Let’s have some more Usability & Productivity!

I’ve initiated a big project: overhauling KDE Open & Save dialogs for greater usability and productivity. If you would like to follow along, here is the meta-task tracking the work: https://phabricator.kde.org/T8552

So far, we’ve:

• Fixed column widths (Scott Harvey)
• Added view mode buttons to the toolbar (Me, Nate Graham)
• Made the dialog always save the view settings even when canceling or closing (Me, Nate Graham)

All of this work–and hopefully the rest of the “open/save panel improvement” work–will ship with KDE Frameworks 5.46.

(Also, what do people think of the above style for these bullet points instead of the typical one I’ve used below?)

As usual, there’s more! Here’s the other Usability & Productivity-related work from the past week:

New Features

• Kate and other programs using the KTextEditor framework gained syntax highlighting for GDB files (KDE Phabricator revision D11902, implemented in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Milian Wolff)
• Konsole now supports more XTerm-style cursor shapes (KDE Bug 347323, implemented in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Ahmad Samir)

Bugfixes

• Bold, italic, and underline effects now work again for Kate’s syntax highlighting modes (KDE Phabricator revision D12221, fixed in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Christoph Cullman)
• Dolphin’s icon view grid spacing no longer changes unpredictably when previews are turned on or off, and has tighter spacing when previews are on and icons are large (KDE bug 393306, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.1, authored by me, Nate Graham):
  
• Gwenview no longer crashes when zooming after reloading an SVG image (KDE bug 359736, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
• Gwenview’s “Failed to save” warning dialog no longer displays raw HTML in it (KDE bug 393170, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.04, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
• Okular no longer loses highlighted search results when a page is rotated (KDE bug 387282, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04, authored by Ahmad Osama)
• The Media Frame widget’s mode chooser now displays the modes corrently even for languages where the words are very long (KDE bug 393232, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12, authored by Friedrich Kossebau)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Changes to a Konsole profile’s keybingings are now immediately applied to that profile (KDE Phabricator revision D12255, improved in KDE Applications 18.08, authored by Ahmad Samir)
• Plasma and Plasma widgets now all use the same color picker widget (KDE Phabricator revisions D12330 and D12318, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Friedrich Kossebau:
  
• Gwenview now positions the viewport more intelligently after crop and resize operations (KDE Phabricator revisions D12167 and D12170, authored by Peter Mühlempfordt)
• Gwenview no longer shows duplicate confirmation dialogs when overwriting an existing image (KDE Phabricator revision D12346, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.1, improved by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
• The KDirOperator widget (commonly used for inline file browsers in apps like Kate, Kile, and RKWard, as well as open and save dialogs) now has a reload button in the context menu (KDE bug 199994, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by me, Nate Graham)

Might seem a little light this week, but trust me, there’s a ton of stuff in progress right now. It may not quite be ready yet, but it will be awesome once it is!

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.

Time for your weekly dose of Usability & Productivity! We’ve got some good stuff today, including some nice improvements for the Open & Save dialogs–with a lot more on that front to come soon!

Additionally, another major bug worth highlighting has been fixed! Previously, image slideshows used for the desktop wallpaper or in a media frame widget would leak memory like crazy, eventually crashing the system. Veteran KDE developer David Edmundson traced this to a Qt bug and submitted a patch that’s been accepted! It’ll go into Qt 5.11 which hasn’t been released yet, so go bug your distros to backport the fix into their Qt 5.9.x or 5.10.x branches, as we plan to do for the upcoming Kubuntu 18.04 release. Soon KDE Plasma users will once again be able to use slideshow wallpapers without blowing up their computers!

