Last week, the 82nd of KDE Usability & Productivity, KDE Community promised us something special that they assured many users would like. That feature was revealed this week and is what you see at the top of this article: GTK3 applications with decorations and header bars the size of the client that use the Breeze GTK theme will respect the active color scheme of KDE. This means that our desktop will be more colorful, depending on the theme we use.
The above is just one of the many new features mentioned this week. What they have not said is when it will be available, probably because they have forgotten to add what it has to do with (Plasma, Frameworks, etc.) and in what version it will arrive. Another interesting function we will have in the systray notifications icon that in the future it will stress us less. You have all the news mentioned in week 83 of KU&P (does it look good like this?) Below.
Future news in KDE Plasma and Applications
- The KWin window manager now supports the zwp_linux_dmabuf_v1 interface in Wayland, which, for supported hardware and drivers, should result in lower memory usage and better performance (Plasma 5.17).
- Okular 1.9.0 can open and read .cb7 comic files.
- Dolphin shows comic previews in .cb7 (KDE Applications 19.12).
Bug fixes and performance improvements
- Fixed an issue that could cause KRunner to display duplicate unit conversion results with a partially written second unit (Plasma 5.16.5).
- When music is playing and the screen locks, the disc art on the lock screen no longer compresses when it is not a perfect square (Plasma 5.16.5).
- The volume slider now provides aural feedback only when we have finished dragging it (Plasma 5.17).
- Fixed a layer issue in the Kickoff app launcher that could cause its tab bar to fill the full view the first time its main horizontal panel was switched to vertical or vice versa (Plasma 5.17).
- Fixed the Plasma vulnerability related to .directory and. desktop (Frameworks 5.61 and will appear soon as a patch on all distributions)
- When the Kickoff app launcher is in a vertical panel, its tab layer is no longer a mess until it is used every time we enter or restart Plasma (Frameworks 5.62).
- Discover displays the correct icons for Snap apps in search lists and app pages, as well as after they are reinstalled (Frameworks 5.62).
- In System Preferences, when we click the preview button for an inactive global theme or splash screen and navigate to another page, it no longer prompts us to save or discard the changes because nothing has been changed (Frameworks 5.62).
- The icons for the .flatpakref and .directory files are displayed even when the text previews are on top (KDE Applications 19.08).
Improvements in the user's interface
- New notification indicator:
- It is now a hood (Frameworks 5.62 and Plasma 5.16.5 or later).
- It no longer shows the total number of unread notifications in the systray, which will prevent a high number from stressing us out (in fact, it's something I understand why it was happening to me). A "ringing" bell will now be displayed. If we want to know the total number of unread notifications, we have to hover over the bell.
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- The bell will vibrate when we receive the first notification (Plasma 5.17).
- The list headings in System Preferences have now been standardized in appearance (Plasma 5.17).
- The layout in the Appearance category in System Preferences, the lock screen page, and the screen and touch screen borders have been polished and reorganized (Plasma 5.17).
- When navigating the Kickoff application launcher tabs using the keyboard, the main category is pre-selected when going back (Plasma 5.17).
- When creating a new password or changing the existing one, more descriptive messages will appear that will tell us why it is or is not a good password (Plasma 5.17).
- The sort menu in open / save dialogs now also uses human-readable sort descriptions, as does Dolphin (Frameworks 5.62).
- When one of the tips from Dolphin 19.12 is displayed, we can hide them instantly by pressing a key.
- When drawing on a presentation using a stylus in Okular 1.9.0, the cursor becomes a crosshair as the stylus moves closer to the screen.
When will all this KDE news arrive?
- KDE Applications 19.08 will arrive this month, probably next week, while 19.12 will arrive in mid-December.
- Plasma 5.16.5 will be released on September 3, while the most important release, Plasma 5.17, will occur on October 15.
- Framework 5.61 was launched yesterday August 10. Frameworks 5.62 will be released on September 14.
What are you most looking forward to trying out of what was explained this week in KDE Usability & Productivity?