Here are the results of week 56 of KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative. We’ve been working on Plasma 5.16 features and fixing old bugs in Plasma 5.12 and beyond.

One additional thing I’d like to mention is that we’re aware that many users of Discover in Plasma 5.14 are suffering from an inability to either check for updates or update their systems. This issue is fixed in Plasma 5.15 and beyond, but we’re working on a fix for Plasma 5.14 users that can be backported. Sorry for the breakage, everyone!

Anyway, onto the good stuff…

New Features

• KSysGuard’s search field now accepts a comma-separated list of process names or IDs so you can monitor just a few things at once (Tomaz Canabrava, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• The Networks widget now has a button to display a search field to help you find a particular network from among the available choices (Valerio Pilo, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• When dragging-and-dropping icons on the desktop over other icons, the dragged-over icons no longer disappear under certain circumstances (Oleg Solovyov, KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
• Desktop icons no longer sometimes get scrambled or rearranged after a reboot (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
• Desktop icons no longer sometimes become visibly duplicated after creating a new folder (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
• System Settings’ sidebar list back button now always has the correct color no matter what color scheme is being used (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• QML Comboboxes always show all items in their pop-up, and can now be closed by clicking anywhere else in the window just like QWidgets Comboboxes (David Edmundson, KDE Frameworks 5.54)
• Okular now properly displays links in Markdown documents that span more than one line (Albert Astals Cid, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

User Interface Improvements

• You can now right-click on networks in the Network widget to expose a “Configure…” action (Valerio Pilo, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• KWin’s blur effect now looks more natural and correct to the human eye by not unnecessary darkening the area between blurred colors (Alex Nemeth, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Print Manager now indicates what’s asking for your password and where it will be sent, which the last of the barriers to making it available on Debian (Michael Weghown, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Kirigami Toolbar buttons now all have the same visual style as other KDE-style toolbars on the desktop (Marco Martin, KDE Frameworks 5.55)
• After opening a new tab in Dolphin, that new tab’s view now automatically gains keyboard focus (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
• Spectacle no longer displays both “Full Screen (All Monitors)” and “Current Screen” options when your computer only has one screen (Emirald Mateli, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

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 donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

First I have some exciting personal news to share: I’ve been hired by Blue Systems to work on KDE projects full time as QA manager!

This means I don’t need community sponsorship via Patreon and will be shutting it down after this month. I’ll be keeping the PayPal and LiberaPay links to serve as a sort of “digital tip jar”, but I don’t need longer looking for internet money to support my family. Blue Systems is seeing to that now. 🙂

I have a lot of plans for how to polish up KDE software 2019 and I’m super excited to get started with no distractions!

Anyway, let’s move onto week 55 for KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative. I want to give a shout-out to our Breeze icon team, whose members have been just knocking it out of the the park lately. For example Rafael Brandmaier just fixed a 14 year-old bug yesterday! A lot of the work will show up in Plasma 5.16, but some of it will be visible in upcoming Frameworks releases too. Check out the full Breeze Icons commit log! Of course we have more than just icons:

New Features

• The System Settings Colors page has been rewritten for better usability and consistency with other pages (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Tooltips in GTK 2 apps like GIMP and Inkscape are no longer unreadable when the app is launched by opening a document from the file manager (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.12.8)
• The Date & Time icon is now visible when using Breeze Dark and in System Settings’ tooltips (Rafael Brandmaier, KDE Frameworks 5.55):
  
• On the System Settings Cursors page, the cursor size combobox now reflects your actual cursor size instead of always saying “Resolution Independent” (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• The Global Menu widget now displays its name when there’s no menu available, which improves the default display and makes it harder to think you’ve accidentally deleted the contents of your panel or something (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Various QML-based System Settings pages are no longer very slow when opened in standalone form using kcmshell5 (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)

User Interface Improvements

• The Analog Clock’s configuration window now has an improved layout and looks good when using a fractional scale factor (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• The button that lets you configure a panel now has a tooltip to make this more obvious (Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• The Desktop Toolbox now shows its own name and better displays the current activity when it’s not in the corner (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Kate now displays a Cancel button to allow you to end long-running tasks such as large search-and-replace operations (Loh Tar, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
• Okular’s Trim tools now have fancy new icons (Rafael Brandmaier and me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  

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 donation to the KDE e.V. foundation.

This week in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative, something big landed: virtual desktop support on Wayland, accompanied by a shiny new user interface for the X11 version too. Eike Hein, Marco Martin, and the rest of the Plasma hackers have been working on this literally for months and I think they deserves a round of applause! It was a truly enormous amount of work, but now we can benefit for years to come. 🙂

We’ve also kicked off the Plasma 5.15 beta period. Here’s how you can test it with KDE Neon or Kubuntu.

Bug reports have already started to come in and we’re fixing them as fast as possible to ensure a smooth release next month on February 12th!

