Bug 1507

This is one of the reasons I loathe Windows 7 and 8, so I won't be the one to do this. ;-)  Anyone else is quite welcome to do so, just make sure that your patch allows the option to be turned on/off easily from the taskbar GUI!

No problems!
If someone wants to do this, it could be available as another TDE panel applet, just as it is on KDE4: The user can use the classic taskbar or smooth task. These are 2 differents applets.
-Alexandre

A screenshot from Win7 would help. :-)

I second the option of making this an applet. That keeps this kind of feature out of the way.

(In reply to comment #3)
> A screenshot from Win7 would help. :-)
> 
> I second the option of making this an applet. That keeps this kind of feature
> out of the way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_7_Taskbar.png

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > A screenshot from Win7 would help. :-)
> > 
> > I second the option of making this an applet. That keeps this kind of feature
> > out of the way.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windows_7_Taskbar.png

Forgot to add: The taskbar in that fair use screenshot actually is showing three active tasks.  This is not obvious nor intuitive, which is just one of the reasons I really despise the "smooth" taskbar UI....

Created attachment 1272 [details]
This is KDE 4.10 on the latest PCLinuxOS 2013, with smooth task taskbar

As you can see, in smooth task, there is no text beside the icon of a window and there is just one row (line) of icon, instead of 2 as in TDE or as in KDE4 with classic taskbar. There is also a transparent rounded-square around the icon, but it is not mandatory. LXDE doesn't draw a rounded-rectangle around the icons in its smooth-task like taskbar. It looks better but has no other real use. It is probably not very hard to implement, by starting with the code of the regular taskbar.

Thanks!
-Alexandre

Created attachment 1273 [details]
Tihs is the Win7 panel, with smooth task taskbar

Actually, the panel picture Tim pointed to has no task running. These were 3 quick-launch icons beside the start menu. In this screenshot of Windows 7 (It came with my computer...), 5 programs are running: Explorer, Skype, Omron CX-Programmer (Ladder industrial automation program), OpenOffice and Calculator. It is very similar to the way it is implemented in KDE4, except that the Win7 version has the ability to highlight directly a program of the quick-launch area without displaying it directly in the taskbar. It saves a little bit of screen space, but it is much more confusion, which is probably a part of why Tim doesn't like it. I agree that KDE4 implement it in a more simple and normal way.

We can see that Win7 panel was largely inspired by the KDE panel :)

-Alexandre

(In reply to comment #7)
> Created attachment 1273 [details]
> Tihs is the Win7 panel, with smooth task taskbar
> 
> Actually, the panel picture Tim pointed to has no task running. These were 3
> quick-launch icons beside the start menu. In this screenshot of Windows 7 (It
> came with my computer...), 5 programs are running: Explorer, Skype, Omron
> CX-Programmer (Ladder industrial automation program), OpenOffice and
> Calculator. It is very similar to the way it is implemented in KDE4, except
> that the Win7 version has the ability to highlight directly a program of the
> quick-launch area without displaying it directly in the taskbar. It saves a
> little bit of screen space, but it is much more confusion, which is probably a
> part of why Tim doesn't like it. I agree that KDE4 implement it in a more
> simple and normal way.
> 
> We can see that Win7 panel was largely inspired by the KDE panel :)
> 
> -Alexandre

OK, I see the difference now that you point it out.  Still, very confusing and not my cup of tea. ;-)

The picture helps. I was unaware KDE4 has this feature.

I'm not enthusiastic about the feature but everybody is different. Options and choice usually is healthy. As long as the new feature is not the default all should be well.

We already have an option to not show the icon (Configure Panel->Taskbar->Show application icons). Patching to do the opposite (Configure Panel->Taskbar->Show only application icons) should be straightforward to somebody interested in adding the code. That seems to be the best place for the addition rather than as an applet. The new option could be a child check box of the existing check box. The new check box would be disabled/grayed out when the parent check box is disabled.

At the moment in pre-v14.0.0, there is an option to display icons only for the taskbar buttons.
What is still missing is an option to limit the number of rows: in case the panel height is too big, currently items are arranged in multiple rows on the taskbar.
This also relates to bug 1442

Is it possible to add an option in the TDE Control Center to choose the size of the icons on the taskbar? The task-chooser part of the panel is the only part where it is not possible to choose the size of the icons.

Then ,the icon size could be set by the user to 32 pixels, with the option to see only the icon, making it possible to look like the smooth-task task-chooser on KDE 4.11.

-Alexandre

(In reply to Alex Couture from comment #11)
I don't think that is the correct way to do that, because the size of the taskbar icons should be related to the height of the taskbar itself.
A better way IMO, is to add an option to allow to specify the number of rows in the taskbar (between 1 and the automatically computed value). In this way, resizing the taskbar with take care of resizing the icons as well.
This bug won't get into v14.0.0 as you know, but it is a good candidate for v14.1.0 I think.

Marking as duplicate of bug 1442. Implementing that bug would automatically solve this bug too.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1442 ***

Hi,

This bug has been closed, without full understanding of what I meant at first. One thing was that the text should have the option to be hidden.

Thank you!
-Alexandre

> This bug has been closed, without full understanding of what I meant at first. One 
> thing was that the text should have the option to be hidden.
Hi Alex,
nice to see you still around TDE :-)

Your request was fully understood. There is already an option to hide the text and show only the icons (at least in R14.1, not sure about R14.0). This is found in Configure Taskbar -> Taskbar pane -> Display combobox: you can choose icons only.
What is missing is the ability to display one icon per row, so solving bug 1442 will solve this issue as well. That is why I had mark this bug as a duplicate of 1442.
I am ok if you want to keep this bug open, but honestly it does not add much more to what bug 1442 already does. Plus I mentioned in bug 1442 to have a look at the comments in this bug for additional info :-)