This week in Usability & Productivity, part 33

Usability & Productivity 2 Minutes

Time for your weekly dose of Usability & Productivity! It’s another big one, and there’s a ton of stuff winding through the review pipeline that didn’t quite make the cut this week. So tune in next week too–but for the moment, check out all these neat improvements:

New Features

Bugfixes

UI Polish & Improvement

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

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.

Published by Nate

Published

26 thoughts on “This week in Usability & Productivity, part 33”

  1. I have no account to report elsewhere my remark. Add one Screen layout very conventional to mobile users : external screen (monitor, upside), internal screen (laptop, downside).
    Congrats on your work. I appreciate your posts that have convinced me that switch to KDE was possible and a possible long term choice.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    3. Ah yes! Even though this OSD doesn’t have an option for that, the first time you set up a screen that way, it should be remembered automatically the text time you plug it in. Is that not what you’re seeing?

      Like

    4. I think that what he meant is that there is an option to put the additional screen on the left or on the right but not on top. I didn’t test, but i suppose those are options for when you connect the screen for the first time.

      Unrelated related:
      There is inconsistency with the icons of the OSD and plasmoid. It’s not only different design, but also different logic. In one of them you see two workstation screens, in the other it’s a laptop and a beamer (even if you put the beamer on the left or right of your laptop screen, you usually use a workstation screen for that). I’d propose to use the laptop and beamer when the beamer is in the background (and also select presentation mode automatically when using this config) and laptop and workstation screen when it’s on the left or right (or top). Maybe put a button there for custom config instead of the “top” one?
      Argh, this is a part of kde which had a lot of overhauls and improvements, but still there is no consistent and logical interface..

      Keep up the good work, all of you are awesome 🙂

      Like

    5. The icons are actually consistent; Kai just took his screenshot of the new plasmoid a few days before the new icons went in. I should have taken a new screenshot so that they would look consistent.

      As for whether to use laptop of screen iconography, we’re working on a change to dynamically display the correct one depending on your hardware: if you’re on a laptop, you’ll see a laptop and a projector or external screen; if you’re on a desktop, you’ll see two screens.

      Like

    7. Sorry (delay and English…) . Above and under. The internal screen of the laptop is under the external screen. So the screen have to be extended toward the upper side, not the right or left side.

      Like

  2. I cannot emphasize enough how enthusiastic and grateful I am about those improvements. At least 9 of them will make my life easier and improve my workflow . Wow !!!

    Like

    Reply

    1. Seriously, isn’t it incredible!? I am also amazed these days. It makes putting together this report such a pleasure. 🙂

      Like

  4. This is awesome, thanks for your hard work!

    Does the new enable presentation mode also allow the reverse (e.g. force on, force off and auto)? Sometimes I have apps such as chrome doing some background music or RTC connection preventing the screen from turning off which is really annoying.

    Like

    Reply

  5. Howdy,

    The new display settings chooser accessible via orca and other screenreaders? So does it implement accessibility?

    I currently try to make KDE better accessible to blind users.
    Would be good if that is there from scratch.

    Like

    Reply

    2. Sure, right now when a plasma desktop it’s connected to a central user management system, like FreeIPA or Active Directory, and the system reports that the password it’s about to expire there is no GUI notification. Also there is no dialog to change the expired password for a new one before the account locks.

      Examples on win10 gaming system:
      Notification on desktop:
      https://imgur.com/a/WFnSsFv
      Password expired on login:
      https://imgur.com/a/nOzIrEv
      Change old password for a new one:
      https://imgur.com/a/7SAlQSJ

      I can workaround this with scripts in the user session but it would be nice to have it integrated on the desktop and sddm.

      Like

    3. Thanks for clarifying this for me.

      This looks like a fairly complex project with multiple elements:
      1. Something in Plasma or a KDE daemon like kded would need to listen for SSSD password expiration notifications from the server
      2. The user manager would need to be taught about all of this too, to understand the concepts of “password age” and “password expiration”
      3. Plasmashell would need to consume events from the daemon or KUser and show “your password is about to expire!” notifications to the user
      4. The Login screen would need to know how to handle all of this too
      5. Same for the Lock screen

      All in all, it’s possible, but since it’s a feature that only institutions would ever have any use for, I don’t think it’s very likely that a volunteer developer would ever go implement any of this on their own. Probably the best way to get the feature implemented would be for a company to sponsor the development work. I gather from your question that your company uses SSSD and would benefit. Is there any chance they might be willing to sponsor the development?

      Like

  7. All these improvements are awesome. The only thing missing soon is KDE moving to GitLab, so we could have a single home instead of all these scattered tools from the past.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a comment