This week in Usability & Productivity, part 54

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 has been working on this literally for months and I think he 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 started the Plasma 5.15 beta period. Go test it: https://blog.neon.kde.org/index.php/2019/01/17/test-kde-plasma-5-15-beta-with-neon/

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 .