'The Workspace Strap', A New Experimental Way To Manage Space On Your Virtual Desktops

This may be fantastic in the literal sense of the word, but it's slower and more cumbersome than the simple pagers we've had in the KDE panel since forever, and the one-click list all desktops and open apps. What is this obsession with turning the nice efficient PC desktop into a cr@ppy smartphone imitator?

@tc: Ah, but isn't that in the newly established tradition of Ubuntu desktops? Just wait - soon all fonts will start at 20-point so they will be clearly legible on phones!

Quoting:What is this obsession with turning the nice efficient PC desktop into a cr@ppy smartphone imitator?

Come on TC, give the guy a break, he is only 15 years old developer! :-)

Besides, what is wrong with one more way of doing an old thing for those who might like it? KDE has to live up to its reputation of offering a Swiss army knife DE.

Actually, such a feature is really handy for tablets and huge active displays during conference presentations. (TV Weather Media & election cover if you watch those)

If you always just stand still, you'll never get anywhere. I'm an old-fashioned dude -- if something works for me, I'll stick with it. But fresh ideas are a good thing. Some people are too closed-minded. Kudos to this kid. "Boo" to those stuck-in-the-mud types who can't ever see anything good about innovative ideas like this.

@ MALsPa, Inovative ideas are great. So long as good ideas that already work and work well are not thrown away, just because of innovative new ideas. For example GNOME Panel, which the GNOME developers are intent on replacing with GNOME Shell, in spite of the fact that GNOME Panel is still part of the GNOME 3 code base, and is still currently available in a crippled form (the GNOME Devs have hidden many of it's features in an attempt to make it less functional, and therefore less desirable) and called Fallback mode or GNOME Classic. While GNOME shell may have it's place (smart phones and Tablets, perhaps) GNOME panel is much more useful on Large high resolution Screens and multi Monitor systems.

What's the fuss?

1) It's a small thing (much like Compiz offers for "Expose" desktops or task switching, only "stepless" and configurable to run vertically or horizontally (ie. unidimensional) Does KDE4 not already offer something similar?)

2) Some people will really like it

3) (This is important) It's not being forced on anybody.

Side note -- if it could be configured to run along an arbitrary edge, rather than in the centre of the screen, it would be nice option to have)

@MrSwiss:

It's not being forced on anybody YET.

Quoting:It's not being forced on anybody YET.

And won't ever be on desktops. There are multiple switcher methods in KDE already. All are off by default, configurable and easy to turn on/off. Tablets are a different story since touch screen is the main method of interfacing.

The problem as I see it is that so many people are suffering from PTSD because of Gnome, Unity, and the upcoming Metro, that they just assume everyone else is going to do the same thing with regard to dumbing down user interfaces. So far, it appears KDE has resisted this urge to force people to do things any one way, as they offer a lot of options (like with the main menu, which you can change to the Classic style or to the "Lancelot" style).