Giuliano Colla wrote:
I fail to grasp the rationale behind creating Plasma and Plasmoids,
which to a simple minded like me appear to be nothing but a clumsy
implementation of what was already available, and then including the
folderview we're discussing, to mimic previous features which in old
good times were already there, and much simpler to create and to maintain.
Could someone give me a clue of why Plasma, Plasmoids and such should be
considered a step forward, and not a step back, as it appears to me?
Is there something more than parroting Mac Desktop, which is the poorest
point of Mac implementation trading off functionality in favor of
pleasant look?
What are, by an user point of view, the extra features we've gained?
What do I fail to grasp?
A folder view entry can only show an icon and a name, and open the
associated program if you click on it. A plasmoid can interact with you
directly on the desktop, e.g. it can show you today's and the next few days'
weather or the latest xkcd comic strip, it can play video and music etc. And
in many cases, the same plasmoid can be put on the desktop (as a desktop
widget) or on a panel (as a mini-widget or a popup widget, depending on the
form factor of the widget), as you prefer. So this is much more flexible
than the plain old folder view desktop. (BTW, the Plasma folder view
containment can actually also host plasmoids, so if you use that, you get
both KDE 3 compatibility and KDE Plasma 4 features.)
Kevin Kofler