But wait, there’s more…

New Features

• When audio is set to switch to new sources that become active, this is now indicated with an on-screen display depicting the new device (KDE Phabricator revision D12083, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik):
  
• You can (once again!) copy the text of the date and time from the Clock widget (KDE bug 355190, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Bernhard Schiffner))

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that prevented removable devices from automounting correctly (KDE bugs 391706, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.5 and KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Stefan Brüns)
• Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to crash when switching the desktop from Folder View to Desktop View (KDE bug 391642, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by David Edmundson)
• Fixed a bug that could cause Konsole to not copy long text correctly under certain circumstances (KDE bug 352616, fixed in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Mariusz Glebocki)
• Fixed a bug that could cause Gwenview to not update an image’s thumbnail in the Thumbnail bar after rotating it (KDE bug D11714, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
• Fixed a bug in Gwenview that could cause an image’s thumbnail to not update properly after undoing a crop or rotate operation (KDE bug 356998, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
• Fixed a bug in Gwenview that could cause changed shortcuts to not take effect until after the program was restarted (KDE bug 389331, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
• Fixed a bug causing Baloo (KDE’s file indexing service) to incorrectly
  handle complex boolean queries (KDE bug 392620, fixed in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Stefan Brüns)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Columns in KDE Open & Save dialogs are now always sized correctly, and resize appropriately as the window is resized (KDE bugs 354388, 338502, 196508, 177743, and 96638, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by Scott Harvey):
  
• The Open dialog now opens in the correct location when using a file located on a remote filesystem (KDE bug 374913, improved in KDE Plasma 5.12.5, authored by Alex Richardson)
• A consistent (and better) icon is now used for “configure” everywhere (KDE Phabricator revision D12034, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.46, authored by me, Nate Graham):
  
  
  
• The login screen now uses the same icon as the Lock screen for the “find or log in as other user” feature (KDE bug 392830, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Scott Harvey)
• Dolphin’s Information Panel can now optionally show condensed absolute dates rather than long relative dates – try right-clicking on it! (KDE bug 392352, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Gwenview now displays a better background for parts of images that are transparent, and lets the user configure more alternate backgrounds if desired (KDE Phabricator revision D11630, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger):
  
• Gwenview now honors the chosen background color setting for SVG images (KDE bug D11629, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
• Gwenview’s transition effect between images has been improved (KDE bug 373161, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
• Dolphin’s “Open path” and “Open path in new folder” actions now scroll to and highlight the selected file (KDE bug 377510, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by me, Nate Graham)
• Non-square icons can now be used for the Application Launcher’s button (KDE Phabricator revision D12161, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik):

  

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Another week in Usability & Productivity, another wish that I could make more announcements about all the cool stuff we have in progress! The wheels of software sometimes turn more slowly than we might wish, but in the end, the better result will be worth it. KDE’s patch review process is there to ensure that code quality is high as possible before making it in!

Nevertheless, we landed some great improvements this week, including a few long-standing requests. Come and see:

New Features

• The volume of the program that’s playing media can now be adjusted by positioning the cursor over the Media Player widgets icon and scrolling (KDE bug 386588, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Radek Hušek)
• Dolphin’s Information panel is now able to show Group membership information for files and folders (KDE bug 308002, implemented in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by me, Nate Graham):
  
• New splash screens can now be easily downloaded and installed right from within System Settings (KDE bug 358839, implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Marco Martin)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug causing Kate to open multiple empty windows after session restoration (KDE bug 360066, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Алексей Шилин (Aleksei Shilin))
• Fixed a bug in Gwenview that made the left and right arrow keys not work for navigating between images after using the crop tool (KDE bug 321091, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Peter Mühlenpfordt)
• Fixed a bug in Gwenview causing the window title to not update when a different images becomes selected in Comparison mode (KDE bug 314724, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Silas Lenz)
• Fixed a bug causing the desktop Trash icon’s “Empty Trash” menu item to not update properly (KDE bug 392738, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.5, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik)
• Fixed a bug that could cause Konsole to execute hidden code when copy-and-pasting from a maliciously-crafted piece of text in a web browser (KDE Phabricator revision D11859, fixed in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Martin T. H. Sandsmark)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Dolphin’s “Image Size” column has been split into separate “Height” and “WIdth” columns, to enable proper sorting (KDE bug 374559, improved in Dolphin 18.08.0, authored by Julian Schraner)
• Gwenview now displays the selection rectangle using a correct size for SVG images (KDE Phabricator revision D11796, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
• Dolphin’s Information Panel now displays folder previews for folders that have been added to the Places panel (KDE bug 392621, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by me, Nate Graham)
• Context menus for Desktop items and the Wallpaper now show the appropriate keyboard shortcuts that can be used to invoke them (KDE bug 392730, improved in KDE Plasma 5.12.5, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik)
• Dolphin’s close-multiple-tabs confirmation dialog is now more explicit about what will happen when you click any of the buttons (KDE Phabricator revision FFFF, improved in Dolphin 18.08.0, authored by Elvis Angelaccio):
  

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.

