This week we’re all at Akademy–KDE’s yearly gathering of developers, designers, system administrators, and users. I’m giving a presentation later today about how we can make KDE Software irresistible!

As such, it as a bit of a lighter week for the Usability & Productivity initiative, what with all the preparation and conference-going, but we still managed to get quite a bit done. And all the in-person interactions are setting the stage for many more good things to come.

Bugfixes

• Disks and volumes formatted with the NTFS filesystem are once again visible in the Places panel (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Framewotks 5.50)
• Text in the Timer widget now looks correct after resuming a paused timer (Peter Mühlenpfordt, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• When KRunner finds System Settings pages (AKA “KCMs”), adding them to the desktop as shortcuts now works (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• When connecting to new password-protected wireless network, the resulting password dialog’s text is no longer cut off in certain circumstances (Ivan Razzhivin, KDE Plasma 5.13.4)
• The lock screen no longer consumes 100% of your CPU’s processing power when using software rendering (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Fixed a memory leak affecting comboboxes (David Hallas, KDE Frameworks 5.50)
• Fixed a case where Dolphin could hang when browsing files on slow mounts (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.50)
• The volume control on Gwenview’s built-in video player is now always positioned correctly (Peter Mühlenpfordt, KDE Applications 18.08)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Ctrl + 0 is now a global shortcut for “Zoom to actual size” (Peter Mühlenpfordt, KDE Frameworks 5.50)
• When the Properties dialog is used to view an item whose name can’t be changed, the name is displayed as a label rather than non-editable text field (Shubham Jangra, KDE Frameworks 5.50)
• The Configure… button in the Widget Style System Settings page now has an appropriate icon (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• The “you can’t name a folder ..” dialog received some polish: it now has a cancel button, the message is worded more naturally, the “choose a different name” button uses a more appropriate icon, and its text is written in Title Case (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.50):
  

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Akademy is next week (I will be there!), but that didn’t stop us from plugging away on the Usability and Productivity initiative! Check it out:

New Features

• Discover gained the ability to upgrade your computer’s firmware (Abhijeet Sharma, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)

Bugfixes

• Fixed a bug that could cause Plasma to crash as soon as you log in (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Fixed a very large number of bugs relating to font installation (Mathias Tillman, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Because it’s not possible to change the trash icons, you’re no longer presented with the option to try doing it anyway (Subham Jangra, KDE Frameworks 5.49 and KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Dragging unmodified images from Gwenview to Chromium and the Plasma desktop (to set it as your wallpaper) now works properly again (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• LibreOffice no longer hangs when launched using Konsole (Andreas Hartmetz, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Discover’s Updates page and Settings page received some visual tweaks to look better and be more consistent with one another (Aleix Pol and me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
  
  (There’s still more to be done, as you can see)
• The Desktop Effects System Settings page received some organizational improvements (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Trying to create a folder with the name . or .. now shows an appropriate error message (Thomas Marshall, KDE Frameworks 5.49):
  
• Kate’s incredibly useful and powerful Text Filter plugin is now enabled by default and more discoverable (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.12.0)
• Gwenview’s Red Eye Reduction feature now has a keyboard shortcut by default: ctrl + e (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.12.0)

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and wind out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Another week, another set of Usability and Productivity improvements! This week we fixed a lot of bugs in preparation for the KDE Applications 18.08 release as well as for Plasma itself.

New Features

• It’s now possible to import an existing Plasma Vault (Ivan Čukić, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)

Bugfixes

• the Enter key now works when using the keyboard to navigate System Settings (Marco Martin, KDE Plasma 5.13.4)
• System Settings’ Search field text now looks crisp and sharp when using a fractional high DPI scale factor (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.12.7):
  
