I want to refactor Deskbar-Applet, because the idea behind Deskbar-Applet is just great and simplifies
your daily work a lot. Unfortunately, the source code is according to the maintainer “full of hacks”[5]
and therefore difficult to maintain. In addition, the current efforts to unite the world of desktop search
engines[6] changes the way Deskbar-Applet works. Ideally, Deskbar-Applet just queries the user's favorite
desktop search engine and presents the results. This way each program does what it can do best.
Deskbar-Applet presents the results and the search engines does the search and manages the search index.
Despite presenting search results Deskbar-Applet should of course keep the plugins that are not directly
related to searching (e.g. launching applications, calculating), because they emphasize that Deskbar-Applet
is more than a search engine.

Even though this goal can't be achieved right now, because the developers of the different search engines
are currently working in implementing the Wasabi specification, it's necessary to gear Deskbar-Applet up
for the time the teams are ready.

Therefore, the UI code needs to be separated from the search part e.g. using MVC pattern. Actually, the code
is already kind of separated in more or less independent parts. But this kind of separation isn't ideal for
the final goal to provide a Deskbar-Applet widget that can be integrated within every application (e.g. gimmie
or slab). Even more important the code should be a lot of easier to maintain and plugins should be easier to
write and integrate. I think of a way to easily find, install and update plugins, maybe even over the internet.

If a developer wants to include the Deskbar-Applet widget within his or her application he or she maybe only
wants to see results that are actually search results and no others. To achieve this either each plugin and/or
each results returned by a plugin should be categorized and only shown in the embedded widget, if the developer
wants to.

From the point of view of the user Deskbar-Applet should load faster and work better as it clearly has some
focus issues. The start-up time could shortened by index in the background and not at start-up. In addition,
the search results could use some polish, too, e.g. if you find a movie or a image it should display a thumbnail.