Hot on the heels of last week, we’ve got a ton more Usability and Productivity for you! Look at all this cool stuff:

New Features

• There’s now a global Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut that launches Konsole from anywhere (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• You can now place hand-made .desktop files in ~/Templates to make new templates appear in the “Create New” menu (Marijo Mustač, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• KNewStuff now includes an interface to actually install the apps that it recommends (Nicolas Fella, KDE Frameworks 5.48):

  

• It’s now possible to sort images by rating in Gwenview (Farid Boudedja, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• It’s now possible to drag an image being viewed in Gwenview into other applications (Huon Imberger, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

Bugfixes

• Discover’s toolbar no longer experiences layout breakage after navigating from one app page to another (Marco Martin and Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14)
• “Locked” emblem icons on read-only folders in Dolphin now display correctly for 3rd-party icon themes (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Discover no longer crashes on launch when Flatpak has always been used only to install to the user’s home directory via the --user option (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• Dolphin’s “Hidden Files” button now displays an icon when using the Oxygen icon theme (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  

UI Polish & Improvement

• Dolphin’s View Properties dialog now shows the additional information list inline rather than in another modal dialog (Elvis Angelaccio, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  
• It’s now possible to open multiple documents at a time in Okular using the file Open dialog (Oliver Sander, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• KMag now has HiDPI support (Christoph Feck, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Devices and processors in KInfoCenter’s Device Viewer list are now sorted in a human-friendly manner (Isaac True, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• .ico files can now be used for custom folder icons (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

After a light week, we’re now roaring back with a veritable avalanche of Usability and Productivity! Look at all this cool stuff:

New Features

• Discover now shows the release date for apps that have defined this information in their AppStream metadata (Aleix Pol and me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• After sharing an image with Imgur in Spectacle, the shared image link is automatically copied to the clipboard (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  
• Kate (and other apps using the KTextEditor framework) can now be configured to show a file’s total number of lines in the status bar (Shubham Jangra and Christoph Cullmann, KDE Frameworks 5.48)

Bugfixes

• The Network widget no longer has inappropriately large icons with certain themes in Plasma 5.13 (Jan Grulich, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• The new blur effect now works properly on Wayland when scaling is used and on secondary screens (Alex Nemeth, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• Copying from GTK applications to non-GTK applications on Wayland now works (Michal Srb, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Fixed a case where Plasma could crash on login (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• Fixed several crashes and hangs in Discover (Apeix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• Discover’s update notifier plasmoid now lists the correct number of total updates when some of them are security updates (Chris Holland, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• When multiple version of a KDE Plasma or app add-on are available, Discover now installs the latest one instead of a random one (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.3)
• Fixed a huge amount of bugs affecting Task Manager preview tooltips, including a lack of thumbnails for the tooltip of a running app’s second window, A window’s first tooltip being too wide, a window’s tooltip being too wide when Plasma is just started, and apps with multiple windows showing an extra tooltip after Plasma is restarted (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.13.1). Thanks Eike!
• The “Minimize All” widget now behaves correctly when a single window is subsequently un-minimized (David Edmundson and Anthony Fieroni, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• Discover’s progress indicator is now more accurate when installing a single application (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)

UI Polish & Improvement

• It’s now possible to turn off the sliding wallpaper feature for the new “Switch Virtual Desktops” effect, and the “slide docks” feature is now off by default (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.14)
• On the System Settings Fonts page, the “to” label is now disabled when the controls on either side of it are also disabled (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.13.2)
• Discover’s Reviews section on the app page is now better laid out and allows you to write a review without having to open the review pop-up (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• The page for KDE Plasma and app add-ons now shows a donation link (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.13.2)
• All text in the Properties window is now selectable (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• The permissions dialog now uses more user-friendly text for the different read and write states (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• Moved Dolphin’s General settings page to the top so it now matches other KDE Applications and it’s the first thing you see when you open the Settings window (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Howdy folks! This has been a bit of a light week for KDE’s Usability and Productivity initiative, probably because everyone’s basking in the warm glow of a well-received release: KDE Plasma 5.13 came out on Tuesday and is getting great reviews!

Don’t worry, we’ve got lots of great stuff queued up though.

Bugfixes

• The context menu for desktop icons now correctly toggles between Move to Trash and Delete when the Shift key is pressed (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• Any toolbar buttons in Kate and KWrite (and other apps using the KTextEditor frameworks) that display a drop-down menu when you click on them now display the menu properly when you click on them normally, instead of requiring a click-and-hold (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)

UI Polish & Improvement

• The Libinput-backend Mouse and Touchpad System Settings pages received a visual and usability overhaul (Furkan Tokac, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  
  
• Discover’s Updates page is now clearer about what version is being upgraded (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  
• Scrollbars in Konsole are now overlay style and disappear entirely when the view isn’t scrollable, e.g. with a full-screen CLI program like top (Tomaz Canabrava and Alex Nemeth, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal.

