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):
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!
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