KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 86

Here’s week 86 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative! There are lots and lots of cool changes, which is especially impressive as the KDE community prepares for Akademy, which kicks off next weekend. Sadly I cannot attend this year–there was an unavoidable scheduling conflict with my best friend’s wedding–but I will be there in spirit! In the meantime, check out the progress:

New Features

Krunner’s unit conversion feature can now convert decibel units (Ismael Asensio, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Spectacle can now be configured to automatically save screenshots right after they’re taken (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 19.12.0):
There’s a new “Recently used” feature, accessible by navigating to recentlyused:/ in Dolphin or the file dialogs. This new one uses the same data source as Activities and the application launcher menus (e.g. Kicker, Kickoff, dashboard) and will be made visible in Dolphin and the file dialogs by default soon! (Méven Car, KDE Applications 19.12.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Discover once again shows app reviews (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.16.5)
Discover’s Update Notifier is no longer capable of crashing Plasma (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Discover’s review dialog no longer allows its contents to visually overflow when logged in as a user with a very long username (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Window decoration buttons in GTK3 headerbar windows are now colored correctly no matter what KDE color scheme is being used (Carson Black, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
System Tray icons that come from Wine apps now display their context menus properly when right-clicked (Konrad Materka, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Changing color schemes is now faster and less visually jarring (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
The Info Center’s Energy page now shows battery icons properly when using a dark Plasma theme and a light icon theme, and the battery display has received a minor visual overhaul in the process (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
Kate and other KTextEditor-based apps now strip off Windows-style newlines from pasted text (Christoph Cullmann, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Dolphin no longer attempts to store view properties on network shares, preventing one possible way for a slow network share to hang your machine (Kai Uwe Broulik, Dolphin 19.12.0)
Kirigami ToolButtons that open menus when clicked now restore the correct background color when the menu is closed (Arjen Hiemstra, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Fixed a common crash in the Baloo file indexing service (Tomaz Canabrava, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Dolphin’s “show split view in new windows” feature works properly again (Alexander Saoutkin, Dolphin 19.08.1)
Konsole’s “show new tab button” option is back again (Mariusz Glebocki, Konsole 19.08.1)

User Interface Improvements

The System Settings “Multimedia” group and the confusing old Phonon page are no more! Instead the much more useful and user-friendly Audio page has been promoted to the top level, and the functionality left in the old Phonon page is still available if needed via the phononsettings app. This allows the “Automatically switch all running streams when a new output becomes available” feature to work (Harald Sitter and Nicolas Fella, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The new “capacity degradation” text was not well-received and still caused confusion, so it’s now been restored to its original scale and renamed to the hopefully much clearer term “Battery Health” (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
The Plasma notification pop-ups now appear a little bit farther away from window edges so they don’t obscure apps’ titlebars and user interface elements at the bottom of the window (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
The System Settings Activities page has received a user interface overhaul for improved consistency and visual appeal (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):

I know the apps don’t all have icons; we’re working on that
KRunner now shows visually when it is still searching for results (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Checkboxes and radio buttons in GTK 3 apps now color themselves appropriately to respect your color scheme when using the Breeze GTK theme (Carson Black, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Dolphin’s default toolbar layout has been adjusted to be more useful and visually pleasing (Simon Krull, Dolphin 19.12.0):

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 tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 85

I’m not dead yet! KDE’s new goal proposals have been announced, and the voting has started. But in the meantime, the Usability & Productivity initiative continues, and we’re onto week 85! We’ve got some nice stuff, so have a look:

New Features

Gwenview now allows the user to configure the JPEG compression/quality level with a default value of 90, just like Spectacle (me: Nate Graham, Gwenview 19.12.0):
Spectacle can now be optionally configured to always save the current screenshot to the clipboard, enabling a save-to-file-and-clipboard feature (Antonio Prcela, Spectacle 19.12.0)
Kate’s advanced search-and-replace regular expression match feature now includes a regex builder helper (Gregor Mi, Kate 19.12.0):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

