KDE Plasma 5.6 Video
KDE Plasma 5.6
Tuesday, 22 March 2016. Today KDE releases a feature-packed new version of its desktop user interface, Plasma 5.6.
This release of Plasma brings many improvements to the task manager, KRunner, activities, and Wayland support as well as a much more refined look and feel.
Slicker Plasma Theme
Breeze Color Scheme Support
The default Plasma theme, Breeze, now follows the application color scheme allowing for a more personalized experience. A new 'Breeze Light' together with 'Breeze Dark' theme can be used to bring back the previous behavior. Additionally, tooltip animations have become more subtle.
Supercharged Task Manager
Copy Progress
Multitasking has just become easier. The much improved task manager in Plasma 5.6 now displays progress of tasks, such as downloading or copying files.
Media Controls in Panel and Tooltips
Moreover, hovering a music or video player shows beautiful album art and media controls, so you never have to leave the application you're currently working with. Our media controller applet that shows up during playback also received some updates, notably support for multiple players running simultaneously.
Jump List Using Firefox 
Jump List Using Steam
Not only did we improve interacting with running applications, starting applications gets in your way less, too. Using Jump Lists you can launch an application and jump, hence the name, to a specific task right away. This feature is also present in the application launchers.
Smoother Widgets
KRunner's Smoother look and Folderview in Panel
There are many refinements to the overall visuals of Plasma in this release. KRunner gained support for drag and drop and lost separator lines to look smoother while icons on the desktop traded the solid label background for a chic drop shadow. Users that place a folder applet in their panel can enjoy improved drag and drop, support for the back button on a mouse as well as choosing between list and icon view. On the more technical side, many small fixes to hi-dpi scaling have found their way into this release.
Weather
Weather Widget
Another feature returns from the old days, the weather widget.
On the road to Wayland
Plasma using Wayland
With Plasma 5.5 for the first time we shipped a Wayland session for you to try out. While we still do not recommend using Wayland as a daily driver, we've made some significant advances:
- Window decorations are now supported for Wayland clients giving you a beautiful and unified user experience
- Input handling gained all features you've come to know and love from the X11 world, including 'Focus follows mouse', Alt + mouse button to move and resize windows, etc
- Different keyboard layouts and layout switching
Tech Preview System Integration Themes
We are trailing a tech preview of Breeze themes for Plymouth and Grub, so Plasma can give you a complete system experience from the moment you turn your computer on.
Also previewed in simple systemtray, an experimental systemtray replacement. Plasma Media Center remains in tech preview but work is ongoing for Plasma 5.7.
Comments
also: very nice Video... Well done!
First of all, I am very grateful to Plasma developers for great job! And I very hope it will continue successfully.Llet me say couple of reflections about Plasma.
First of all, every time I try the new Plasma version I check whether displaying of KOrganizer events in Calendar widget was implemented, but unfortunately... For me it is crucial feature of Plasma, which I very need and looking froward for it. And it is main reason making me sticked to KDE 4. I remember that Martin Gräßlin in his blog had promised yet in October 2015 to somebody of users to "push" to developer who works on this code . Can we hope for implementing this feature in Plasma 5.7?
And second wery painful issue for me is the absence of possibility to switch off the snapping of desktop elements to the grid. It is the most annoying and irritating restriction in Plasma 5. First of all it concerns the icons of symbolic links in "Folder view" of desktop, but also widgets as well. I beg you VERY much, please, bring back the possibility to switch gridding off! There are a lot of reasons for doing this. In my case it is first of all because I got use for much more dense arrangement of icons then you propose by default, and for me such loose desktop looks horrible. Besides that, I am strongly got use to place Trashcan to right lower corner (I do this for more then 20 years), and now it became problematic - it jumps away when comes too close to lower border of the screen (especially if it is a link, but not widget).
The possibility of free moving icons on desktop without gridding exists for more than 25 years in most environments since Win 3.11, OS/2 Warp, all previous versions of KDE, GNOME, etc. And there are a lot of users who got use to it. If nobody complained about it up to this moment - it's just because Plasma 5 was in state of active developing, and testers don't want diverting of developers' attention from more urgent things. But now, when new LTS distributions start using Plasma 5, this issue needs to be solved.
And the third. Please, make the "System settings => Input devices => Mouse => Double click for opening files and folders" option taking effect not only over symlinks, but over the widgets on desctop as well, as it was in KDE 4. It is qute unconvenient when, for example, the Trashcan opens accidentally in Dolphin by single click, taking a lot of time. A lot of old users got use to launching everything from desktop by double click.
One more vote for option to enble or disable desktop grid in desktop folder view as it was in KDE 4. Or at least provide us the file and string which we can modify to avoid thode large squares. In Desktop mode there is a solution with editing /usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.desktopcontainment/contents/ui/main.qml and change LayoutManager.cellSize.width and LayoutManager.cellSize.height to 1 but this not work in Folder view mode. For now I only try Plasma 5 in a virtual machine because of this and it prevents me from migrating to Plasma. And I run Arch you see...