• The Notifications plasmoid no longer inappropriately groups notifications that have inline images attached (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• The Kickoff Application Launcher’s icon now respects size hints and no longer becomes arbitrarily huge with a tall panel–unless you want it to (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• The on-screen display for choosing what to do with a new screen is now navigable using the keyboard (Fredrik Gladhorn, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Discover can no longer crash if you quit it while it’s still in the middle of checking for Flatpak updates (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14.0
• The Plasma splash screen’s “Plasma Made by KDE” text is no longer blocky and located in the wrong place when using a fractional scale factor (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Sorting files by modification time in Dolphin is now 12 times fasteris now 12 times faster (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• In Gwenview, it’s once again possible to zoom and pan using the mouse wheel and the middle click and Ctrl+ left/right click shortcuts while using the Crop or Red Eye Reduction tools (Peter Mühlenpfordt, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• The Size slider in Gwenview’s Red Eye Reduction tool now works again (Peter Mühlenpfordt, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Fixed a few cases in Gwenview where a manually zoomed-in image would not be properly smoothed (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Gwenview now displays the correct crosshair cursor when using the Red Eye Reduction tool (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Reduced the blurriness of images in epub files viewed with Okular (Gilbert Assaf, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

UI Polish & Improvement

• In Discover, the updates list is now sorted by completion percentage when packages are being updated (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• The icon thumbnailer now supports MNG files and Apple ICNS files, and shows prettier icons for windows .ico files (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.12.0)
• Multi-column views in the open/save dialogs (and some other places) now use alternating background colors, just like Dolphin does (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.49):
  

Next week, your name could be in this list! Just check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and wind out how you can help be a part of something that really matters.

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Here’s another big week for KDE’s Usability and Productivity initiative. We’re getting ready for the release of KDE Applications 18.08–the second of our three yearly Applications releases. As the numbers in the version suggest, it will be released in August of 2018, about a month from now. As such, there’s been a lot of focus on new features and polish for core KDE apps such as Dolphin, Gwenview, Konsole, and Spectacle. We’re also ramping up our work for KDE Plasma 5.14, which is scheduled for release in October.

To learn more about KDE’s software release schedule, check out https://community.kde.org/Schedules. To learn more about what we did last week, keep reading!

New Features

• The System Monitor now has a handy “Tools” menu button that shows useful system tools (Gregor Mi, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• In Gwenview, you can now use the F key to toggle between the Fit, Fill, and 100% zoom modes (Peter Mühlenpfordt, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• In Spectacle, it’s now possible to use the keyboard to create and adjust the selection rectangle in Rectangular Region mode (KDE Applications 18.08.0, Scott Harvey)

Bugfixes

• Blurred backgrounds behind context menus on the Desktop no longer look corrupted (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• The Application preference chooser now shows apps’ icons in the app list (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  

  

• Fixed a bug that could cause the screen edges and corners to not be hit properly when the cursor is traveling at high speed when using Wayland (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.13.4)
• Worked around a Qt 5.11 regression that could cause KDE apps to lose their menu bars, toolbars, and panels (Mladen Milinkovic, KDE Frameworks 5.49)
• System Settings no longer displays the “Ambiguous shortcut!” dialog when you try to quit it using the Ctrl+Q shortcut (Marco Martin, KDE Frameworks 5.49)
• Buttons in newly-written System Settings pages no longer display incorrect text instead of their accelerators in certain circumstances (Marco Martin, KDE Frameworks 5.49)
• Fixed a few memory leaks in Dolphin (David Hallas and Jaime Torres, KDE Applications 18.08.0 and KDE Frameworks 5.49)
• Dolphin’s selection marker now looks crisp and sharp in high DPI mode (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  
• Konsole no longer hangs when processing very large stderr output (Martin Sandsmark, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Improved the CSS support in Kate, KDevelop, and any other app using the KTextEditor framework (Jonathan Poelen, KDE Frameworks 5.49)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Plasma now uses a trash icon for any action that will remove a widget or a panel, making it harder to accidentally remove something when all you want to do is close a menu instead (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• Plasma’s panel widget editing menu received a visual and usability overhaul (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• Labels for icons on the desktop now perfectly align to the pixel grid, improving text rendering when using a non-integer systemwide scale factor (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7):
  
