Ok, if anyones interested I managed to get the smooth tasks widget running by compiling from source :-
https://bitbucket.org/flupp/smooth-tasks-fork/downloadsGo to branches and download the 4.8 branch in zip .gz or .bz2 format
Extract it to a directory and read the install.txt file for instructions on how to compile.
I needed to install the following dependencies for the compile to work on a base install :-
build-essential
cmake
g++
kdebase-workspace-dev
Caveats :
For some reason it messed up my taskbar and I had to recreate the panel. Its fine again now.
Remember this is an unsupported plasma widget that is a fork of the original smooth tasks.
Cheers,
Grepnix