Smooth Tasks

This is a fork of mbaszczewskis STasks plasmoid. For the original STasks code go there:
http://www.kde-look.org/content/show.php/STasks?content=99739

This taskbar replacement has window peeking similar to Windows 7 when you use the kwin 'highlite window' effect. Even if this effect is not used you can click the tooltip in order to activate the corresponding window.

Known Issues:
In KDE 4.3.0 there is a bug in kwins 'highlite window' effect which causes windows not to get unhighlited unless you stop the effect and restart (move the mouse away from the tooltip). I have implemented a workaround for this but this causes changing the peeked window to flicker. The place for a fix is definitely kwin. Maybe I'll take a look at this bug later.

Sometimes when you move the mouse fast over the taskbar items the tooltip contains garbage (no tooltip contents is rendered but part of the screen contents is captured in it). Does someone have an idea what could cause this problem? I'm not even sure if this is my fault. Actually I doubt it.

The window previews are rendered above context menus. When you right click a window preview a context menu opens. The window preview gets partially rendered over that, which looks very crappy. Window previews are a kwin effect, too. You tell kwin where on your window you want the preview of which other window to be rendered and kwins composite feature does this in realtime. However, it seems not to cope with windows obscuring the preview area. This is a kwin bug and should be fixed by kwin (more evidence for this is, that FancyTasks suffers from exactly the same problem).

About Launcher Support:
A feature often requested in the comments is support for launchers and a more comprehensive context menu. Because the information about which task items there are, their grouping and state (minimized, demands attention, is active, ...) and even the context menu is all provided by libtaskmanager, such feature requests should be directed to kdelibs. I wrote a wishlist entry in the kde bugtracker for these features: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207902 If you want this feature vote for this wish.

Bugreports and Wishes:
http://bitbucket.org/panzi/smooth-tasks/issues/

Packages:
The kde-look.org user sarp is providing Debian packages:
http://usoftx.wordpress.com/deb/

The lauchpad.net user Sam Rog provides Ubuntu packages:
https://launchpad.net/~samrog131/+archive/ppa/+index
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/samrog131/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/samrog131/ppa/ubuntu YOUR_UBUNTU_VERSION_HERE main

Apparently there are official packages for Fedora 11 and 12:
http://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/kde-plasma-smooth-tasks

Just do:
sudo yum install kde-plasma-smooth-tasks

And to get meaningful backtraces:
sudo yum install kde-plasma-smooth-tasks-debuginfo

Note: I didn't check the validity of any of these packages!

Poll: Which Layout should stay?
I have created a poll about which of the various layouts supported by Smooth Tasks should be kept and which I can drop:
http://twtpoll.com/dm5m96

Please participate in this poll so I know whether I have to bother with supporting all of the currently provided layouts. In case you do not use multiple rows please choose the first option. In this case most layouts should look the same anyway.

wip 2009-12-06:
NEW: also do middle click action on tooltip
FIX: chinese translation by Weng Xuetian (hurricanek)

wip 2009-11-26:
FIX: tiny bit better animation tick time calculation
Translations:
* updated polish translation, thanks to Maciej Warnecki

wip 2009-11-20:
FIX: taskbar getting stuck issue, much thanks to the bitbucket user flupp for fixing this!

wip 2009-11-16:
FIX: text placement (more like the original taskbar does it)
Translations:
* updated russian translation, thanks to xep

wip 2009-11-11:
Translations:
* added chinese translation, thanks to Weng Xuetian (hurricanek)
* updated french translation, thanks to Sergio
* added ukrainian translation, thanks to Oleksandr Natalenko

wip 2009-11-07:
NEW: added middle click actions (No Action, Close Task, Move to Current Desktop) because of popular demand

wip 2009-11-03:
FIX: don't hide the panel when the tooltip is displayed

wip 2009-11-02:
FIX: gave tooltips a reasonable width when composite is deactivated an thus no preview is shown

wip 2009-11-01:
FIX: another tooltip placement regression

wip 2009-10-30:
FIX: crash on right click on startup items. thanks to hurricanek for noticing and xep for hints on how to reproduce this bug.

wip 2009-10-29:
FIX: tooltip layout (text was not expanding horizontally properly), thanks to anonymous for noticing.

For more see:
http://bitbucket.org/panzi/smooth-tasks/src/tip/ChangeLog