In this week's KDE Commit-Digest: A Calculator and Show Desktop Plasmoid, units conversion and contacts "runners", enhanced composite-based effects, a "dashboard" view and applet hover handles in Plasma. Updated artwork for "about" pages (like the one present in Konqueror upon application startup). Support for quick user switching in Kickoff. Continued development progress in KDevelop 4. Work begins on resurrecting KEduca for the KDE 4.1 timeframe. New imagery for KTuberling and KMahjongg. Foundations laid for "undo close tab" in Konqueror. OSS device hotplugging in KMix. A bandwidth scheduler plugin in KTorrent. Interface work, including per-protocol UI specification in Kopete. Hardware database for an enhanced audio device experience in Phonon. Continued KDE 4 porting in K3b, with the integration of Solid and Phonon for device and media management. KDE 3.96 tagged, comprising Release Candidate 2 of the development platform (hopefully final), and Beta 5 (or Release Candidate 1) of the Desktop.
Comments
I second the thing about the progress bars... they look clunky and nothing like the elegant and light bars hovering over the other elements with a soft shadow in nuno's mocks. I'd really love to see that again in 4.0, together with the awesome oxygen dropdown-menu style; the actual one is not an eye opener i fear.
Sorry guys, but watering our mouths with such beautiful mocks make me complain there a bit ... oxygen is really nice and clean, but lacks just this last "wow". Pleeease, remember it'll be christmas soon ;-)
The menus will not be done for 4.0. But the mocks will probably not be possible to implement when we actually try to :(
As for the progressbar - it is not done like we want, but we are running out of time, so maybe this will be postponed for a later release too.
Besides using a progressbar to show disk usage in dolphin is conceptually wrong in the first place, though that is besides the point that the progressbar is not done.
I was wondering if the tabs will look like it is now in RC1... It was SOOOO very beautiful in the first version of Oxygen (Beta 1, the old version of Oxygen - With Colorful "background", like in "Option 1" in the Nuno's preview)
http://nuno-icons.com/images/estilo/new%20style%20tabs.png
That was one of the aspects that really showed me somenthing completely new and awesome! Please, please artists and coders of KDE, consider bringing it back!!
And the progress bars are also very diferent from Nuno's mockups.
I know you're all running out of time, but it would be great to see those implementations on next releases. Now, Oxygen theme is not as good as Oxygen icons (but I know that's just a momentary issue).
Bespin (from the old coder of Oxygen) seems more finished (at least for what we can actually see - the theme), so it is good to take already an alternative at the moment of 4.0 release.
Keep up the good work guys! I know you'll make KDE the best desktop enviroment ever!
I'd love to see a theme that more closely matches those mock-ups, and offers the flexibility that Domino provided.
point is: they WANT the theme to be as close to the mockups as possible, but they don't have the manpower to do it.
Here's a couple of KDE3 features that I (and many other people) really love, but which are not yet available for 4.0. It would be nice to know whether they simply haven't been ported yet, or whether they have been purposefully dropped, for usability or other reasons. This is an important distinction as I know that I can write a patch for the former and have it accepted, but if for the latter I know I'd be wasting my time[1].
1) Thumbnailing in File Dialogues. Note that I'm *not* talking about the individual file preview that can be summoned by pressing F11, but the "icon view" that thumbnails *all* files in the current directory (even over remote kio_slaves like ftp!) so you can see previews of all of them at once without having to hover over each one individually.
I remember my 58-year-old mum went bananas over this when she saw me attach an image in KMail - she'd been using Thunderbird whose GTK file dialogue does not have this feature, and finding the right image she wanted to attach out of her hundreds was really laborious. But with KMail, she could see all the previews at once in the file dialogue itself and just scroll through, finding the one she wanted almost straight away. It's a fantastic usability enhancement for power-users and newbies alike, and is often trumpeted as being one of the top reasons why KDE's file dialogues are so much better than GNOME/GTKs. Hopefully it just hasn't been ported yet - the idea of such a great labour-saving feature being dropped just for some "less is more" aesthetic makes me queasy :/
2) Thumbnail + info when you hover over a file in Konqueror. This is a great feature because you do not need a separate panel taking up space all the time - just hover over the file you want information/ thumbnail of, and up it pops! Dolphin does not have this feature, relying on the aforementioned panel to display the info, which is one of the reasons why I'll be using Konqueror in KDE4 (no disrespect to Peter and Dolphin - having Dolphin as the default file manager was the Right Choice as far as I'm concerned, as long as Konqueror remained as feature rich as it is now).