• Plasma now uses a “broom style” icon for features that clear history (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• Tweaked the new shadows to reduce the size and darkness of the bottom edge’s shadow in response to user feedback (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• Improved the layout and presentation of controls in Discover’s Update Notifier Plasmoid (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• When sorting apps in Discover by release date, Discover now shows more recently released apps first rather than last (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.13.4)
• The Get Hot New Stuff download window now defaults to sorting content by rating (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.49)
• Konsole tabs are now harder to accidentally detach, and faster to accurately re-order (Tomaz Canabrava, KDE Applications 18.12.0
• Gwenview now zooms in to the cursor position when using zoom keyboard shortcuts (Peter Mühlenpfordt, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

Wanna be a part of this? Of course you do, because you want to make a difference, and you want to help make the world’s best free operating system even better. It’s more important than ever. So hop on over to https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved! There’s room for everyone, and you don’t even need to be a programmer! I’d never written a line of C++ or QML before getting started in the KDE community. You can do it!

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Get ready for a humongous week for KDE’s Usability and Productivity initiative! KDE developers and contributors squashed a truly impressive number of bugs this week, all the while adding features and polishing the user interface.

New Features

• Discover now supports Snap Channels, allowing people to choose whether to install stable or beta versions of Snap apps (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Kate can now use a different color scheme from the system’s global color scheme (Thomas Fjellstrom, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  

Bugfixes

• The Kickoff Application Launcher’s “Search For” entries now work again (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Fixed a case where Plasma could crash when switching Activities (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• The Desktop Grid effect no longer unnecessarily switches activities (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.13.4)
• The Font Management System Settings page doesn’t yet work on Wayland, so it no longer appears there (previously it would taunt you by showing up, and then crash when you tried to use it) (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.13.3)
• When removing installed Snap apps with Discover, the “Remove” button no longer changes its text (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Dolphin no longer asks for confirmation before moving an item to the trash until an unrelated setting is changed (Алексей Шилин (Alexei Shilin), KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Fixed a rare situation where Gwenview 18.04.x could take up to 30 seconds to launch (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.04.3)
• Using Ctrl+left click/right click to zooms now zooms at the correct speed when you click quickly (Henrik Fehlauer, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Fixed a number of bugs with syntax highlighting for the C++, Python, Lua, JavaScript, and CoffeeScript programming languages in Kate, KWrite, and other apps using the KSyntaxKighlighting framework (Nibaldo González and Jonathan Poelen, KDE Frameworks 5.49)
• Kate’s Quick Open feature now works again when using Qt 5.11 (Sven Brauch KDE Applications 18.04.3)

UI Polish & Improvement

• The Kickoff application launcher’s “Computer” tab now shows entries grouped, just like they are in Dolphin (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.7):
  
• Standalone widgets now display a better icon for the “remove” button on their handles, so it’s much less likely that you’ll accidentally remove a widget when you just mean to hide the handle (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0,):
  
• Shadows in Breeze have been further refined, and now feature softer corners and edges and a more true-to-life lighting model (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• Icon previews in Dolphin are now sharper in HiDPI mode (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Improved the layout of the View Properties windows (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  

There are still more bugs I’d like to get fixed ASAP, though, including a number of high-profile regressions with the mouse and touchpad settings in Plasma 5.13. I hope very much that we can fix these soon. If anyone reading this feels like they could help out, please do so! We’re happy to lend a hand when first getting started as a KDE contributor. There are lots of other ways to get involved, too.