New Features

• The digital Clock widget now lets you change the date formatting however you please (Chris Holland, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• The Devices Notifier widget now has a button that lets you unmount all mounted disks at once (Thomas Surrel, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• The NOAA Picture Of The Day wallpaper source works again (Tagore Chandan Reddy, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Fixed a bug that could cause in-titlebar menus do disappear after restoring a session (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Info Center’s USB devices section now displays all USB devices (Alexandre Ferreira, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• All the hands on the Analog Clock widget now cast a shadow (me: Nate Graham and Shubham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0):
  
• Long tooltips in QML/Kirigami apps and windows no longer get cut off at the edge of the window (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.55):
  

User Interface Improvements

• The clock in the System Settings Date & Time page now looks good when using a fractional scale factor (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.12.8):
  
• The wallpaper chooser view now looks good with all default wallpaper plugins when using a fractional scale factor (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• The Network Monitor widget now features a clearer legend for its graph (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plas,a 5.15.0):
  
• It’s now easier to find and use KRunner’s time plugin (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• When searching for an app in KRunner, if Discover is opened as a result, it displays a search field as expected (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen)
• KMail now lets you turn off the unread count badge on its Task Manager icon, which can be useful for people whose email workflows leave a lot of messages unread (Laurent Montel, KMail 5.11.0)
• Dolphin now warns you if you try to quit while the terminal panel is open with a still-running program (Roman Inflianskas and me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0

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 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.

I totally missed that last week marked the one-year anniversary of my documentation and guidance of KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative. I think we’ve achieved a lot over the course of that year!

Note that this is NOT an exhaustive log of everything that happened this week in the entire KDE community, or even in all of Plasma. The actual number of commits and improvements is always vast and enormous–too much to comprehend, really. The KDE Community is staggeringly productive.

Rather, this is always a curated list of only the user-facing improvements I believe are directly relevant to the Usability & Productivity initiative. And speaking of it, this week we got an interesting assortment of new features, bugfixes, and UI improvements–many of which I didn’t mention but will ultimately be appreciated when taken together. Check it out:

New Features

• Okular now features support for viewing and verifying digital signatures in PDF files(Chinmoy Ranjan Pradhan, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
• Gwenview now supports large 512 px thumbnails (Martin T. H. Sandsmark, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Discover’s search on the Installed Apps page now works properly when the Snap backend is installed (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• The KWin window manager no longer crashes when a window is minimized via a script (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Header text throughout Plasma and KDE apps is no longer very thin–sometimes almost illegibly so–when using Qt 5.12 (Filip Filla and Krešimir Čohar, KDE Frameworks 5.55)
• Apps written in Qt that don’t use KDE Frameworks no longer get ugly ampersands inserted into user interface controls (Albert Astals Cid, KDE Frameworks 5.55))

User Interface Improvements

• On the Activities page in System Settings, the buttons are now vertically centered and no longer let you futilely try to delete the last activity, which is not deletable (David Edmundson and me: Nate Graham KDE Plasma 5.12.8):
  
• The System Settings Login Screen page received a number of visual improvements: The default Breeze theme’s image preview was updated to reflect its current appearance, the background color of the preview is now color-scheme-aware, and the sizes and margins were tweaked to make sure that everything fits without being cut off (Filip Fila, Björn Feber, and me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• The System Settings page for choosing window decorations buttons received a visual overhaul, fixing many bugs in the process (Valerio Pilo, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• The Devices Notifier no longer lets you futilely try to unmount the root partition when configured to display all disks rather than just removable disks (Thomas Surrel, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Ported the System Settings Desktop Effects page to QtQuickControls 2, which fixes a number of issues such as bad fractional scaling appearance, ugly dropdown menu checkboxes, and the window size being too small when opened as a standalone app (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• When using Discover to launch an installed app, the cursor now shows the “launching” animation (if one is configured) so you can tell that something is actually happening (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• The Plasma Device Notifier now shows a busy indicator while a device is unmounting (Thomas Surrel, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Improved the padding and appearance of notification pop-ups (Krešimir Čohar, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• All search fields in Plasma and System Settings are now consistent in their use of text and ellipses (Krešimir Čohar, Filip Filla, and Björn Feber, KDE Plasma 5.15.0 and KDE Frameworks 5.55)
• Gwenview’s filter-by-name feature is now invokable using the ctrl+i shortcut, matching the behavior in Dolphin (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

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 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 week in Usability & Productivity, the KDE VDG worked very intensively on aesthetics. The Breeze icon theme gained a lot of attention, resulting in many improvements, and we now have a good number of icon designers diligently working through a backlog of issues. More is on the way too, with several enthusiastic new VDG members who combine an eye for design with strong technical abilities. Expect good things to come of this!