Unfortunately, KDE4's Konqueror now embeds Dolphin, so we lose this handy and space-efficient feature. Any chance of having it return if, say, the File Information panel isn't currently enabled by the user?
3) File Size View in Konqueror. That awesome little plug-in that shows you what's taking up all the space in your current directory and subdirectories by showing all files as blocks geometrical physical size reflects their on-disk size.
--
Incidentally, maybe it would be worth setting up a "Things That Didn't Make it (But Will)" page on techbase or the like, detailing all the features that are planned but didn't make it for 4.0 - things like ereslibres excellent progress viewer, for example. Whenever a feature goes astray, there's often a huge outcry on the Dot about "teh GNOME-ification!1" of KDE/ threats to leave KDE or, if it was a feature that was hyped a while back (as was Raphael's progress viewer, in the Road to KDE4) people will scream "KDE4 is all hype!1", etc. While such tantrums can usually be ignored, it's nice to avoid them in the first place, and a page such as this would go a long way towards accomplishing this and quelling whiner's complaints or just putting dedicated fan's (like me!) fears to rest. What do people think of this idea? Does anyone who has used a recent KDE4 have any items they would add to my list?
[1] There's nothing more demoralizing than this. I remember when someone (not me!) actually spent time on and submitted a patch to add the oft-requested tabs to Dolphin, only to have it rejected. Peter was very nice about the whole thing and was very apologetic and clearly conflicted, but it would have been better, I think, to have a clearly publicised statement saying "We know this feature is really desired by end-users, but we have no plans to include it for the following reasons:"
>> 2) Thumbnail + info when you hover over a file in Konqueror
Couldn't agree more: a nice, simple and elegant solution.
I find that feature of G'd old Konqy surprisingly helpful when browsing through loads of archived media (that and the icon file previews, which you also mentioned).
Dolphin's preview pane is clunky and space-consuming. IMO, previews and all kinds of metadata -fstat, extattr, Nepomuk, ID3, EXIF, whatever- should be displayed on tooltips and edited from the File->Properties dialog.
Leave those "all in your face" design ideas for M$. Surely they'll know how to capitalize on them.
All said, thanks Dan for you amazing work and happy Thanksgiving to those of you who live in the US!
I actually prefer Dolphin's preview pane to tooltips. Less cognitive overhead, less clicks, smoother...
Both should be available, so that the user can enable the one he likes.
So we will be in the YAO (yet another option) tunnel again and again. No, thanks.
That's nice. But as was mentioned, some people using _Konqueror_ might not want such a pane displayed. They are using Konqueror, not Dolphin.
Konqi users who are unhappy about Dolphin replacing it as a filemanager are always assured "konqueror is still there". This obviously isn't entirely correct if Konqi is embedding Dolphin for the file view and missing functionality.
"Incidentally, maybe it would be worth setting up a "Things That Didn't Make it (But Will)" page on techbase or the like, detailing all the features that are planned but didn't make it for 4.0"
Yeah, I was actually thinking we need something similar, a series of "Truth In Advertising" articles on the Dot going through each core area or module with highlights of what's in, what's out, and what's still to come in 4.1. Expectation management, if you will.
Another good series of articles would be "How Do I..." which would show people how to master the basics of the new features, e.g. a walk-through of the new file dialog.
Anyone from the publicity department care to comment on what communication / education is planned in the lead-up to The Big Release?
John.
> going through each core area or module with highlights of what's in,
> what's out, and what's still to come in 4.1.
let's start with this truth: we have enough to do leading up to 4.0. if we want to also do a full examination of kde 3.5 vs kde 4.0 components and schedule / project for each feature not there in 4.0 we'll need many more people on board doing the work.
> Expectation management
we'll be showing exactly what 4.0 is capable of, as well as some technology previews at the release event. i think that will help a lot already.
> Another good series of articles would be "How Do I..."
i agree. and i bet that you or someone like you could write them =) remember, we aren't a staff of people, we're a community of contributors. i'd love to see a techbase like wiki set up for this kind of content for the community to rally around add to, much like the gentoo, ubunto or other such "how to" wikis.
it would take a couple of people to appear on the scene willing to put in the effort to coax the process along. we can provide hosting, the wiki software, etc... but it would take people to make it happen.
perhaps one of the kde forums out there would like to take this on, even, and direct their community towards a new set of possibilities in sharing.
p.s. wiki.kde.org could become that place as well, but again .. it would take some strong stewardship to get that sorted out so we have someting akin to techbase but for users.
I agree that it would be nice to see:
Feature X was intentionally changed and/or removed.
