the work activity to your freetime
activity.
</quote>
And now a bit more on how to use them:
http://userbase.kde.org/Plasma#Activities_and_the_Zooming_User_Interface_.28ZUI.29>
Activities and the Zooming User Interface (ZUI)
KDE 4 has brought a lot of new features to the modern linux desktop, however
many people are only using a fraction of the desktop's full potential. One of
the most useful and underused features is the plasma activities. The basic
idea behind are that, is that your desktop space is limited to how many
widgets it can hold. A user will want to use a lot of widgets but doesn't want
their desktop to be cluttered. The answer to this problem is activities; they
allow you to specialize each desktop to whatever task you need to accomplish.
To make a new activity you have to click on the cashew in the upper right hand
corner, from there click zoom out. The desktop will zoom out then click add
new activity under the small desktop. It will make a new desktop right next to
it. now go click the zoom in button under the new desktop. with this desktop
you can add whatever widgets to this desktop and it will not affect the other
desktop.
[edit] Use Cases
A user likes web comics so they add their favorite web comics via the comics
widget. The user now has a full desktop activity dedicated to their favorite
web comics. Now the user is happy with the web comics, but the user now has to
go to work, so the user creates a activity with the folder view widgets set to
the folders of the projects the user is currently working on. After work the
user goes home and works on a side project of writing romance novels. The user
always gains inspiration by looking at pictures of the user's significant
other. The user now creates a new Activity but now puts pictures frame widgets
with pictures of the user's significant other. The user also has a folder view
of the romance novel project folder. Now no matter what the user is doing the
user has a custom tailored activity to match it.
</quote>
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