Welcome to week 12 in Usability & Productivity! Despite all the awesome improvements I’m about to share, there are EVEN MORE that I wasn’t able to announce this week because they’re not quite done yet! But In the coming weeks, some very nice fixes and improvements are going to land. Without further ado…

New Features

• Mouse settings now fully support using libinput as the backend (KDE bug 350688, Implemented in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Roman Gilg):
  

  

• Hidden files on Windows partitions are now properly marked as hidden (and are no longer visible by default) when viewed in Dolphin (KDE bug 171537, implemented in KDE Frameworks 5.45, authored by Roman Inflianskas)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a few bugs that could cause Spectacle’s Rectangular Region selection box to jump around (KDE Phabricator revisions D11598 and D11704, fixed in Spectacle 18.04.0, authored by Tao Guo)
• Fixed a bug causing the Shift+Home/End keyboard shortcuts to not work while editing the name of a file or folder on the Desktop (KDE bug 392318, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.4, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik)
• Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to lock up when an app updates its window’s title very rapidly (KDE bug 365317, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by David Edmundson)
• Fixed a bug causing the weather widget’s BBC source to not fetch data after the BBC changed the URL on us (KDE Bug 392510, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.4, authored by Friedrich Kossebau)

UI Polish & Improvements

• In Open/Save dialogs, the context menu’s “Show Containing Folder” action now highlights and scrolls to the selected files in the window that appears (KDE bug 392330, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.45, authored by me, Nate Graham)
• Kdenlive icons now look good in HiDPI mode (KDE bug 390104, improved in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Andrew Crouthamel)
• Improved the look of Task Manager tooltip previews (KDE bug 390457, improved in KDE Frameworks 5.45, authored by Fredrik Höglund):
  

  

• Made it slightly easier to figure out how to change the wallpaper by adding a wallpapery icon to the “Configure Desktop” menu items (KDE Phabricator revision D11253, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by me, Nate Graham):
  
• Icons and text in Dolphin’s Places panel are now always perfectly aligned with one another with any font and size, including the common Noto Sans 11 (KDE bug 390771, improved in KDE Applications 18.08.0, authored by Scott Harvey)
• Improved the appearance of the category and subcategory headers in System Settings (KDE bug 392340, improved in KDE Plasma 5.12.4, authored by me, Nate Graham):
  
• The logout screen’s buttons are now more readable against a dark background (KDE bug 382264, improved in KDE Plasma 5.12.4, authored by Radek Hušek):
  

  

Every week, you can see the omissions being remedied and the papercuts being healed one by one. We’re on a mission to make KDE Plasma the best graphical desktop on planet Earth. There’s a lot of ground to make up, and we need your help! Climb on board and be a part of something truly magnificent.

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.

Check out what KDE contributors have been up to this week in the world of Usability & Productivity! The KDE Applications 18.04 feature freeze happened this week, so there was a burst of energy to get in some last-minute new features for core KDE apps, among other welcome changes:

New features

• Dolphin’s trash view now has a visible “Empty Trash” button (KDE bug 163306, implemented in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Roman Inflianskas):



• Okular gained support for forms with read-only fields that update based on other fields (KDE Phabricator task T8097, implemented in KDE Applications 18.04.0 and poppler from git master, authored by Andres Heinecke)
• Gwenview’s crop tool can now constrain the crop proportions to those of the current image (KDE bug 236970, implemented in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
• Gwenview’s crop tool now allows the cropping proportions to be constrained to their current shape by pressing the shift or ctrl keys (KDE Phabricator revision D11380, implemented in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
• Gaming controllers with batteries now appear in the Battery and Brightness plasmoid (KDE Phabricator revisions D11553 and D11331, implemented in KDE Frameworks 5.45, authored by Florian Dollinger)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that was causing KRunner to require two presses of the down arrow key to navigate to the list of search results (KDE bug 392197, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.4, authored by me, Nate Graham)
• Fixed a bug that could cause the Device Notifier plasmoid to display a confusing message about unmounting a device right after it had been mounted (KDE bug 391180, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.4, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik)
• Fixed a bug that was causing different feedback options in the Launch Feedback System Settings page to not take effect when chosen (KDE bug 392050, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Scott Harvey)

