Version 20.04.0 of KDE’s apps has been released! Go check it out; there’s amazing stuff in there.
Work proceeds on the Breeze Evolution task for Plasma 5.19. In particular, the System Tray visual overhaul subtask is nearly complete and our tray popups are looking better than ever:
Other work is proceeding nicely as well!
New Features
- Elisa’s top bar is now responsive to the window size and device form factor, so it looks good with a portrait orientation window/device and can scale down to be really tiny (Dami Erny, Elisa 20.08.0):
- Gwenview now saves the size of the last-used crop box, so you can quickly crop multiple images to the same size in rapid succession (Mario Aichinger, Gwenview 20.08.0)
- When Okular is asked to open a document that’s already open, it can now be configured to swith to that document instead of opening it again in a new window (Andi Sardina Ramos, Okular 1.11.0)
- The System Settings KWin rules page was rewritten from scratch and now features a much better user interface (Ismael Asensio, Plasma 5.19.0):
- The amazing Plasma Browser Integration system now supports the Brave browser (Kai Uwe Broulik, Plasma 5.19.0)
- The holiday calendar now includes holidays for Taiwan and Nicaragua (Ricky Lindén and Carlos Arguello, Frameworks 5.70)
- KRunner can now convert to and from Imperial Gallons and U.S. Pints (Felix Riiga, Frameworks 5.70)
Bugfixes & Performance Improvements
- The folder View popup dialog is once again wide enough to show three columns of icons (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.5):
- Fixed several memory leaks in Gwenview (Martin T. H. Sandsmark, Gwenview 20.08.0)
- The menu items for “Encrypt File” and “View Decrypted File” in Dolphin when kGPG is installed now use more semantically-correct icons that are now legible when using a dark color scheme (me: Nate Graham, kGPG 20.08.0)
- Searching on the Kickoff Application Launcher works again when the cursor is positioned below the tab bar (Tranter Madi, Plasma 5.18.5)
- Full screen screenshots taken on High DPI systems using Wayland now have the correct resolution (Méven Car, Plasma 5.19.0)
- The OSD to choose what happens when you plug in an external monitor is now centered on Wayland (Benjamin Port, Plasma 5.19.0)
- After applying a Global Theme, the correct Plasma style, widget style, and splash screen are now selected in their respective pages (Cyril Rossi, Plasma 5.18.5)
- Inline messages that include buttons in Kirigami apps no longer put the buttons in an overflow menu when there’s plenty of space to display them inline (Xuetian Weng, Frameworks 5.70):
- The Breeze icon for VSCode is once again visible (Guo Yunhe, Frameworks 5.70)
- Icons throughout Plasma and Kirigami-based apps now look better on high DPi multi-monitor setups (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Frameworks 5.70)
User Interface Improvements
- It’s now additionally possible to navigate from Dolphin’s search field to the results view by pressing the down arrow key (Shlomi Fish, Dolphin 20.08.0)
- The Standard Shortcuts System Settings page window now has a sane default size when opened standalone in its own window (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.18.5)
- The Weather applet’s weather station chooser window now has a clearer user interface (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0):
- It’s now more feasible to position your notification pop-ups on the top or bottom center because when located there, they are now wider and have less vertical spacing, so they don’t intrude into the center of the screen as much (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0):
- The size of the default fixed-width font has been raised from 9 to 10, to match the size of the default non-fixed-width font (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0)
- The mount dialog for Plasma Vaults now includes the vault’s name in the titlebar (Konstantinos Smanis, Plasma 5.19.0)
- The Bluetooth applet now displays a nicer tooltip when only a single device is connected (me: Nate Graham, Plasma 5.19.0):
- The latitude and longitude displayed in the System Settings Night Color page no longer display a pointlessly large number of digits after the decimal point (Shubham, Plasma 5.19.0):
- When using KDE software in Polish, the translation for “Cancel” is now “Anuluj” (Łukasz Wojniłowicz, the next released versions of all KDE software)
- Dolphin and the file dialogs now use the same shortcuts for their “show/hide hidden files” actions such that changing the shortcut in one place changes it for the other too (me: Nate Graham, Frameworks 5.70 and Dolphin 20.08.0)
How You Can Help
Just keep being awesome, and rest when you need it. These are hard times. Don’t beat yourself up for not doing more; it’s enough. We’ll get through it.
Adventures in Linux and KDE 
Videos are down. https://m.imgur.com/a/TArQLBE
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For me too, but clicking on the link and playing it a separate tab works for me.