The Cuttlefish, System Settings, Kdevelop, and Klipper apps no longer show up twice in Discover and other software center apps (me: Nate Graham, Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Matthias Klumpp, and Friedrich Kossebau, KDE Plasma 5.16.5)
Using the System Settings GNOME Application Style page no longer deletes configuration entries from the GTK config files that it doesn’t manage, which fixes various bugs such as bad font rendering, and inappropriate deletion of manually-configured options for GTK2 and GTK 3 apps (Mikhail Zolotukhin, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Discover no longer sometimes displays a string formatting error message in place of version numbers on its Updates page (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Trying to overwrite an existing file on an FTP server no longer hangs forever (Yaroslav Sidlovsky, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
It’s no longer possible to drag a QML combobox’s popup menu out of its own frame, which was just silly (Björn Feber, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
In the open/save dialogs as well as other inline file views, it’s no longer possible to futilely attempt to create a new file or folder on top of an existing file (Daan De Meyer, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Some buttons in certain Plasma widgets (like the weather widget’s Configure... button) are no longer comically large (Camilo Higuita, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Konsole’s “confirm closing multiple tabs” dialog no longer crashes the app when you choose the “close current tab” option (Andrey Yashkin, Konsole 19.08.1)
Spectacle’s Rectangular Region mode now works properly on Wayland when there are multiple screens (David Redondo, Spectacle 19.08.1)
Konsole no longer allows you to create duplicate bookmarks (Martin T. H. Sandsmark and Tomaz Canabrava, Konsole 19.12.0)
Kate no longer crashes instead of quitting when the Escape key has been configured to quit the app (Christoph Cullmann, Kate 19.12.0)

User Interface Improvements

“Network disconnected” notifications no longer stick around cluttering up your notification history (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.5)
On Discover’s Updates page, a progress bar is now displayed while the list of updates is being loaded (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
When performing updates in Discover and there are problems, the error messages are now displayed in a more typical pop-up dialog box rather than in the form of tiny rapidly-disappearing inline notification messages (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
The System Settings User Manager page now shows a button to set or change a user’s password rather than an odd always-empty text field (Méven car, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The menu displayed when you click the hamburger button in System Settings now has a drop shadow and displays keyboard shortcuts, like all other menus (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):

Try not to notice the black dots in the corners of the menu; we’re working on it!
The buttons on Discover’s ok/cancel dialogs now support keyboard control using the return/enter and escape keys (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
When referring to batteries, the somewhat ambiguous term “Capacity” has been inverted and renamed to “Capacity degradation” to better communicate that it refers to the battery’s time-induced degradation reducing its ability to hold a charge (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
Info Center’s Energy page has gotten a UI overhaul regarding how battery and energy information is presented (Méven Car and me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):

Ignore the fact that my battery’s original charge capacity is smaller than its last full charge; as batteries go, it’s… special
.fictionBook files now get their own icons (Yuri Chornoivan, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Long labels in Dolphin and the file dialogs are now elided in the middle rather than at the end so that their filename extensions are always visible (me: Nate Graham, Dolphin 19.12.0 and KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Drag handles in Spectacle’s Rectangular Region mode are now much more usable and touch-friendly, and no longer become un-resizable at small sizes (Leon De Andrade, Spectacle 19.12.0):

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

KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 84

Get ready for week 84 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative! 84 weeks is a lot of weeks, and in fact the end is in sight for the U&P initiative. I’d say it’s been a huge success, but all good things must come to an end to make room for new growth! In fact, KDE community members have submitted many new goals, which the community will be able to vote on soon, with the three winners being unveiled at Akademy next month.

But fear not, for the spirit of the Usability & Productivity initiative has suffused the KDE community, and I expect a lot of really cool U&P related stuff to happen even after the initiative has formally ended–including the long-awaited projects of PolicyKit support and mounted Samba and NFS shares in KIO and Dolphin! These projects are making steady progress and I hope to have them done in the next few months, plugging some longstanding holes in our software.