Feature Y didn't make the cut, but should in the future
Feature/App Z is in limbo do to lack of a maintainer. Please volunteer.
File Size View is there: it is another kpart so select View/View mode (first menu entry)/File Size View. Not a nice interface though.
I've been trying to use kde 4 RC1 these days. But I miss a guide or manual that tells me what I should test, what should be working. Because there are lots of things that are obviously not working. So, should I post a bug because of something that simply isn't ready? Kopete, for example, doesn't store all options of it's settings and some they aren't applied. The plasma replacement of kicker is also missing usability: I don't know how to add or remove plasmoids in it.
Have to agree with this. I've used linux\kde on and off for a few years and am keen to help with testing on KDE 4. There don't appear to be any release notes to accompany each release - I would expect these to summarise known errors and direct people to where the testing effort is required. Just releasing something and asking people to 'test it' doesn't seem the most efficient or effective way of utilising your testing resource...
Common sense applies. If you find a very obvious lack, such as adding plasmoids to the panel, then move on -- it's simply not done. For quirkier things like kopete not storing settings file a bug in bugs.kde.org.
Also join #kde4-krush on Saturdays to do intensive testing and collaboration.
actually, you can add them to the panel. drag&drop is your friend :)
I know this isn't obvious, but nobody's had time to make things more easy to use - making stuff work at all is first priority.
I know perhaps this isn't the right place to ask.... but exactly how you drag and drop them to the panel? I've been trying with a very recent build (yesterday) with no luck. If I drag applets over the taskbar, they go under it. If the function is not yet implemented, I apologize for the noise.
You should test stuff you use every day, and report any bugs you see.
It's a lot better for us to have duplicate reports than to have no idea
that something isn't working; which is possible since people have very
different work habits.
A flipside, though: when you submit bugs, please take a look at the duplicate suggestions the bug wizard provides.
SO the screencast looks fantastic, but I am not sure how the containers work yet. I am wondering if there are plans for the user to be able to zoom in and out using the keyboard. I am not sure the best way is to click on the toolbox.I have to say kde4 it looking better and better everyday.
we don't have a keyboard shortcut for zooming yet... one zooming is more feature complete (there are a couple key things missing to really make it what it needs to be) then we'll come back to the keyboard shortcuts for it =)
Can't wait to final! It is do good and ...
But I have some questions in relationship with plasma?
- what about support for icons on desktop
- what about compatibly .desktop files both for KDE3 and 4
- links that i have made in KDE3 don't work in KDE4
- what about configuring wallpaper? I still can't configure it. It would nice to see options from KDE3 conf dialog - gradients, etc.
- what about superkaramba support for plasma? And, for example I write plasmoid, how can I run it - or better how can I add it too dialog and new ...
- also what about apple dashboard support
- panel is not configurable
I think that KDE have to be higly costumable as KDE3 is - maybe idea for 4.1 - old kcontrol from 3.5 for example - not kubuntu systemsettings!!!.
I know that there are many more important things but please include walpaper option.
> what about support for icons on desktop?
planned, not done.
> what about compatibly .desktop files both for KDE3 and 4
yes they are compatible.
> what about configuring wallpaper?
you now can. update.
> It would nice to see options from KDE3 conf dialog - gradients, etc.
sure. but it's not done yet.
> what about superkaramba support for plasma?
there is a plasmoid for superkaramba compatibility. I guess it's still in playground somewhere.
> And, for example I write plasmoid, how can I run it?
not sure. you are supposed to use "Plasmagik". Also see `plasmoidviewer`.
> also what about apple dashboard support
it has to wait for QtWebKit.
> panel is not configurable
yes, known.
> I think that KDE have to be higly costumable as KDE3 is
it will be loads more so, with all the SVG theming, etc.
> old kcontrol from 3.5 for example - not kubuntu systemsettings!!!
it's been decided in a developer meeting to use systemsettings by default. why do you want kcontrol?
I don't know the original poster's opinion, but I like kcontrol better because it has a tree showing all the available pages. In kubuntu systemsettings, you have to press the "Overview"-button before you can choose another page. In kcontrol, you select the new page directly in the tree, which is faster. I also hate the fact that in systemsettings the overview disappears when you select an item.
yes, same reason. kcontrol is more usuable, but not userfriendly. It should be option.
I agree, it is really annoying. I agree that the old kcontrol a bit like a mess, but the systemsettings in kubuntu is worse. Luckily you can switch back in kubuntu, but if kde adopts this as a standard I fear this will not be possible.
Also in kcontrol, if a module does not fit in the window, and needs to be scrolled, Apply, Default etc. buttons at the bottom are always there. In systemsettings you have to scroll to apply.