UI polish and improvements

• The SDDM login screen now has a more appropriate Breeze-style default avatar (KDE Phabricator revision D11057, improved in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Phil Stefan):
  
• Gwenview’s crop tool settings are now remembered after navigating away from the current image (KDE bugs 391757 and 392036, improved in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Huon Imberger)
• Gwenview’s Recent Folders list now shows folder paths in a much more human-readable manner (KDE bug 383850, improved in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Henrik Fehlauer)
• Dolphin no longer shows two redundant ways to open a folder in a new window (KDE bug 391997, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik)
• KMenuEdit gained HiDPI support (KDE bug 390737, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.12.4, authored by Andrew Crouthamel):
  
• Konsole’s “Edit Key Binding List” window now has a more reasonable default size (KDE Phabricator revision D11637, improved in Konsole 18.08.0, authored by Ahmad Samir):
  

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.

KDE contributors continue to polish up KDE software! In addition to our recent work on Discover, KDE Plasma and other apps got a lot of love too, especially Konsole. See for yourself!

New features

• Spectacle now exposes a token that can be used to add the window title to the file name of the saved screenshot (KDE bug 378463, implemented in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Roman Inflianskas)
• Konsole tabs can now be marked as “read-only”, blocking all input (KDE bug 126930, implemented in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Joshua Noack)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug causing Spectacle to incorrectly screenshot individual windows when compositing is off and they’re touching or going beyond the edge of the screen (KDE bug 390652, Fixed in KDE Applications 18.04 authored by Alex Nemeth and Henrik Fehlauer)
• Fixed a bug that could cause the SDDM login screen to not display properly for certain HiDPI systems (SDDM bug 894, fixed in SDDM 0.18, authored by Fabian Vogt)
• Fixed a bug causing certain files to not show up under “Recent Documents” when right-clicking on an app in the Task Manager or Launcher menu (KDE Phabricator revision D10890, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.11.4, authored by Алексей Шилин (Aleksei Shilin))
• Fixed bug causing Konsole to recall shell history instead of moving the view when scrolling with a mouse wheel or touchpad (KDE bug 355106, fixed in Konsole 18.04.0, authored by Ahmad Samir)

UI Improvements and polish

• Plasma’s support for showing app menus globally or in a titlebar button now supports virtually all GTK-based programs (KDE bug 375976, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik; read more about it here!):
  
  
  
• The Media Player widget now uses better and more appropriately-sized icons (KDE bug 390280, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.0, authored by Roman Gilg):
  
• Konsole now uses KMessageWidgets to display status indicators, which are prettier and more usable than the old UI was(KDE Phabricator revision D10935, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Joshua Noack):
  
• Konsole’s scrollbar now blends in with the terminal’s background color to avoid distracting you (KDE Phabricator revision D11184, fixed in KDE Applications 18.04.0, authored by Marco Martin)
  
• Desktop icon behavior and consistency has been much improved for multi-monitor setups (KDE bugs 390676 and 389745; KDE Phabricator revision D10729; fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13.0)
• Buttons inside text fields (e.g. an inline “clear” button) show the pressed state correctly (fixed in Qt 5.12, authored by Kai Uwe Broulik):
  
• Fixed a bug causing System Monitor to open in a partially or fully off-screen location for people with multiple displays (KDE bugs 368158 and 356706, fixed in KDE Plasma 5.13, authored by Valeriy Malov)

We need your help! KDE is committed to polishing our software to a mirror sheen and focusing in the kind of usability that our community is clamoring for, but we need the community’s help to make it happen as fast as everyone wants! Consider becoming a KDE contributor, particularly in development, and help make KDE Plasma and KDE apps total no-brainer choices in the Linux world, and then eventually the whole world…

If my efforts to do, 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.