Fancy Tasks

Plasmoid providing a fancy representation of your tasks and launchers for those who need full power of task manager and fresh look.
Developed and tested on KDE 4.3.0 with Qt 4.5 (Mandriva 2010 beta) and KDE 4.4 with Qt 4.6 (Mandriva 2010.1 alpha).

Some screen casts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5i2S1xCKPk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wj4W6cqycl8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfqtnncLNcQ

Warning!
Milestone 1.0 is intended mainly for KDE 4.3. This branch will be focused on fixing potential bugs and improving stability. Small feature additions will be possible but not guaranteed. Form no work will be focused on milestone 1.1 which will provide better integration with KDE 4.4 and will focus on fixing issues specific to this KDE version. Decision to separate branches for KDE 4.3 and 4.4 was made because of significant differences in some areas between both versions. Milestone 2.0 will bring new dock management library which will allow for more advanced features. There will be also new applet interface (might be available earlier, depends on progress on library).

Note that included panel was made only for test and could make various problems, use it on your own risk (I'll focus on it later).

This applet uses standard libtaskmanager like other task managers in KDE, so before you report bug check if it also happens in other applets (for example Tasks).

Tips:
- To make applet more usable you can put it on panel with enabled option "Windows can cover" or similar.
- You can use theme with panel background similar to that of dock (for example Sabre Tiger) or modify current using Desktop Theme Details.
- You can add launchers to applet by drag and drop of URLs and desktop files when Plasma is unlocked or using configuration dialog.
- You can set "No Sorting" to make tasks show icon instead of launcher icon (not in tasks area);
- To show only launchers you need to remove tasks area item from arrangement.
- To show application jobs you need to add jobs area.

Hidden options:
You can set them in applets configuration file (usually located at ~/.kde4/share/config/plasma-desktop-appletsrc), in group containing line plugin=fancytasks or plugin=fancypanel.
- initialZoomLevel - initial zoom level for zoom move animations (value ranging from 0 to 1, default: 0.7);
- paintBackground - decides if background should be painted or not (true or false, default: true);
- paintReflection - decides if icon reflection should be painted or not, note that it won't change icon size because of space allocation for drawing task indicators (true or false, default: true);

Features:
- manages your tasks, launchers and application jobs;
- tasks filtering, grouping (including manual) and sorting;
- keyboard navigation (Tab and Shift+Tab);
- launcher to task transition (icons of launchers with running tasks are hidden);
- preview of windows with (live previews with KWin Taskbar Thumbnail effect enabled);
- dropping files on launchers runs command with parameters or gives option to move, copy or link them (if this is directory);
- visual drop indicator that helps in manual tasks sorting and dropping launchers;
- possibility to browse directories of directory launchers using context menu;
- possibility to add application menus;
- menu with list of all icons shown after activating keyboard shortcut;
- configurable animations (zoom, jump, bounce, highlight, etc.) and appearance (optional thumbnails and text label);
- fully animated icons (including animations of starting applications, tasks needing attention and application jobs progress).

If you have found bugs or have suggestions you can contact me via email, message or using comments, before you will vote bad.
And remember that not everybody has enough time for fast replying. ;-)

Don't be silly, don't vote bad just for fun!

1.0.93 (27.04.2010):
- fixed possible crash when checking for task window.

1.0.92 (25.02.2010):
- fixes in icon rendering.

1.0.91 (03.02.2010):
- added settings to manage how icon actions should be triggered;
- initial work on option to show only tasks that have corresponding launchers;
- applet tries to maintain it's center point on desktop (when unlocked);
- code cleanups;
- some fixes.

1.0.90 (02.02.2010):
- removed custom tool tip implementation;
- removed QImageBlitz dependency;
- code cleanups and small fixes.

1.0.0 (01.02.2010):
- first release of milestone 1.0;
- small fixes.