This week in Usability & Productivity, part 14

Usability & Productivity 3 Minutes

Time for your weekly dose of Usability & Productivity! We’ve got some good stuff today, including some nice improvements for the Open & Save dialogs–with a lot more on that front to come soon!

Additionally, another major bug worth highlighting has been fixed! Previously, image slideshows used for the desktop wallpaper or in a media frame widget would leak memory like crazy, eventually crashing the system. Veteran KDE developer David Edmundson traced this to a Qt bug and submitted a patch that’s been accepted! It’ll go into Qt 5.11 which hasn’t been released yet, so go bug your distros to backport the fix into their Qt 5.9.x or 5.10.x branches, as we plan to do for the upcoming Kubuntu 18.04 release. Soon KDE Plasma users will once again be able to use slideshow wallpapers without blowing up their computers!

But wait, there’s more…

New Features

  • When audio is set to switch to new sources that become active, this is now indicated with an on-screen display depicting the new device (KDE Phabricator revision D12083, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik):
  • You can (once again!) copy the text of the date and time from the Clock widget (KDE bug 355190, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Bernhard Schiffner))

Bugfixes

  • Fixed a bug that prevented removable devices from automounting correctly (KDE bugs 391706, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.5 and KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Stefan Brüns)
  • Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to crash when switching the desktop from Folder View to Desktop View (KDE bug 391642, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by David Edmundson)
  • Fixed a bug that could cause Konsole to not copy long text correctly under certain circumstances (KDE bug 352616, fixed in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Mariusz Glebocki)
  • Fixed a bug that could cause Gwenview to not update an image’s thumbnail in the Thumbnail bar after rotating it (KDE bug D11714, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
  • Fixed a bug in Gwenview that could cause an image’s thumbnail to not update properly after undoing a crop or rotate operation (KDE bug 356998, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
  • Fixed a bug in Gwenview that could cause changed shortcuts to not take effect until after the program was restarted (KDE bug 389331, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
  • Fixed a bug causing Baloo (KDE’s file indexing service) to incorrectly
    handle complex boolean queries (KDE bug 392620, fixed in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Stefan Brüns)

UI Polish & Improvement

  • Columns in KDE Open & Save dialogs are now always sized correctly, and resize appropriately as the window is resized (KDE bugs 354388, 338502, 196508, 177743, and 96638, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Scott Harvey):
  • The Open dialog now opens in the correct location when using a file located on a remote filesystem (KDE bug 374913, improved in KDE Plasma 5.12.5, authored by Alex Richardson)
  • A consistent (and better) icon is now used for “configure” everywhere (KDE Phabricator revision D12034, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by me, Nate Graham):


  • The login screen now uses the same icon as the Lock screen for the “find or log in as other user” feature (KDE bug 392830, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Scott Harvey)
  • Dolphin’s Information Panel can now optionally show condensed absolute dates rather than long relative dates – try right-clicking on it! (KDE bug 392352, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0)
  • Gwenview now displays a better background for parts of images that are transparent, and lets the user configure more alternate backgrounds if desired (KDE Phabricator revision D11630, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger):
  • Gwenview now honors the chosen background color setting for SVG images (KDE bug D11629, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
  • Gwenview’s transition effect between images has been improved (KDE bug 373161, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
  • Dolphin’s “Open path” and “Open path in new folder” actions now scroll to and highlight the selected file (KDE bug 377510, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by me, Nate Graham)
  • Non-square icons can now be used for the Application Launcher’s button (KDE Phabricator revision D12161, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik):

    🙂

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Published by Nate

Published

22 thoughts on “This week in Usability & Productivity, part 14”

  1. You should really fix the bug where you start every bugfix entry with “Fixed a bug…”. This redundantly redundant redundancy is driving me crazy!

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    1. Possibly it would take the author longer to draft these lists if he also varied all the sentences’ beginnings?

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  5. Amazing work as always!!!

    But: “Non-square icons can not be used” -> i think you meant “Non-square icons can NOW be used”

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  6. I think consistent icons for configuration actions is good, but after looking at the mockups (or are they actual screenshots?) I think the “general config” one (two switches in a column) just aren’t identified as “configuration” at lest in my head, especially in the open file dialog. In the other ones, it’s just (barely) OK because I’ll rely more on the text (unconsciously?), but in just this one case, I just can’t decide what’s it’s expected to do. Well, for the next day, I’ll remember I guess.
    Then you can use things like tooltips, but they d’ont work so well with graphic pens.

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    1. Those are actual screenshots. This icon is not necessarily final, and we’re discussing possible better icons. But it was important to standardize on *something*, since at the very minimum it’s a prerequisite for being able to easily changing it in the future. Before this patch, Plasma, System Settings, and GTK apps run in Plasma used the “two sliders” icon, while KDE apps used the icon commonly used for file or document properties. It was an inconsistent mess.

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  7. Hi, Thanks for your hard work.
    Here are some notes on my usage of KDE Plasma, I will be glad if you think about any of them.
    .
    -KDE Dialogue and Dolphin :
    Both does not support the “computer:///” Page which simply view all hard disks and external connected devices. I know they are obvious on the left panel. However, Many other file managers support this page and it is far more elegant as a start page. Especially in the (Save) and (open) dialogue.
    I wish you rethink of it and even make it optional not default.
    .
    -Konsol :
    Tabs close button in not in a standard position; away from the tab. i think you may rethink to make tabs close button and new tab just like Firefox.
    by the way, It will be very good idea to make a konsole “private session/tab” that pause recording commands history temporary and any other metadata kept by konsole, if any.
    Actually this is a fun idea for dolphin “Private window” too
    .
    -Kde-Connect:
    Great, Very Useful, thank you. One tiny problem : The same mount point per device every time it connect. one more: Bluetooth support ? Out of topic : flatpak version ? windows port?
    -I will write down more notes if you do not mind.
    .
    Thank you.

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  8. “Columns in KDE Open & Save dialogs are now always sized correctly”
    OMG, never thought i’ll live to see this one fixed! Thanks!

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    1. I do, but the PIM suite isn’t my priority right now. I’m focusing on Frameworks, Plasma, and other apps for the time being, and hope to start on PIM in a year or two. There are only so many hours in the day…

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  11. Hello Nate,

    Do you think there is something you can do to improve windows placement when you have multiple monitors ? For exemple, as I said in the bug report, I have 2 monitors and the applications always opens on the wrong monitor, the secondary one. I saw that I can force each windows to open on a specific monitor but it’s not viable. I just want every applications to open on the primary monitor. I’m on Debian Strech at work (no choice) so I use Plasma 5.8.6 but I think it’s the same with the latest release (correct me if I’m wrong).

    https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=393229

    Thanks.

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  12. Well how about new wallpaper? Every plasma release used to have a fresh wallpaper, but 5.12 didn’t have and it seems 5.13 is not going to have new wallpaper either. It makes using plasma everyday so much worse! Wallpapers should be no1 Priority!

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