KDE 4.8.0 - Icon-Only Task Manager instead of Smooth Tasks

[Fitzcarraldo]

Just a 'heads up' for those of you who use KDE and will be upgrading to KDE 4.8.0 when it becomes available in Entropy:

If you're using the Smooth Tasks widget then I have found that it does not work in KDE 4.8.0. However, there is a widget called Icon-Only Task Manager which does basically the same thing. So use that instead.

[batvink]

Thnks,
I made a note for that In the TIPS entry of the wiki.

[Fitzcarraldo]

One thing to point out: I had to untick 'Highlight Window' (Kickoff > System Settings > Desktop Effects | 'All Effects' tab), otherwise, when I hover the mouse pointer over the icon on the Panel of a minimised window, both the window preview and the window itself are displayed while the mouse pointer is over the icon.

[cmost]

I've been using the icon-only task manager for quite a while now and I find it to be superior in many ways to Smooth tasks. I am very happy to see this improvement now integrated in KDE 4.8. It's nice to see desktop developers that listen to users as opposed to Unity developers who apparently just don't care what users think or want in a desktop.

[joost]

https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=400863

[Fitzcarraldo]

Whilst it's good that Smooth Tasks has been fixed now for KDE 4.8.0, the functionality of the Smooth Tasks widget appears to be identical for all intents and purposes to the functionality of the Icon-Only Task Manager widget, so I think it's not worth bothering to install the package kde-misc/smooth-tasks as well as the package kde-base/kdeplasma-addons (the latter contains Icon-Only Task Manager as well as other widgets). I think I'll stick with Icon-Only Task Manager, especially as it's part of kde-base.

Code: Select all

# eix -I kdeplasma-addons
[I] kde-base/kdeplasma-addons
     Available versions:  (4) 4.6.3 4.7.4 (~)4.8.0
        {aqua attica debug desktopglobe exif kdeprefix qalculate qwt scim semantic-desktop}
     Installed versions:  4.8.0(4)(01:43:33 27/01/12)(exif semantic-desktop -aqua -attica -debug -desktopglobe -qalculate -qwt -scim)
     Homepage:            http://www.kde.org/
     Description:         Extra Plasma applets and engines.

# eix smooth-tasks
* kde-misc/smooth-tasks
     Available versions:  (4) (~)0_p20120130
        {aqua debug linguas_cs linguas_de linguas_fr linguas_hu linguas_pl linguas_ru linguas_zh_CN}
     Homepage:            https://bitbucket.org/flupp/smooth-tasks-fork
     Description:         Alternate taskbar KDE plasmoid, similar to Windows 7