KDE: Happiness is...

Happiness is just simple as a good comment. It was about a Matrix style colorscheme but --indirectly-- it was about how good Serenity can handle dark colorschemes. Probably was I in a good mood, but I really enjoyed it --once translated in French. ;-)

As for Serenity, if I'm here that's just to say a few words about my style. That's it, I made a new release. There was that tiny visual bug on the checkmarks in HTML pages that I couldn't stand any more. Gone! The fix isn't elegant but there is no 100% sure way to know if you are drawing on an HTML page, so I had to find a sort of clever way.

I also added tiny buttons behind the sub-menu arrow. I saw this on a screenshot somewhere and I wanted the same! But when the menu entry is hovered and the sub-menu is opened, the tiny button is depressed. That's really nice... and I don't think the style I saw does the same thing.

I also played a little with the "gradient engine" of both the style and the window decoration. There's no real "engine" since KDE draws all the gradients but the so-called "engine" now can tune the parameters passed to KDE in order to draw different types of gradient, and eventually totally bypass the gradient drawing to draw a flat area instead. The "flat" gradients are especially nice on depressed buttons. It gives the impression the buttons are engraved on the surface of the window. Otherwise, the "engine" can produce buttons with a very smoothly curved surface --almost flat-- or Serenity's regular buttons, or else buttons with a more curved surface that improves their look when using a dark color.

But this is only the first step. There are still a few different types of gradient that could be worth playing with.

Well, if I don't already start a new style. I saw an interesting volume slider on KDE-Look. I still need to figure out what the other widgets will look like but what I have in mind is something definitively more alien than Serenity. Any way, I will probably wait for KDE 4. I need the anti-aliased drawing capabilities of Qt 4.

Already?! ;-)