This week in Usability & Productivity, part 58

Week 58 for KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative is here! Hot on the heels of last week’s update, we’ve got lots of nice goodies to share:

New Features

The System Settings Window Decorations page has been completely rewritten, bringing it into greater conformance with the modern visual style and fixing a huge number of bugs in the process (Valerio Pilo, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
Dolphin now lets the user choose which split view will be closed by the “Close Split” button (Angelo Oliveira Jr., KDE Applications 19.04.0)
Okular gained a command-line argument to open a file and instantly highlight all occurrences of a given string (Joao Netto, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

The Weather widget now correctly displays weather alert text when there’s either a watch or a warning, but not both at the same time (Chris Holland, KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
Fixed the most common crash-on-launch issue in Discover that was plaguing many users who have devices capable of being updated with fwupd, but had not actually applied the update yet (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, KDE Plasma 5.14.5.1)
Icons on Discover’s Updates page no longer glitch out when using the three-column widescreen view and clicking on the “More Information” button for the selected package (Jonah Brüchert, KDE Plasma 5.15.1)
The Digital Clock widget’s 12-hour/24-hour toggle now works again (Chris Holland, KDE Plasma 5.15.1)
By default, the Task Manager now only shows tasks from the current virtual desktop (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
Ported the System Settings Audio Volume page to QtQuickControls2 and Kirigami, which makes it look good when using a fractional scale factor (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
GTK 3 applications no longer spew zillions of warnings to the console (Andrzej Broński, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
Scrollbars in Kirigami apps now behave the same as other scrollbars: left-clicking in the trough does a PageUp/PageDown action, and middle-clicking will zoom directly to the clicked location (Marco Martin, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
Restoring manually-saved Plasma sessions now works with all apps again (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
Long wallpaper names can no longer blend into one another (Filip Fila, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
Plasma can no longer crash when BZip2 support abruptly disappears (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
The Baloo file indexing service now correctly indexes folders that were moved from a non-indexed location to an indexed location (Igor Poboiko, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
Wide characters such as some Emojis are now displayed properly in Konsole (Mariusz Glebocki, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
When a folder is opened in a new tab in Dolphin, the new tab is placed immediately to the right of the current one instead of always on the end of the tab bar (David Hallas, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

User Interface Improvements

The Networks widget is now faster to refresh wifi networks, and more reliable at doing so (Valerio Pilo, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
In System Settings, the Look and Feel page is now a top-level item, because it affects everything (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
When you hide the Desktop Toolbox, an informational message tells you how to return to the configuration window without it (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
Inline buttons in Kirigami lists are now real ToolButtons, so they change their appearance appropriately when hovered over or clicked (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.56):
When a Kirigami app sends a low-priority transient notification of the type that automatically disappears after seven seconds, the countdown timer now only starts when the parent window has focus, so you don’t miss the notification if the window was behind another one or minimized or something (Kai Uwe Broulik and me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
Konsole now has an on-by-default option to display close buttons on individual tabs, like most other tabbed apps do nowadays (KDE Applications 19.04.0)
Much more image metadata is now displayed clearly in apps like Dolphin (Alexander Stippich, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 57

Get ready for a humongous monster week 57 for KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative and there’s a metric tonne of stuff!!! So go make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and settle in for a long list of improvements. 🙂

But first I want to mention that we’re working on fixes for Discover users in Plasma 5.14.5 who are stuck unable to update. We’ve pushed a fix into the 5.14 branch that should cause the stuck backend to time out after one minute, allowing everything else to work. We’ll be releasing a Plasma 5.14.5.1 bugfix release, inclusing this fix. Fear not, we won’t leave you out in the icy cold blackness of night… alone, hungry, and unable to upgrade your software using a GUI application?

Also it’s already fixed in Plasma 5.15. 🙂

We’ve also backported a number of other fixes onto the 5.14 branch and I hope we can ship one more bugfix release of 5.14 just to ensure that the quality is as high as possible for the upcoming Debian Stable freeze.