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I’ve notived that on Device Notifier too, and although it never bothered me much to report, I agree, it diesn’t look very polished. One possible fix I can think of is to add a vertical movement animation to the items in addition to the existing fade.
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Whoops… I accidentally replied to a wrong comment. Please delete this one.
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Yeah I need to find a better video hosting solution. 😦
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In the first video, the blue rectangle and the items which expand are not synchronized. Is that intended? If you stop at second ~5, you will see that the blue rectangle lags behind. 🙂
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Yeah, that’s noticeable. I don’t know if it’s intended but it looks kinda awkward.
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I’ve notived that on Device Notifier too, and although it never bothered me much to report, I agree, it doesn’t look very polished. One possible fix I can think of is to add a vertical movement animation to the items in addition to the existing fade.
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Yeah, I need to fix it.
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About the KWin rules page, would do you think about those fancy sliders like on Android for the boolean choices, “yes o no o”? Could you imagine those in general in KDE for all types of boolean choices? 🙂
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It’s under discussion.
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Hi Nate, very happy to see all those changes. I’m especially excited about the massive amount of bug fixes and UI improvements.
The redesigned Window Rules UI should make it much easier to use. I was wondering, however, why the Add Properties button results in an (in my eyes non-standard) inline dialog box. I have seen this behavior in some other recent screenshots as well.
Is this intended to be the default behavior for any dialog boxes in the future? I don’t think this is optimal UI because the existing dialog boxes, that launch in a separate window, have more functionality (can be dragged, resized to create more room for content, etc.)
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One nice thing about sheets vs free-floating dialog boxes is that because they remain connected to their parent windows, they can’t get accidentally moved out of right or lost in the windoow stacking order in unusual circumstances. The parent window itself can always be increased in size to make more room for the sheet’s content.
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It seems to me that there are two conflicting UI requirements: on one hand not losing dialog boxes, and on the other hand being able to handle dialogs freely. Personally I’ve not had issues with the former, but I can see why it would be a problem. I move and resize dialog boxes quite often though, not only to make room for content, but also to avoid obscuring the parent window’s content. (As an example, with the sheet used for adding window rules active, it is hard to see the existing window rules in the parent window.)
Would it be possible to have KWin group dialog boxes better with the parent window? That would be more consistent than using sometimes sheets and sometimes dialogs, and the user would retain the advantage of being able to resize / move then if they wanted/needed to.
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Sheets are definitely a good solution for Plasma Mobile or Plasma BigScreen, while on the dekstop I’m not sure, what I’d prefer. 🙂
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Ye gods, the bug report for the polish translation issue…. Just, wow…
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I thought Brave was already support with KDE desktop integration. I am (with my limited testing) able to use play/pause video/audio playback. Am I not thinking of the same thing?
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I always thought that the huuuuge mouse icon on Wayland was a bug…not a feature 😀
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Finally! Cancel will be Anuluj again, after so long battle!
The videos on this won’t play on Firefox for me, had to open the post in Chromium. Something in the technology used is often incompatible with FF.
Elisa is now awesome! It started awkwardly but not with time it really matured and is just great. I didn’t know I could maximize the upper panel like that – thanks! This is an awesome and clean looking effect.
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Recently started to use activities in KDE and since activity switched doesn’t have fancy animations when you try going to activity with different background it is flickering badly.
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Thanks a lot for so many improvements! Looking forward to Breeze Evolution especially in 5.19. 🙂
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Nice improvements, as always, this week was really intense, a few new features.
Brave supported I suppose that means that it will appear as Brave on the KDE Connect software, instead as Chromium.
The KWin Rules GUI revamp is a huge new, i would love to see them working on Wayland session, truly.
And the improvement on the notifications looks pretty awesome, i will have to file a bug about the change from 5.17.x to 5.18, because i don’t see the notification discard regressing animation since then, on 1 of my PCs and on my parents’ laptop :(.
Pretty good news about the advance of Breeze Evolution, Plasma 5.19 looks like it’ll be a really huge one, i can’t wait to that :).
As always, a huge thank you to everyone involved on this amazing and beautiful software, improving each and every day, for your really hard work, huge efforts, you give us a tremendous Free (as in freedom) Software, that everyone can enjoy and that really rocks.
Keep rocking as you did until now, even more, you are the bests.
Receive a huge virtual hug everyone ^^.
Stay safe, stay home.
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Such a relief: “Searching on the Kickoff Application Launcher works again when the cursor is positioned below the tab bar (Tranter Madi, Plasma 5.18.5)” … 🙂
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