This is a task to discuss this idea I have. This should be discussed between Promo, Plasma developers/VDG.
I have an idea to increase engagement with new Plasma version announcements. Also, since the announcement pages can contain the YouTube video of the release and links to social media, so they would all be indirectly benefited from this. I'll explain in detail below:
Idea
Basically, my idea would be to have a "What's New In This Release" icon show up in the system tray every time there's a new major Plasma update, like 5.23 > 5.24 (and maybe the x.xx.1 release that distros tend to adopt). To avoid any kind of problems, distros would have to opt-in to that functionality. Some candidates to show that icon by default would be KDE Neon and rolling-release distros (since users that use them are very likely to be interested in knowing more about updates but might not know about KDE social media).
Benefits
With this feature, Promo could reach many users that would otherwise be oblivious to the fact KDE has social media pages, and they would also be informed of new features and possibly start getting interested in following Plasma development and even contributing. Also, letting them know about all the new features would improve user perception about Plasma and work as a sort of tutorial by showing users all the new things they can do and didn't even know about, thus improving the user experience.
Functionality:
Clicking on that button would simply open a browser window with the latest release announcement page. Clicking on it one time or right-clicking and closing it would make it permanently go away until the next major update, that way, it wouldn't be intrusive to the user experience.
Since this would probably have to be included in Plasma before the announcement is written and we have a link for it, the button could simply point to a hardcoded, generic link which the sole purpose would be to redirect to the correct announcement page once it gets published.
Discussion topics for this task:
Promo:
- Any thoughts or ideas to improve this?
Plasma developers:
- How feasible would this be to implement?
- Is anyone interested in implementing it?
VDG:
- What icon should be used?
- Would it be better to open the link in a browser window or in a dedicated one?
- Should it just open a link or instead work like an applet with a message like "Your KDE Plasma Desktop has been successfully updated. Click on the button below to check all the new features and improvements:"