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This was quite a bugfixy week in KDE’s Usability and Productivity initiative, but we managed to squeeze in a cool new feature! See for yourself:

New Features

• Dolphin now has a “Share” menu just like the one in Spectacle and Okular (Nicolas Fella, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  

Bugfixes

• Folder view widgets that have been placed in a panel once again behave correctly when clicked (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.13.3)
• With compositing off, the default panel now covers the entire bottom of the screen properly (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• GTK windows without client-side decorations (i.e. those that use the standard KWin-drawn server-side decorations, like the titlebar and shadow) once again have window decorations on Wayland (David Edmundson, GTK 3.24)
• Devices whose size cannot be determined no longer show up as “0 B Hard Drive” in the Places panel (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Discover no longer shows packages removed via the terminal as still being installed (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• When viewing the Properties dialog for a file on the desktop, the “Share” tab is now visible (Kai Uwe Broulik, 18.08.0)
• search:/ and timeline:/ entries now work again from the Kickoff Application Launcher menu (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)

UI Polish & Improvement

• When KRunner finds and displays an entry from your Places panel, the name of its category appears to the right of it (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• Modernized the layout of some pages in Dolphin’s settings window (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  
  
  

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Hot on the heels of last week, we’ve got a ton more Usability and Productivity for you! Look at all this cool stuff:

New Features

• There’s now a global Ctrl+Alt+T shortcut that launches Konsole from anywhere (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• You can now place hand-made .desktop files in ~/Templates to make new templates appear in the “Create New” menu (Marijo Mustač, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• KNewStuff now includes an interface to actually install the apps that it recommends (Nicolas Fella, KDE Frameworks 5.48):

  

• It’s now possible to sort images by rating in Gwenview (Farid Boudedja, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• It’s now possible to drag an image being viewed in Gwenview into other applications (Huon Imberger, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

Bugfixes

• Discover’s toolbar no longer experiences layout breakage after navigating from one app page to another (Marco Martin and Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14)
• “Locked” emblem icons on read-only folders in Dolphin now display correctly for 3rd-party icon themes (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Discover no longer crashes on launch when Flatpak has always been used only to install to the user’s home directory via the --user option (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• Dolphin’s “Hidden Files” button now displays an icon when using the Oxygen icon theme (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  

UI Polish & Improvement

• Dolphin’s View Properties dialog now shows the additional information list inline rather than in another modal dialog (Elvis Angelaccio, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  
• It’s now possible to open multiple documents at a time in Okular using the file Open dialog (Oliver Sander, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• KMag now has HiDPI support (Christoph Feck, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Devices and processors in KInfoCenter’s Device Viewer list are now sorted in a human-friendly manner (Isaac True, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• .ico files can now be used for custom folder icons (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

After a light week, we’re now roaring back with a veritable avalanche of Usability and Productivity! Look at all this cool stuff:

New Features

• Discover now shows the release date for apps that have defined this information in their AppStream metadata (Aleix Pol and me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• After sharing an image with Imgur in Spectacle, the shared image link is automatically copied to the clipboard (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  
• Kate (and other apps using the KTextEditor framework) can now be configured to show a file’s total number of lines in the status bar (Shubham Jangra and Christoph Cullmann, KDE Frameworks 5.48)

Bugfixes

• The Network widget no longer has inappropriately large icons with certain themes in Plasma 5.13 (Jan Grulich, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• The new blur effect now works properly on Wayland when scaling is used and on secondary screens (Alex Nemeth, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• Copying from GTK applications to non-GTK applications on Wayland now works (Michal Srb, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Fixed a case where Plasma could crash on login (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• Fixed several crashes and hangs in Discover (Apeix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• Discover’s update notifier plasmoid now lists the correct number of total updates when some of them are security updates (Chris Holland, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• When multiple version of a KDE Plasma or app add-on are available, Discover now installs the latest one instead of a random one (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.3)
• Fixed a huge amount of bugs affecting Task Manager preview tooltips, including a lack of thumbnails for the tooltip of a running app’s second window, A window’s first tooltip being too wide, a window’s tooltip being too wide when Plasma is just started, and apps with multiple windows showing an extra tooltip after Plasma is restarted (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.13.1). Thanks Eike!
• The “Minimize All” widget now behaves correctly when a single window is subsequently un-minimized (David Edmundson and Anthony Fieroni, KDE Plasma 5.13.1)
• Discover’s progress indicator is now more accurate when installing a single application (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)