New Features

• When using the YaST configuration app on openSUSE, icons now get Breeze versions when using the Breeze icon theme (Noah Davis, KDE Frameworks 5.54)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• When using Wayland, resizing a window now results in the correct cursor being used (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Plasma no longer crashes when switching windows in certain ways (David Edmundson, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Devices like memory card readers are no longer unnecessarily powered down when their cards/disks are ejected (Stefan Brüns, KDE Frameworks 5.54)
• Discover no longer gets stuck in a state where both the “Update all” and “Check for Updates” buttons are grayed out (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Frameworks 5.54)
• Dolphin split views now keep the correct titles when switching and closing views (Elvis Angelaccio, KDE Applications 18.12.1)
• Konsole tabs now display their titles more accurately in a variety of circumstances (Mariusz Glebocki, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

User Interface Improvements

• System Settings now shows helpful tooltips for all items in the sidebar, not just items on the first level of navigation (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• The default image fill mode for wallpapers is now “Scaled and Cropped”, which has the advantage of not deforming images whose aspect ratio differs from that of the screen (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• The plasma-workspace-wallpapers package–which is shipped by default on Manjaro, and hopefully soon will be in Neon and Kubuntu—now includes some of the best recent Plasma wallpapers (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  
• Discover’s Updates page now shows the old and new versions of packages right there on the page (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0):
  

  

• Kolf gained a beautiful new icon (Rafael Brandmaier, KDE Frameworks 5.54):
  
• A variety of Breeze device and preference icons have been improved, including the multimedia icons and all icons that depict a stylized version of a Plasma wallpaper. Some examples can be seen in other screenshots in this post! (Björn Feber, KDE Frameworks 5.54):
  
• Dolphin now displays an error message when you try to create a new folder with the same name as an existing folder (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.54):
  
• Konsole’s profile switching shortcuts now switch the current tab’s profile instead of opening a new tab with the other profile (Thomas Surrel, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

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 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.

Week 51 of KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative is here! Most people are still out on vacation these days, so like last week it’s a bit lighter than usual. That didn’t stop the rest of us though! Check out what we did:

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• When using the KDE file dialog from a GTK app via the XDG portal, the “Automatically select extension” option no longer puts a raw shell glob at the end of the filename (Jan Grulich, KDE Plasma 5.14.5)
• KWin no longer occasionally crashes when disabling compositing, often when launching a video game (Vlad Zagorodniy, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Non-clickable list items in Discover’s Tasks view no longer inappropriately look clickable (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Changed the default sort order for the “Get New [stuff]” dialog to “Most Downloads”, which produces more relevant results than Rating did because it takes into account recency (Björn Feber, KDE Frameworks 5.54)
• Fixed one of the ways that Dolphin could crash when renaming a directory (Jaime Torres Amate, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
• When using Konsole’s “Enable Alternate Screen buffer scrolling” option to permit using the scroll wheel or two-finger touchpad gesture to scroll in command-line programs like less, now the behavior keeps working after issuing a reset command (Ahmad Samir, KDE Applications 18.12.1)

User Interface Improvements

• When choosing new wallpaper images using the “Add Image” button, it’s now possible to add multiple images at a time (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.0)
• Python bytecode files now get their own icons (Rafael Brandmaier, KDE Frameworks 5.54):
  
• Konsole tabs now only show icons on tabs when using a profile that has a customized icon (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
• Kate now has a menu entry for enabling and disabling Static Word Wrap, so you can easily toggle it on and off on a per-document basis without having to change the global default setting (Loh Tar, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  

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 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.

Holy moley, there are 50 of these Usability & Productivity reports?! Time sure flies when you’re having fun!

Speaking of having fun, this week is going to be a bit light what with the run-up to Christmas. Folks are spending some time with their families and recharging batteries!

Nevertheless, it was quite a week for some of the core KDE applications, which received a number of nice improvements and new features. More are on the way too, and the upcoming KDE Applications 19.04 release promises to be packed with much-requested goodies!

New Features

• Okular’s print dialog now has scaling options (Oliver Sander, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Improved the speed with which HTTP and HTTPS links are opened in a browser when the browser has been set as the default browser in ~/.config/mimeapps.list but not ~/.config/kdeglobals, which can happen when the browser received permission from the user to set itself as the default browser rather than the user specifically marking it as the default browser in System Settings (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.54)
• Python 3 script files now get the correct icon (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.54)
• The backend code for Spectacle’s Rectangular Region mode has been completely rewritten, which hugely improves performance and fixes a variety of bugs such as being unable to easily escape from Rectangular Region mode under certain circumstances and capturing the mouse pointer too late (Ambareesh Balaji, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
• In Konsole, inactive tabs that receive a notification and have their title text color changed now reset the color to the normal tab title text color when the tab is activated (Tomaz Canabrava, KDE Applications 19.04.0)

User Interface Improvements

• Konsole’s Edit Profile dialog received a huge user interface overhaul (Mariusz Glebocki, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
  
• Konsole’s Breeze color scheme is now used as the default Konsole color scheme, and has better contrast and consistency with the systemwide Breeze theme (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
• Dolphin’s “Compress” and Extract context menu items now display appropriate icons (Nicolas Fella, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
• It’s now possible to open an item in the breadcrumbs bar from its context menu (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Frameworks 5.54):
  
• Improved the behavior and consistency of the URL navigator/path bar in Dolphin and the open/save dialogs: now ctrl+L makes the location bar editable and focused and selects all the text; however when all of those are already true it instead returns it to breadcrumbs mode (me: Nate Graham, KDE Frameworks 5.54 and KDE Applications 19.04.0)

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 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.