This week, the 77 and counting, KDE Usability & Productivity He tells us again about what is to come to KDE Desktop, Applications, Frameworks and Plasma. Reading everything they tell us, there is something about this week that stands out: unlike other weeks, this time they tell us about many new functions, improvements and corrections that are already available, since they are marked as «Plasma 5.16.2 »And that version of the graphical environment that KDE develops I arrive on June 25.
Although in the original post everything is mixed, here we will separate what is to come of what has already come, among which we have now that Flatpak and Snap applications with application IDs that do not match are displayed correctly in the application manager. Also available from Thursday, lNotification pop-ups no longer collapse or fly from the wrong place when there is a nasty flood of notifications. Below you have all the news mentioned in KDE Usability & Productivity, Week 77.
What KDE Usability & Productivity mentions us late
As we have mentioned, what has already arrived and we can enjoy is everything that is marked as plasma 5.16.2, which is the following:
- Flatpak and Snap apps with mismatched app IDs now display correctly in the task manager.
- Job status notifications reappear for those using the Latte Dock.
- Notification pop-ups no longer collapse or fly from the wrong place when there is a nasty stream of notifications.
- Notifications for stopped jobs no longer show an imprecise "time remaining" indicator.
- Fixed an unexpected crash in Wayland when using the default "Smart" window placement strategy.
- System appearance and splash screen pages now consume much less memory.
UI improvements that came in Plasma 5.16.2
- Plasma's notification history no longer includes apps that don't set their notifications correctly, preventing or reducing "spam."
- Notification history now shows set and delete buttons in the same order at the top as they appear in individual notifications.
What's to Come, Based on Week 77 of KDE Usability & Productivity
- When trying to access a network with a captive portal (for example, an airport or hotel Wi-Fi network that requires you to log in or click the "Yes, I accept the terms of use blah blah blah" button), an icon in the system tray allows us to access again in case you lose the page the first time (Plasma 5.17.0).
- Dolphin 19.08 Information Panel can now automatically play multimedia files; the settings are found in the context menu of the Dashboard.
- Plasma no longer freezes to a black screen when exiting a Wayland session (Plasma 5.16.3).
- The Plasma KWin window manager no longer gobbles up all available memory when using a non-Breeze window décor theme in Wayland (Plasma 5.16.3).
- It is now possible for the screen to lock automatically while a KWin effect is active (Plasma 5.17.0).
- Applications like Kate and KDevelop that use the KTextEditor framework now continue to spell check documents for which spell check is enabled after they have been reloaded after being changed from disk, and scroll down when they drag something to the bottom of the view in the the same speed as they scroll up by dragging it to the top (Framework 5.60).
- When Spectacle 19.08 is used to save an image with a space in its filename and then automatically closes, the link in the notification generated by this action now works.
The improvements to come
- Notifications that appear within a second of another notification that has identical content are now automatically suppressed, preventing spam notifications from misbehaving (Plasma 5.16.3).
- The Colors page of the System Settings now also shows the title bar colors of color schemes, so for example you can distinguish color schemes that vary only in their title bar colors (Plasma 5.17.0).
- Pages in the Information Center now all have the same size titles (Plasma 5.17.0).
- The sound volume settings window now accurately describes what the response options do (Plasma 5.17.0).
- The User Manager page of the system settings no longer prompts us to enter an incorrect short name (Plasma 5.17.0).
- The Places panel in Dolphin, file dialogs and other applications no longer shows a "Root" item by default. May can be accessed from the Places panel (Framework 5.60).
- The share job dialog is now even more polished, has a better default size and more consistent bottom buttons (Frameworks 5.60).
- Now it is possible to deactivate the unreleased feature of Dolphin (19.08) "open externally opened folders in new tabs".
- Everything in the Dolphin 19.08 main window has a text "What's this?"
- Okular 1.8.0's annotation settings dialogs look better.
When will all this come
As we have explained, much of the above is already available this week in KDE Usability & Productivity. For the rest, Plasma 5.16.3 will arrive on July 9, while Plasma 5.17 will officially arrive on October 15. KDE Applications 19.08 will arrive in mid-August. Is there something on this list that you are especially looking forward to?