I need your ideas for Google Code-in

It is time again to prepare for Google Code-in. We have 2 weeks to collect tasks that we’d like high-school students aged 13 to 17 to work on. Last year GCI was an amazing success and I hope we can take part again this year.  For this I need your help.

We need to fill this page with as many tasks as we can in the next 2 weeks: http://community.kde.org/GoogleCodeIn/2011/Ideas  Unlike last year we will not be able to add more tasks for the students until the middle of the program so we really need to have as many as we can by the time the program starts.

We are again looking for tasks in the following areas (we need at least 5 in each of them):

  • Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
  • Documentation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
  • Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
  • Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
  • Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
  • Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
  • Translation: Tasks related to localization
  • User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

If you are unsure how tasks should look like:

http://community.kde.org/GoogleCodeIn/2011/Ideas is waiting for your ideas. Go Go Go! 😀
PS: If you are a high-school student who wants to take part in GCI and have a task you’d like to work on: Get in touch with the team you want to work with and ask them to add the task for you now!

18 thoughts on “I need your ideas for Google Code-in”

  1. Maybe a nice and simple Outreach/Documentation task could be to create some professional-looking (and freely-licensed!) example documents which can be used in the official screenshots of applications like Krita, Kexi, Okular, etc.
    Just a thought…

  2. Audit the presence of keyboard shortcuts, adding them to the main interface.

    Step 1. Check for keyboard shortcuts. Report problematic areas. All KDE software functions should be reachable with the keyboard.

    Step 2. Make a report with all missing or malfunctioning keyboard shortcuts.

    Step 3. With the report, add all missing or malfunctioning keyboard shortcuts. Depending on the skill level required, let the student file bugs according with all his conclusions, or require the student to fix some keyboard interaction bugs.

  3. I am not a programmer, but I can make some suggestions:

    – Create a set of Klipper actions – Klipper allows to create actions based on Mimetype (or content) of the clipboard. Unfortunately there a very few. Think about useful ones, ask about need in KDE forum and implement them.

    – Create questionnaire (and write a report about the results) about what people think about KDEs browsers (rekonq, Konqueror): What are there problems? How much are they using them, compared to competition (Firefox, Chromium, Opera)? Why are they using competition? What features do they miss in a KDE browser?

    – Identify problems with multi-screen setups. Multi-screen-setups still cause some problems in KDE. Check out the existing bug reports and try to reproduce them. Also check out yourself, what kind of problems you stumble upon, when using a multi-screen setup and report them, if necessary. (This task could be done by more then one student (each using a different graphic driver). I guess this task would appart from having a multi-monitor setup would require running trunk.

    – Check out service-menus in Dolphin/Konqueror: Which of those (or parts) users can download from KDE-apps should be delivered in the KDE standard-configuration, which available in the KDE-standard config do not make sense any more. Possibly evaluate this in a questionaire or by asking users in the forum.

  4. More:
    KDEs Plasma Desktop give users possibilities in configuring their Desktop in all ways they could dream of. Still the standard KDE Desktop configuration looks very similar to old times: Check out the possibilities and create one or more alternate Desktop configurations which serve as example for other users. Create instructions (or: do not know if this is possible prepare them to be delivered with KDE as an alternative). Also: Based on you findings you could suggest usefull alterations to the KDE standard desktop configuration.

  5. more:
    The report bug or wishes function in many apps helps users to easily report bugs/wishes to the right KDE component. Unfortunately at many places (especially KControl-modules and many plasma-applets this is missing). Evaluate where this is missing and add them.

  6. more:
    Akregator contains a short list of KDE related feeds which are shown on first start. This list is partially outdated. Create a suggestion for an updated list, may be add some more KDE/Linux related feeds. (also check, if it is possible to have a different list depending on the users language). Do the same for KDE standard bookmarks. Update them, look for useful KDE/Linux related links which which appear in a new installation. Ask in KDE forum for useful suggestions.

  7. Bug 226124 – kmix panel applet should give access to phonon systemsettings module: on right click the kmix panel applet should give access (a “link”) to the
    phonon systemsettings module.

    Bug 216585 – kaffeine should also have a binding to *.iso-files

    Bug 202495 – dr. konqui should autologin in bugs.kde.org

    Bug 283501 – OSDs for Wireless on/off, 3G on/off, GPS on/off and (un)docking

    Make Dolphin ask for permission(passwords), if a user wants to perform a task where he does not have the sufficient rights (I believe the basics for this exist in KDE, its just not implemented in Dolphin.

  8. Bug 131219 – mailinglist-addresses should be also added to autocomplete

    Akregator: Bug 194858 – search bar for feed folders like in kmail

    Bug 194860 – The function of konqueror plugin akregator should available in akregator itself too.

    Bug 199973 – Akregator: No back in browsing history if embedded file openend in tab

    Bug 264437 – Allow directly editing an added addressbook entry

    Bug 261830 – text snippets can not be moved via drag and drop between groups

    Bug 202498 – clicking on a feed-folder should bring it to the front when I am in it

    Akregator and Konqueror should be made network aware (so that they re-attempt loading tabs which could not loaded while network was down)

    Bug 244678 – add a copy “email address” into the context menu when right clicking on an email address

    Bug 228742 – share function for social networks (implemented in Akregator, Konqi and rekonq)

    Bug 224594 – improve the error page in konqueror

    Bug 145278 – Integrate Cookiebutton like functionality

    Bug 264437 – Allow directly editing an added addressbook entry

    Bug 199973 – No back in browsing history if embedded file openend in tab

    Bug 244678 – add a copy “email address” into the context menu when right clicking on an email address

    Bug 203229 – reload all tabs function

    Bug 202498 – clicking on a feed-folder should bring it to the front when I am in it

    This is list of bugs which might not need so much time. Since I am not a coder, I do not know.

  9. About what Mark said, I would expand:

    Create video tutorials on how to make KDE look like other existing desktop environments.

    I’m thinking of: Windows 7, Windows XP, Mac OS X, KDE 3, GNOME 2, GNOME 3, etc. And maybe make Plasma Active look like Android (if possible), etc.

  10. The video thing would in the end prove how flexible Plasma is, which is the actual point. If an user learns how to turn plasma into those popular systems, he will be able to setup the desktop with what he likes the most about each.

  11. @lydia: I could sort them better and write the non-technical part of the description to those tasks where a mentor is found.

  12. Here are a few ideas for Rekonq
    1- Add a “Clear All” button to the Downloads page.
    2- Assign a shortcut for opening Downloads page. (Ctrl + J)
    3- Option to open links from a different domain in new tab.
    4- Add context menu to TabBar to close right/left tabs.
    5- If the zoombar is visible zooming a page using Ctrl + Mouse Wheel change the value.
    6- Re-opened closed tab should go, as best as possible, where the original tab was.
    7- Middle Click a bookmark folder to open the folder in new tabs.

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