UI Polish & Improvement

• It’s now possible to turn off the sliding wallpaper feature for the new “Switch Virtual Desktops” effect, and the “slide docks” feature is now off by default (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.14)
• On the System Settings Fonts page, the “to” label is now disabled when the controls on either side of it are also disabled (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.13.2)
• Discover’s Reviews section on the app page is now better laid out and allows you to write a review without having to open the review pop-up (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• The page for KDE Plasma and app add-ons now shows a donation link (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.13.2)
• All text in the Properties window is now selectable (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• The permissions dialog now uses more user-friendly text for the different read and write states (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• Moved Dolphin’s General settings page to the top so it now matches other KDE Applications and it’s the first thing you see when you open the Settings window (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

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. Also consider making a donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

Howdy folks! This has been a bit of a light week for KDE’s Usability and Productivity initiative, probably because everyone’s basking in the warm glow of a well-received release: KDE Plasma 5.13 came out on Tuesday and is getting great reviews!

Don’t worry, we’ve got lots of great stuff queued up though.

Bugfixes

• The context menu for desktop icons now correctly toggles between Move to Trash and Delete when the Shift key is pressed (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.12.6)
• Any toolbar buttons in Kate and KWrite (and other apps using the KTextEditor frameworks) that display a drop-down menu when you click on them now display the menu properly when you click on them normally, instead of requiring a click-and-hold (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)

UI Polish & Improvement

• The Libinput-backend Mouse and Touchpad System Settings pages received a visual and usability overhaul (Furkan Tokac, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  
  
• Discover’s Updates page is now clearer about what version is being upgraded (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  
• Scrollbars in Konsole are now overlay style and disappear entirely when the view isn’t scrollable, e.g. with a full-screen CLI program like top (Tomaz Canabrava and Alex Nemeth, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

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.

This has been another strong week for KDE’s Usability and Productivity initiative! Quite a few longstanding bugs got fixed, among lots of other nice improvements. Look at all this cool stuff:

New Features

• Gwenview can now sort by ascending or descending order (Farid Boudedja, KDE Applications 18.08.0):
  

Bugfixes

• It’s no longer possible to accidentally drag-and-drop Task Manager entries into app windows (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Fixed a bug introduced by Qt 5.11 that could cause the wrong day to be highlighted in the calendar view (Fabian Vogt, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• The Breeze Task Switcher no longer has an odd transparent rectangle on the bottom (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Many icons throughout all KDE software now display a more appropriate version when using HiDPI mode (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Calculating free space can no longer block the user interface (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Kate’s cursor width no longer shrinks on long lines in certain circumstances (Subham Jangra, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Gwenview’s toolbar Share button now prompts you to install the necessary plugins if they’re not already installed, just like the menu already does (Farid Boudedja, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• When a file in Dolphin is renamed via the rename dialog such that it would scroll out of view, Dolphin now scrolls to it (Elvis Angelaccio, KDE Applications 18.08.0)
• Fixed a few cases in Konsole where block selection mode didn’t work (Ahmad Samir, KDE Applications 18.08)
• Sending screenshots from Spectacle to phones using KDE Connect now works (Aleix Pol, KDE Applications 18.08.0)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Colorized buttons in Discover (and other Kirigami apps) now use a better-contrasting color for the text and icon (Aleix Pol, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• Discover now switches to its compact view more often, to make it more discoverable (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  
• Discover now updates the repo cache if it’s old, improving reliability of software installation in certain circumstances (Aleix Pol, KDE Plasma 5.14)
• .desktop files with custom icons specified now show their custom icons when text file previews are turned on (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• Improved the layout of the Trash page in Dolphin’s settings window (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48):
  
• Removed the black triangle in the bottom-right corner of windows when using the “No Borders” setting (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.48)
• The System Load Viewer plasmoid’s text headers are now centered (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Notifications on the Bluetooth System Settings page now display more contextually appropriate labels on their buttons (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.14):
  

See all the names of people who worked hard to make the computing world a better place? That could be you next week! Getting involved isn’t all that tough, and there’s lots of support available. Give it a try today! It’s easy and fun and important.

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.