And finally, I’ll be continuing these weekly blog posts for the foreseeable future! It’s just too much fun to stop. Anyway, here’s what we’ve got this week:

New Features

Notifications’ Do Not Disturb mode can now be optionally enabled automatically when screens are mirrored, such as when giving a presentation (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The list of recent documents in the Kickoff Application launcher and other launchers now includes items that show up in GNOME’s Nautilus and the GTK file dialogs (Méven Car, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Fixed various issues with right-clicking on System Tray icons: the wrong app no longer comes into focus in certain circumstances, and the right-clicked-on icon no longer steals and keeps focus (Konrad Materka, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
The Plasma Networks widget no longer freezes when its standalone configuration window is resized on Wayland (Jan Grulich, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Split buttons that can open a dropdown menu no longer display visual glitches on their right sides (Hugo Pereira Da Costa and Noah Davis, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
Various menus in certain KDE apps that did not respect the active color scheme now do (Noah Davis, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
When using Konsole outside of KDE Plasma, pressing and releasing the Alt key no longer makes focus get stuck in the menubar (Konstantin Kharlamov, Konsole 19.08.0)
After opening and closing Dolphin’s terminal panel, the main view now retains keyboard focus (Andrey Yashkin, Dolphin 19.12.0)

User Interface Improvements

Active and inactive tabs in Google Chrome and Chromium now look visually distinct with the Breeze-GTK theme (Carson Black, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
It’s now possible to set a maximum volume that’s lower than 100% (Kishore Gopalakrishnan, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Discover now shows a better error message when there’s no internet connection (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
Discover now shows a busy indicator while it’s still loading the initial apps list (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
On Discover’s Updates page, the version numbers are now displayed in lighter text to keep visual focus on the app names (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The Task Manager’s context menu now has an icon for the “Allow this program to be grouped” item (Simon Krull, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The tab bar in System Settings Screen Locking page now has a full frame for the content beneath it (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The Dr Konqi crash reporting dialog is no longer shown for 3rd-party apps where it wouldn’t be able to generate any useful output anyway (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Kate now prompts you to save or discard unsaved changed when closing its settings window that has un-applied changes (Shubham, Kate 19.12.0)
Konsole’s “Randomize background colors” feature now ensures adequate contrast for text (Mariusz Glebocki, Konsole 19.12.0)
When quitting Konsole and only a single tab is open and a program is still running in it, the dialog box that asks you if you’re sure you want to quit doesn’t mention multiple tabs anymore (Andrey Yashkin, Konsole 19.12.0)

If you’re getting the sense that KDE’s momentum is accelerating, you’re right. More and more new people are appearing all the time, and I am constantly blown away by their passion and technical abilities. We are truly blessed by… you! This couldn’t happen without the KDE community–both our contributors for making this warp factor 9 level of progress possible, and our users for providing feedback, encouragement, and being the very reason for the project to exist. And of course, the overlap between the two allows for good channels of communication to make sure we’re on the right track.

Many of those users will go on to become contributors, just like I did once. In fact, 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 tax-deductible donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 83

This week in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative is massive, and I want to start by announcing a big feature: GTK3 apps with client-side decorations and headerbars using the Breeze GTK theme now respect the active KDE color scheme!

Pretty cool, huh!? This feature was written by Carson Black, our new Breeze GTK theme maintainer, and will be available in Plasma 5.17. Thanks Carson!

As you can see, the Gedit window still doesn’t display shadows–at least not on X11. shadows are displayed on Wayland, but on X11 it’s a tricky problem to solve. However I will say that that anything’s possible!

Beyond that, it’s also been a humongously enormous week for a plethora of other things too:

New Features

The KWin window manager now supports the zwp_linux_dmabuf_v1 interface on Wayland, which, for supported hardware and drivers, should result in lower memory usage and better performance (Roman Gilg, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Okular can now open and read .cb7 comic book files, and Dolphin now shows previews for them (Natsumi Higa and Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 19.12.0/Okular 1.9.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

Fixed a bug that could cause KRunner to display duplicate search results for unit conversions with a partially-written second unit (Ismael Asensio, KDE Plasma 5.16.5)
When music is playing and the screen locks, the media art preview on the lock screen is no longer awkwardly stretched when it’s not a perfect square (Filip Fila, KDE Plasma 5.16.5):
The volume slider now provides audio feedback only when you’re done dragging it, so it doesn’t make a bunch of weird noises while being dragged (Kezi Olio, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Fixed a layout problem with the Kickoff Application Launcher that could cause its tab bar to take up the entire view the first time its parent horizontal panel was changed to be vertical or vice versa (Konstantin Lisin, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
Fixed a security vulnerability that could have caused maliciously-crafted .desktop or .directory files to execute arbitrary code (David Faure and Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.61, and should show up as a hotpatch update for all distros soon)
When the Kickoff Application launcher is located on a vertical panel, its tab layout is no longer messed up until it’s used every time you log in or restart Plasma (Konstantin Lisin KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Discover now shows proper icons for Snap apps in search lists, browse lists, and app pages, as well as after they’re installed (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Frameworks 5.62):
In System Settings, when you click the preview button for an inactive global theme or splash screen and then navigate to another page, you’re no longer prompted to save or discard changes, because nothing has gotten changed (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.62)
Icons in .flatpakref and .directory files are now shown even when text file previews are on (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.08.0):