This is a "bug" that could be fixed without dropping systemcontrol as a whole.
Moreover, the real problem is that many KCM modules doesn't follow the 800x600 rules. Fix the module first, than the container.
what a clusterf.
Couldn't agree more.
kcontrol: select category, click option, select another category, click option...
systemsettings: click advanced, select category, click option, go back, click general, select category, ugh wrong category, go back, select right category, click option...
Is this an improvement? What should I expect in KDE5?
But how many different settings does someone regularly change at the same time?
A recent message on a list points out the "people I know" issue but this can't even fall into that category because it's obvious most people don't complain about not being able to easily change a bunch of settings at the same time. This should be something for everyone not the minority power user or old school "I love the 90's" person. ;)
I'm looking at the kubuntu system settings right now. 18 icons in the general category and 9 in the advanced category. I open kcontrol on the same system and I have at the most 9 categories I can click on before I can click on something within one of those categories that will let me change a setting. Some of those I expand only to find that there are still settings within something else that needs to be expanded. *If* everything was expanded and it didn't require a huge windows and still didn't require some scrolling it *might* be faster to change different settings in different modules but it isn't.
The biggest problem system settings has and related dialogs is that the user doesn't get a sense of any forward or back action. When you click it instantly goes to a different view. If this had an animation it would give that 'feel' of what just happened and a person's instinct can kick in when they see that it "came from over there" so they need to "go back". They have the related items on the same line so you could push that horizontal line to the side vertically and it would give quick access to similar settings and provide the animation that gives the user a sense of 'where they are' at the same time.
get together 2-3 people and start developing kcontrol4. the code is already ported but has some bugs and what not to bring it up to speed. we can host it in extragear and then everyone can be happy with their preference.
but to support multiple apps for each category requires a similar multiple in the number of people involved. simple math =)
logixoul already answered most of the queries, but i'll add a couple notes:
- what about support for icons on desktop
you can already have icons on your desktop. they need a bit of final touch up love, but they exist and essentially work. what isn't there is loading the contents of the desktop folder. honestly, i think that's a very, very broken concept that needs to be shot in the head and never heard from again. however, given how much so many people have built their workflow around that very, very broken concept we'll have support for it. it will be possible to disable, however, for those who wish to adventure forward a bit. =)
- links that i have made in KDE3 don't work in KDE4
which links?
- It would nice to see options from KDE3 conf dialog - gradients, etc.
erg. i really hope we don't duplicate that nightmare. there are tons of fiddly that few to no one uses (when was the last time you saw someone use the desktop pattern + blending option?) .. moreover, containments give us the ability to provide multiple options for background rendering separate from the core. so if someone steps up to create the ultimate mind bending set of options galore for blending patterns, colours and pixmaps with 12 different scaling algorithms ..... we can provide that in extragear very easily while keeping the default clear and simple.
this is rather similar to the approach firefox has taken for many such features, if you think about it =)
Ok, i understand. You want to make KDE cleaner and more userfriendly.
But look people says that Gnome is userfriendly! OK. It is! But what can you do with it? Nothing (i think).
And what about colorizing knotes? - don't like yellow so much.
Please provide options in extragear.
Plasma will make things so much more flexible.
Choices don't have to be expressed as just micromanaging options. :)
screnshoot from my kde-devel
there are 2 bugs:
- icons looks very bad while reising - where is now SVG?
- systemtray isn't on dockbar
very good work have done in UI - looks very professional, clean...
what about moving items from desktop to panel. it workn't for me.
What about this http://www.kde-look.org/CONTENT/content-files/40702-40702-koledar.gif
Finally I got Kwin Composite working whit ati, aiglx and the new driver.
And, I liked a lot some of the effects, as the parent dialog, however, it's a lot slower than Compiz Fusion, and it doesn't appear to offer all the effects.
It felt like using xcompmgr. Is it really using 3D accel? or is it just using 2D accel?
Thanks, and cheers.
Ok, I mess even more whit my xorg.conf, they work much much better know, however, it's still not as fast as Compiz, though it could be fglrx
The new panel look is awesome. However, there is a slight usability problem with it: the launcher button is not in the corner anymore and is therefore not as easy to hit.
Maybe some special rule could be devised where when you click on the side borders of the panel, the clicks would register as clicks on the leftmost/rightmost contained plasmoid.
+1 !
If you make it the full width of the screen then the side borders dissappear, as Aaron explained in his screencast.
omg! someone was actually listening! ;)
That must feel nice :) Thanks for explaining it.