Plasma Active for portable devices
As part of the Plasma Active project, an initial prototype of a new user interface concept has been prepared for a wide range of embedded devices that go beyond ordinary laptops and PCs, for example, for Internet tablets, media centers and smartphones. The key direction of the development of the new shell is the development of tools for providing an interactive, rich and convenient user interface.
Under the cut image of the interface, as well as video
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Plasma Active runs on top of the standard Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, Qt, and KDE Plasma Framework. The existing desktop technologies used in Plasma Active are optimized for building an interface specific to various types of devices. The first release of Plasma Active focuses on support for touch screens and tablet computers, the interface for which is built with an eye to the intensive use of social networks, Web navigation and work with multimedia content. Among the opportunities there are also marked the means for organizing collaboration and data exchange between users, using the system of P2P-distribution of programs instead of the centralized model of building the application catalog. The first release of Plasma Active, designed to work on tablets, is scheduled for release in September.
An important part of Plasma Active is the Contour project, within which work is under way to create a new desktop use paradigm. The main idea of Contour is to transition to a content-oriented interface that adapts to the current context, areas of activity and patterns of user behavior. In other words, the interface becomes not application-oriented, but data-driven, intelligently combining data using a context-sensitive recommendation manager.
Among the currently supported devices are ViewSonic Viewpad 10 and WeTab tablets, as well as a Lenovo Ideapad 10 netbook. For testing Plasma Active, a bootable Live image (1.2 GB) based on openSUSE 11.4 was prepared. Plasma Active source code can be downloaded from a special repository , ready binary packages are currently available only for openSUSE and MeeGo. For a visual assessment of the capabilities of Plasma Active, a small demonstration video was created.
The interface in Plasma Active is based on a variant of the Plasma shell, translated into the use of Qt Quick's declarative interface description technology, which allows you to dynamically create a user interface, the structure and parameters of which are specified by CSS-like blocks, and the logic is determined using JavaScript-like QML . The QML-based interface allows for great flexibility in changing the appearance (the interface is completely separate from the code and easily adapts to the specific mobile device, taking into account the resolution, DPI, screen orientation and interface features). In addition to widgets built on the basis of Qt Quick, Plasma Active also allows using classic widgets.
As planned by the developers, applications written for Plasma Active will be able to run on various classes of devices, from tablets and set-top boxes to handheld computers and smartphones, regardless of screen size and type of data entry system, without changing the design. The application interface can be easily reworked using a CSS-like style system. Currently, two subprojects are being developed: plasma-mobile and plasma-tablet, differing in the organization of the desktop space. The desktop itself is identical in both systems, but on top of it, different shells are run, optimized for different screen resolutions.
Among the features planned for the future, support for multi-touch navigation, gesture management (for example, pinch scaling), support for locally installed web services, creation of web-based widgets (for example, for viewing news and tracking RSS), Facebook support integration . Among the basic applications that are planned to be developed are the mobile versions of the office package Calligra and the manager for personal information management Kontact.
A source
Under the cut image of the interface, as well as video
')
Plasma Active runs on top of the standard Linux desktop stack, including the Linux kernel, Qt, and KDE Plasma Framework. The existing desktop technologies used in Plasma Active are optimized for building an interface specific to various types of devices. The first release of Plasma Active focuses on support for touch screens and tablet computers, the interface for which is built with an eye to the intensive use of social networks, Web navigation and work with multimedia content. Among the opportunities there are also marked the means for organizing collaboration and data exchange between users, using the system of P2P-distribution of programs instead of the centralized model of building the application catalog. The first release of Plasma Active, designed to work on tablets, is scheduled for release in September.
An important part of Plasma Active is the Contour project, within which work is under way to create a new desktop use paradigm. The main idea of Contour is to transition to a content-oriented interface that adapts to the current context, areas of activity and patterns of user behavior. In other words, the interface becomes not application-oriented, but data-driven, intelligently combining data using a context-sensitive recommendation manager.
Among the currently supported devices are ViewSonic Viewpad 10 and WeTab tablets, as well as a Lenovo Ideapad 10 netbook. For testing Plasma Active, a bootable Live image (1.2 GB) based on openSUSE 11.4 was prepared. Plasma Active source code can be downloaded from a special repository , ready binary packages are currently available only for openSUSE and MeeGo. For a visual assessment of the capabilities of Plasma Active, a small demonstration video was created.
The interface in Plasma Active is based on a variant of the Plasma shell, translated into the use of Qt Quick's declarative interface description technology, which allows you to dynamically create a user interface, the structure and parameters of which are specified by CSS-like blocks, and the logic is determined using JavaScript-like QML . The QML-based interface allows for great flexibility in changing the appearance (the interface is completely separate from the code and easily adapts to the specific mobile device, taking into account the resolution, DPI, screen orientation and interface features). In addition to widgets built on the basis of Qt Quick, Plasma Active also allows using classic widgets.
As planned by the developers, applications written for Plasma Active will be able to run on various classes of devices, from tablets and set-top boxes to handheld computers and smartphones, regardless of screen size and type of data entry system, without changing the design. The application interface can be easily reworked using a CSS-like style system. Currently, two subprojects are being developed: plasma-mobile and plasma-tablet, differing in the organization of the desktop space. The desktop itself is identical in both systems, but on top of it, different shells are run, optimized for different screen resolutions.
Among the features planned for the future, support for multi-touch navigation, gesture management (for example, pinch scaling), support for locally installed web services, creation of web-based widgets (for example, for viewing news and tracking RSS), Facebook support integration . Among the basic applications that are planned to be developed are the mobile versions of the office package Calligra and the manager for personal information management Kontact.
A source
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/117439/
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