This has been another strong week for KDE’s Usability and Productivity initiative! Quite a few longstanding bugs got fixed, among lots of other nice improvements. Look at all this cool stuff:

New Features

• Gwenview can now sort by ascending or descending order (Farid Boudedja, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  

Bugfixes

• It’s no longer possible to accidentally drag-and-drop Task Manager entries into app windows (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Fixed a bug introduced by Qt 5.11 that could cause the wrong day to be highlighted in the calendar view (Fabian Vogt, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• The Breeze Task Switcher no longer has an odd transparent rectangle on the bottom (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Many icons throughout all KDE software now display a more appropriate version when using HiDPI mode (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Calculating free space can no longer block the user interface (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Kate’s cursor width no longer shrinks on long lines in certain circumstances (Subham Jangra, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Gwenview’s toolbar Share button now prompts you to install the necessary plugins if they’re not already installed, just like the menu already does (Farid Boudedja, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• When a file in Dolphin is renamed via the rename dialog such that it would scroll out of view, Dolphin now scrolls to it (Elvis Angelaccio, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Fixed a few cases in Konsole where block selection mode didn’t work (Ahmad Samir, KDE Applications 18.08)
• Sending screenshots from Spectacle to phones using KDE Connect now works (Aleix Pol, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Colorized buttons in Discover (and other Kirigami apps) now use a better-contrasting color for the text and icon (Aleix Pol, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• Discover now switches to its compact view more often, to make it more discoverable (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  
• Discover now updates the repo cache if it’s old, improving reliability of software installation in certain circumstances (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14)
• .desktop files with custom icons specified now show their custom icons when text file previews are turned on (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Improved the layout of the Trash page in Dolphin’s settings window (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• Removed the black triangle in the bottom-right corner of windows when using the “No Borders” setting (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• The System Load Viewer plasmoid’s text headers are now centered (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Notifications on the Bluetooth System Settings page now display more contextually appropriate labels on their buttons (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal.

Another week, another dose of Usability and Productivity in KDE land! We picked up a lot of great improvements to Discover, a much-requested change to allow Kate and Dolphin to be run with the root user account again, and quite a lot of important bugfixes. Take a look!

New Features

• Discover now lets you optionally view an app’s dependencies (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):

  

• Kate (and other apps using the KTextEditor framework) now have syntax highlighting for OpenSCAD files (Julian Stirling, KDE Frameworks 5.47)
• Spectacle can now be configured to save within dynamic sub-directories (e.g. based on the date), creating the path when necessary (Marco Scarpetta, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

Bugfixes

• Dolphin and Kate can once again be launched when logged in as the root user, and Dolphin displays a warning (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• It’s no longer possible to accidentally replace an existing file when selecting the filename for a pasted image (Elvis Angelaccio, KDE Frameworks 5.47)
• The alt+tab window switcher shortcut now works more reliably (Sontol Bonggol, KDE Frameworks 5.47)
• Discover no longer lets you log out while updates are in progress (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.13.0)
• On System Settings’ Mouse page, the Acceleration Profile setting now works (Roman Gilg, KDE Plasma 5.13.0)
• When using the slideshow wallpaper feature, hidden images and images in hidden folders no longer appear (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• The Glide effect no longer inappropriately affects Plasma’s logout screen (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)

UI Polish & Improvement

• The Application Launcher menu (Kickoff) now switches tabs instantly on mouse hover (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Discover’s Install button is now more button-like and has a green background, for greater obviousness (Aleix Pol, KDE Frameworks 5.47):
  
• Discover now handles .flakpakref more gracefully by offering to install the Flatpak backend if it’s not already installed (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Discover is now more clear about when an update update will replace some packages with other ones (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• KWin’s blur effect now remains blurry during animations (Alex Nemeth, KDE Plasma 5.13.0)
• Dolphin’s context menu now includes “Sort By” and “View Mode” submenus (Someone who would prefer to be known as “Nerdopolis Turfwalker”, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• You can now drag-and-drop an image onto Gwenview’s window to instantly view that image in Gwenview (Huon Imberger, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

If my efforts to perform, guide, and document this work seem useful and you’d like to see more of them, then consider becoming a patron on Patreon, LiberaPay, or PayPal.