User Interface Improvements

The notifications indicator now looks like a bell, the way it does everywhere else (Noah Davis, KDE Frameworks 5.62 with Plasma 5.16.5 or later):
The notifications indicator no longer shows the number of unread notifications in the system tray so a high number doesn’t stress you out; instead, a “ringing bell” icon is shown instead. The exact number of unread notifications is available in the tooltip if you really want to see it (Noah Davis, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The bell-style notifications indicator in the system tray now wiggles a bit when the first unread notification comes in! (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
List headers throughout System Settings have now been standardized in appearance (Björn Feber, David Redondo, me: Nate Graham, and the rest of the KDE VDG team, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):

(This is still a work-in-progress, both in implementation and visual style)
The presentation of System Settings’ Appearance category has been polished and re-organized (me: Nate Graham and the rest of the KDE VDG team):
The System Settings Screen Locking page now has an updated and polished user interface (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The System Settings Screen Edges and Touch Screen pages now have updated and polished user interfaces (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
When navigating the Kickoff Application Launcher’s Applications tab using the keyboard, the parent category is now pre-selected when going backwards (Andrey Kozlovskiy, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)

When creating a new user’s password or changing an existing one, more descriptive messages are now shown for bad passwords (Harald Sitter, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The sorting menu in the file open/save dialogs now also uses human-readable sort ordering descriptions, just like Dolphin (Méven Car, KDE Frameworks 5.62):
When one of Dolphin’s extended tooltips is being shown, pressing a key now instantly hides it (Piotr Dabrowski, Dolphin 19.12.0)
When drawing on a presentation using a stylus in Okular, the cursor now turns into a crosshair as the stylus approaches the screen (Oliver Sander, Okular 1.9.0)

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

KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 82

I know I say this a lot… but it’s been yet another big week for KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative! We also have major features in development–one of which I think will be very popular and I hope to be able to announce it next week. Until then, enjoy this week’s assortment:

New Features

KRunner can now convert fractional units (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
The “move your cursor with the keyboard” accessibility feature that got lost with the Libinput mouse driver support is now back (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
KWin Maximize and Size & Position rules now work on Wayland (Vlad Zahorodnii, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
There’s now a page in System Settings that shows basic information about your system–for more info, open the KInfoCenter app (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.17.0):
KDE apps with configurable toolbars now allow you to add expanding spacers, which, for example, permit buttons to be centered or stick to the right side of the toolbar (Felix Ernst, KDE Frameworks 5.61):

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

KRunner’s dictionary plugin now actually works (though it still needs UI work and a fixed icon) (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.4)
It’s now possible to type a number in the spinbox on the System Settings Virtual Desktops page (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.4)
When another screen is plugged in, it is now extended or mirrored (as appropriate) by default, and the chooser OSD no longer pointlessly appears on login for already-plugged-in screens (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)
List items on the System Settings Desktop Effects and Virtual Desktops pages no longer overflow the bounds of their frames (David Redondo, KDE Frameworks 5.61):
When activating a new profile, Konsole once again opens a new tab with the specified profile instead of applying it to the current tab. A lot of people complained about this change, so it has been reverted! (Kurt Hindenburg, Konsole 19.08.0)
Dolphin’s embedded Konsole terminal panel now changes the active directory as expected when it’s running a process and the user navigates to another location in the file view (Andrey Yashkin, Dolphin 19.08.0)
Dolphin’s name grouping feature now works with Cyrillic characters (Andrey Yashkin, Dolphin 19.12.0):
When opening a background tab in Dolphin and then switching to it, focus is now on the file view rather than the URL bar (Andrey Yashkin, Dolphin 19.12.0)