KDE Usability & Productivity: Week 63

It’s time for week 63 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative. These things are getting so huge I’m going to have to start splitting them up into multiple posts, because KDE contributors just don’t stop fixing and improving things! Expect more to come soon, but for now, here’s what we’ve got for you:

New Features

• Blender files now get thumbnail previews (Chinmoy Ranjan Pradhan, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  
• You can now launch Dolphin at any time using the new Meta+E global keyboard shortcut (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
• Spectacle’s settings window now displays a handy preview of how the filename will actually look (David Redondo, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

• Discover is now actually able to install apps on openSUSE when source packages are enabled (Dan Leinir Turthra Jenser, KDE Plasma 5.15.4)
• Discover no longer inappropriately lets you try and always fail to disable Flatpak repos (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.15.4)
• The Media Frame widget now renders images correctly and also uses less memory (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.4)
• Items in the Application Dashboard whose names are very long and get elided now display the full name in a tooltip on hover (Tranter Madi, KDE Plasma 5.15.4)
• System Settings’ tooltips now correctly display monochrome icons (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.15.4):
  
• The System Settings “GTK/GNOME Application Style” page now appears in search results (Harald Sitter, KDE Plasma 5.15.4)
• When re-arranging favorite app icons via drag-and-drop on the Application Dashboard, the dashboard no longer disappears and then launches the dragged app once the drag is finished (Tranter Madi, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Plasma panels, widgets, tooltips, and dialogs now have the correct background color again when using Qt 5.12.2, which broke it (Fabian Vogt, KDE Frameworks 5.57)
• The “Get new dialogs throughout KDE Software no longer always display an “Unknown Open Collaboration Service API Error. (405)” message on the bottom of the window (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, KDE Frameworks 5.57)
• The Baloo file indexing service now immediately stops indexing folders added to its exclusions list (Igor Poboiko, KDE Frameworks 5.57)
• The confirmation dialogs for deleting or trashing items now always display the correct titles and text (Jonathan Marten, KDE Frameworks 5.57)
• Certain unconventional Plasma themes now look like they’re supposed to (Friedrich Kossebau, KDE Frameworks 5.57):
  
• Re-arranging items in Dolphin’s Places panel once again works properly when some items are hidden (Tigran Gabrielyan, KDE Applications 19.04.0)
• Dolphin’s tooltip now correctly displays monochrome icons (David Hallas, KDE Applications 19.04.0):
  

User Interface Improvements

• Discover’s Updates page received a major usability overhaul : apps and packages now have distinct “downloading” and “installing” phases, and after an item has finished installing, it disappears from view (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Discover now displays a busy indicator to show that it’s actually doing something while checking for updates (me: Nate Graham, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Discover’s tasks completion indicator now uses a real progress bar, which looks much nicer (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• When closing Task Manager tasks by middle-clicking on them, as long as the cursor stays over the Task Manager, the remaining tasks do not resize as they reposition themselves to be under the cursor , so you can keep middle-clicking the same pixel to quickly close more tasks (Thomas Surrel, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Discover now shows any AppImage applications that are available on https://opendesktop.org in the correct category (Dan Leinir Turthra Jensen, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• Power and battery-related messages are now worded more naturally, with less technobabble and jargon (Krešimir Čohar, KDE Plasma 5.16.0)
• The help documentation in KHelpCenter now has an improved and modernized look (Carl Schwan, KDE Frameworks 5.57):
  
• Breeze-themed Kirigami inline messages no longer have a drop shadow on the bottom , giving them a sleeker look and 100% visual consistency with their QWidget counterpart used in non-Kirigami apps (Filip Fila, KDE Frameworks 5.57)
• Dolphin now defaults to showing the same layout for all folders (Elvia Angelaccio, 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 .