New Features

Audio CDs can now be ripped to files in the Opus file format (Yuri Chornoivan, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
eBook files (.epub and .fb2) now get thumbnails (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
Windows .xps files and some Microsoft Office files now get thumbnails (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

When auto-login is enabled, the session you automatically log into is always correct and no longer sometimes unexpectedly changes after you adjust unrelated settings in the System Settings Login Screen page (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
When a window is in full screen mode and the system is restarted, that window now correctly restores the window borders after being un-full-screened (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
The Kickoff Application Launcher now opens to the correct view after previously having closed it following aborting a search on a non-default tab (Krešimir Čohar , KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
When using the legacy Evdev mouse input driver, user-customized settings in the System Settings Mouse page are now correctly applied on startup, login, and after waking from sleep (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.14.5.1)
The System Tray’s pop-up no longer becomes non-interactive after an item’s visibility is changed (Tranter Madi, KDE Plasma 5.14.5.1)
When using software rendering on a weak graphics card, the login and lock screens now ensure readability by putting outlines around the white text instead of the previously-un-renderable shadow (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
The System Setting Login Screen page now visually remembers custom images chosen for the login screen background and can handle being given a new wallpaper image with the same name (but a different path) as the current image (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
System Settings no longer crashes under certain circumstances after visiting the Launch Feedback page (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
The Screen Edge’s glow effect is now properly blue, rather than having an ugly gray edge, and also looks straight rather than like a bumpy wave (Vlad Zagorodniy, and Noah Davis, KDE Plasma 5.15.1 and KDE Frameworks 5.56)
All System Settings pages with Grid Views now sort the content alphabetically rather than pseudo-randomly (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.15.1)
Improved Discover’s reliability in the face of flaky content from store.kde.org (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
When using multiple screens, the lock screen’s focus follows the screen where the mouse cursor is located (Andrey Bychkov, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
New-style grid views used in many System Settings pages and the wallpaper chooser now have inline buttons that are legible and obvious against any kind of background (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.56):
Dragging desktop icons (and many more things) once again works properly when using Qt 5.11 or later (Tranter Madi, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
When changing the color scheme, Plasma now updates all of its colors immediately, with no need for a log-out-and-then-log-back-in cycle (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
When using Kate’s Print Preview functionality, the text now gets the correct color irrespective of the active color scheme (Ahmad Samir, KDE Frameworks 5.56)
Kate’s Project plugin’s tree view now displays all menu items for git entries that have umlauts in their names (Dominik Haumann, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

User Interface Improvements

The Task Manager now allows re-ordering items via drag-and-drop by default (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
Wallpaper chooser views now display the name of the wallpaper (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
In System Settings, Breeze theme previews are now accurate Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
Standalone app launcher widgets now display a spinning busy indicator while launching, just like their pinned Task Manager launcher equivalents (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
The Color Picker widget now lets you drag the current color right off the widget itself without having to open it first (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
Many System Settings pages now have improved icons (Rafael Brandmaier, Noah Davis, and Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
Plasma dialogs, OSDs, and panels now have subtly rounded corners (Krešimir Čohar, KDE Frameworks 5.56):
QML Spinboxes now display the correct I-beam cursor when hovering over the number (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.56):
The default search providers now get appropriate icons (Shubham, KDE Frameworks 5.56):
Dolphin’s Downloads folder is now sorted by date with grouping on by default. and the Recent Documents view (accessible by navigating to recentdocuments:/) is now sorted by date with a list view by default (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
Gwenview now uses the standard Ctrl+L keyboard shortcut to focus the URL field, and Ctrl+Shift+R for “Rotate left” (Shubham, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

If you find KDE software useful, consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in Usability & Productivity, part 56

Here are the results of week 56 of KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative. We’ve been working on Plasma 5.16 features and fixing old bugs in Plasma 5.12 and beyond.

One additional thing I’d like to mention is that we’re aware that many users of Discover in Plasma 5.14 are suffering from an inability to either check for updates or update their systems. This issue is fixed in Plasma 5.15 and beyond, but we’re working on a fix for Plasma 5.14 users that can be backported. Sorry for the breakage, everyone!

Anyway, onto the good stuff…