First of all, I am very grateful to Plasma developers for great job! And I very hope it will continue successfully.Let me say couple of reflections about Plasma. First of all, every time I try the new Plasma version I check whether the displaying of KOrganizer events in Calendar widget was implemented, but unfortunately... For me it is crucial feature of Plasma, which I very need and looking froward for it. And it is main reason making me sticked to KDE 4. I remember that Martin Gräßlin in his blog had promised yet in October 2015 to somebody of users to "push" to developer who works on this code . Can we hope for implementing this feature in Plasma 5.7? And second very painful issue for me is the absence of possibility to switch off the snapping of desktop elements to the grid. It is the most annoying and irritating restriction in Plasma 5. First of all it concerns the icons of symbolic links in "Folder view" of desktop, but also widgets as well. I beg you VERY much, please, bring back the possibility to switch gridding off! There are a lot of reasons for doing this. In my case it is first of all because I got use for much more dense arrangement of icons then you propose by default, and for me such loose desktop looks horrible. Besides that, I am strongly got use to place Trashcan to the right lower corner (I do this for more then 20 years), and now it became problematic - it jumps away when comes too close to lower border of the screen (especially if it is a link, but not a widget). The possibility of free moving icons on desktop without gridding exists for more than 25 years in most environments since Win 3.11, OS/2 Warp, all previous versions of KDE, GNOME, etc. And there are a lot of users who got use to it. If nobody complained about it up to this moment - it's just because Plasma 5 was in state of active developing, and testers don't want diverting of developers' attention from more urgent things. But now, when the new LTS distributions start using Plasma 5, this issue needs to be solved. And the third. Please, make the option "System settings => Input devices => Mouse => Double click for opening files and folders" taking effect not only over symbolic links, but over the widgets on desctop as well, as it was in KDE 4. It is qute unconvenient when, for example, the Trashcan opens accidentally in Dolphin by single click, taking a lot of time. A lot of old users got use to launching everything from desktop by double click.
nfc
I second that
I'm sorry to have to say it, but you're delusional.
Let's just be honest for a moment. Large square boxes and stick figure icons are the polar opposite of refined. KDE is not getting more refined; it went to Play Skool, not finishing school.
Getting rid of separator lines is another significant regression. I see that all the Plasma things are still translucent and thus unreadable, one of many bad choices that my testing has revealed is non-optional.
In case you didn't notice, everyone hates Windows 8. Stop trying to mimick Win 8/10!
> Let's just be honest for a moment. Large square boxes and stick figure icons are the polar opposite of refined.
It's called "flat design" and it has been around for years and is well liked by very many people. The Numix Icon set is a flat icon set that has been touted as one of the best for Linux users by many people. Besides, the icons in Breeze that are flat style are mostly just indicators, system tray icons, and stuff like that. Application icons are still much more detailed icons.
> KDE is not getting more refined; it went to Play Skool, not finishing school.
In your opinion, which many people disagree with that opinion, including myself.
> Getting rid of separator lines is another significant regression.
If you want lines for separation, edit the SVG that makes the separator and put it back. It's not that big of a problem to be "severly disappointed".
> I see that all the Plasma things are still translucent and thus unreadable, one of many bad choices that my testing has revealed is non-optional.
Change the opacity in the SVGs that run the plasma theme, problem solved.
> In case you didn't notice, everyone hates Windows 8. Stop trying to mimick Win 8/10!
They hated the tiling icon start menu, not the design itself . . . most people even said they liked the overall design of 8 and 10.
Besides, KDE Plasma 5 design was announced at least a year before Windows 10 showed their design so KDE certainly didn't mimic or copy Windows 10 design.
While I'm, in general, rather satisfied with Plasma, I must admit that design isn't improving a lot. As in Windows, it seems designed for mobiles, with those enormous text boxes which are almost the triple ize of the font and corners, many corners and rectangles everywhere. If KDE designers want to take some inspirationl ideas, MacOS is the place to look at, not Windows.
If still there isn't a way to provide shadow for gtk applications in kde I won't use it due to lack of a solid qt-based web browser which can be fully integrated to the system such as theme, shadows, transparency ...
Maybe I just don't understand what you are referring to but based on your comments it seems like you mean GTK apps blending well with KWin for colors (theme), shadows (I guess around the windows themselves) and transparency affects.
If I understand correctly, then yes Plasma 5.6 has that because so did Plasma 4.6 . . . that has been available for a very long time. There is a new theme via Plasma 5.5 with Breeze-Dark and stuff like that but for the most part that has always been available via Oxygen.
Hello Micheal thanks for your comment. I was referring to drop down menu in gtk applications such as file menu in firefox. Since you pointed out there are new developments I am downloading new manjaro 16.06 pre 2 which shipped with plasma 5.6 to test gtk shadows.
I have been using plasma 5 way back from its first release and now its the best daily driver for me.
How do i install this on Kubuntu 14.04 i can't fin the way !! HALP plz
Hello, I'd like that you fix this bug in the plasmoid, the thumbnails in file manager vs plasmoid seems diferent even when I look the same folder
With the new update the background of the fullscreen menu has gone weird. Before it used the blur settings, now it ignores the blur intensity no matter if I turn blur off and on or sliding the intensity scrubber to the left or right (and applying the changes). Rebooting didn't help.
http://imgur.com/a/oKhKL
the top image is the old correct version while the bottom is the new version.