This week in Usability & Productivity, part 35

For this week’s Usability & Productivity report, we’ve got oodles of goodies, including some new features, a whole bunch of visual improvements related thumbnail previews in Dolphin, the open/save panels, and desktop icons (i.e. Folder View), icon improvements throughout KDE apps when using a High DPI screen, and lots of other miscellaneous goodies! We haven’t forgotten about Samba, and another very important fix landed. There are more in the works, too. Have a look:

New Features

• Info Center now has a “Copy to Clipboard” button that copies everything to the clipboard (Gregor Mi, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• The Logout Options screen now shows “Hibernate” as an option if hibernation is supported (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  

Bugfixes

• Fixed a data loss issue that could affect non-KDE apps that perform atomic saves when saving modified files located on Samba shares (Jaime Torres Amate, KDE Frameworks 5.51)
• Fixed a security issue that could allow maliciously-crafted .okular archive files to create arbitrary files on the user’s computer (Albert Astals Cid, KDE Applications 18.08.1)
• The Kicker Application Menu now responds properly to arrow key navigation after searching (Eike Hein, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• The Plasma calendar now properly supports locales where Sunday isn’t the first day of the week (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• The Media Player plasmoid now shows correct playback length and status for media that is longer that 33 minutes and 22 seconds (Arsen Arsen, KDE Plasma 5.12.7)
• Significantly improved performance when using a Folder View plasmoid that’s sorted by date (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• KRunner can now find bookmarks created with recent versions of Firefox (Stefan Brüns, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• Monochrome icons are no longer invisible when selected in Dolphin (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.08.2)
• Dolphin now correctly saves your preferences when you change Settings -> General -> Confirmations -> Executing scripts or desktop files (David Edmundson, KDE Applications 18.08.1)
• Reduced the number of times that Dolphin needs to look up file information , which should improve response times with Samba shares and other slow network locations (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.12.0)
• Gwenview now names print jobs appropriately (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.08.2):
  
• Fixed the “Solarized” color schemes in Kate to be readable (Andrew Crouthamel, KDE Frameworks 5.51)

UI Polish & Improvement

• Improved the behavior of drawing frames and shadows for thumbnail previews in Dolphin and the file open/save dialog : now frames and shadows are drawn only for images with no transparency, improving consistency and visual presentation, particularly for icon files and PNGs with transparency (me: Nate Graham, KDE Applications 18.12.0 and KDE Frameworks 5.51):
  
• Desktop icons now show thumbnail previews just like Dolphin , and those previews can be turned off if desired (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.14.0):
  
• The Samba credentials System Settings page is now located in a more appropriate location, under the “Network Settings” category (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Plasma 5.14.0)
• All of Spectacle’s save options are now located on the “Save” page (Kyle Utecht, KDE Applications 18.12.0)
• Improved the clarity of small icons when using Dolphin on a High DPI screen (Kai Uwe Broulik, KDE Applications 18.08.2):
  
• When using Dolphin on a High DPI screen, the places panel still shows monochrome line-art icons, and they’re nice and sharp . This also improves icons throughout all other KDE apps too! (Chris Rizzitello, KDE Frameworks 5.51):
  

Impressive stuff, huh? Just look at KDE’s momentum these days: improvements throughout the stack every week. We’re on a mission to make KDE Plasma and apps the pre-eminent desktop computing environment , and we’d like you help! Be a part of something big. 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.

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