Selective list of Plasma changes for KDE 4.3
[ Sunday, 24 May 2009, Tomasz Dudzik ]
Aaron Seigo has published a list of changes and new features to Plasma, the desktop shell for KDE4, that will be included in KDE4.3. This list is quite long, so I will only try to show the most important changes.
Notifications
The system tray of KDE4.3 finally supports notifications fully. Also the configurability has changed there. Now we can select the group of icons that are to be shown at all times - e.g. the Hardware group, containing i.e. KMix - if not enabled, the KMix icon won’t be shown in tray. The notification icon is shown at all times, unlike the earlier KDE4 versions. The notifications can now be grouped together and also they can e.g. display the Kopete contact avatar. Also the possibility to choose whether the notifications are to be hidden after some time, or to be always visible, has been added - when the mouse pointer floats over the notifications icon, a Notifications and jobs tool-tip is shown.
Plasma::Dialogs
The dialogue windows of Plasma are now animated. These animations work if the KWin effects are on. So far, the animation is not too smooth yet.
libplasmaclock
Can now speak out the current time (using text to speech) and show the holiday days for a chosen country in the calendar.
Plasma desktop shell
Cashew is now smaller and its appearance can be changed. If not docked, it can show the given activity’s name in one of the corners of the screen. Also the keyboard shortcuts of Plasma options are now in Cashew menu. Also as I mentioned earlier in the article on KDE4.3, Plasma has now a separate dashboard to dock Plasmoids on. They appear when this table is turned on, not on the desktop as until now. Now the empty space on a panel can be added directly from its configuration tool. The empty space can be resized at will. The new “show windows underneath” option causes the windows to be visible in the background of the panel.
New Plasmoids
- Bubble Monitor - system monitor
- Media player - audio/video player
- RememberTheMilk - integration with this site
- Unit converter
- Weather
New wallpaper plug-ins
- Virus - burn-out the screen pixels
- Weather - the wallpaper adjusts to current weather
- Mandelbrot
- Marble - the Earth on your desktop
These are the most visible changes from the user perspective. Obviously there were many changes under the bonnet too.
The full list of Plasma changes can be found here
This article was posted originally as Wybrana lista zmian w Plaźmie dla KDE4.3 / Selective list of Plasma changes for KDE4.3 on the Authors’ blog.
Translated-by : el es
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25 Comments
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“Also as I mentioned earlier in the article on KDE4.3, Plasma has now a separate table to dock Plasmoids on.”
What do you mean with table?
Could you do a screencast? some of those wallpaper effects are only really noticable with a video.
(great article btw)
I think that our translator dude meant the dashboard.
eheh I was thinking ‘table’ meant somekind of widget sidebar like in vista…
Thanks for the screencast, but I was asking one showing the new wallpaper effects (slide show, virus, fractal, etc) not the dashboard.
virus can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FUtTII2upc
mandelbrot doesn’t work right for me, slide show is like in win7 with that cool fade effect( requested by me :D), and weather just changes pass the wall to the weather.
Nice, the slideshow in previous versions was really rather lame with that quick switch.
I was actually hoping they would add some kind of fade effect like I saw in OS X (did not know W7 also has this).
“mandelbrot doesn’t work right for me,”
Hi, I’m the developer. Can you detail what doesn’t work for you? It’s useful to know how you built KDE (which build type, did you enable SSE, etc), what is your CPU, OS, etc.
It was a translation issue indeed. Corrected, and thanks for pointing that out.
yes, +1 for a screencast…
Screencast is on my blog. Checkout:
http://madsheytan.blogspot.com/2009/04/kilka-nowosci-w-kde4.html
sorry for the OT, but… can I have that wallpaper?
Take a search on deviantar and type blue bird in HDTV/widescreen section.
The killer new feature in KDE 4.3 for me is the ability to associate activities with virtual desktops so now we can have separate plasmoids and wallpapers per desktop.
Okay…..I am just starting to look at KDE4, so forgive the ignorance, but does KDE4 have “Hide Panel” buttons or does it even have that function ? I ask this because it is essential I use a piece of Java based software which MUST have the ability to hide the panel. Otherwise it throws a hisssssy fit. (Well, it won’t display or run properly, if that makes more sense.) So far in every version of KDE4 I have seen, a Hide Panel button has never been shown on that bottom panel. I find the Hide Panel button at the end of the bottom panel in KDE3.5 to be excellent, but so far I have not seen this “widget” (if that is the right term for this function) in the lists of available widgets or on any display.
Anybody like to explain ?
It is available since 4.2. You can configure the panel to autohide. Right click on the panel, click unlock widgets, click the cashew at on the panel, click more settings, and finally click autohide. Thats done
Thankyou m_goku, and I do appreciate your wish to help. I had already found that technique during my explorations, but it is not what I was asking for. Normally, I strongly prefer that the bottom panel is always there, no matter what software I am running, so I simply would not usually use autohide. I suppose I could do what you are suggesting for that one program, but consider: what I currently do is make one click on Hide Panel…….One click and the panel disappears sideways. A single click on that button when I am finished with my Java software, and it returns………Now look at what has replaced it. Five separate steps, and again five separate steps to get it back.
If ever I was to make a suggestion for a little sense this would be one…….Why make a very simple procedure hitherto, so much more complex ? Surely a widget could be designed to do what I want ? A one step/click Hide Panel button. Yes ? No ? Again, my lack of knowledge of how KDE4 is designed prevents me from understanding if this is possible or not…..but I hope someone can throw a little light on what I think is a fairly reasonable requirement.
Incidentally…..my reply above was not, repeat NOT intended to represent a “whinge”. It is purely that my exploration of KDE4 finally suggested that I would like an answer to a very simple question: Will a “Hide Panel” widget be built for KDE4, or not ? From what m_goku is saying and from the little I already know, it doesn’t yet exist. If such a widget is not intended, well, that’s the new rules of the game. Nevertheless, I personally think it would be a shame to omit such a simple process - if it can be done easily - but again, I have no idea whether the new stucture of KDE4 would permit the process.
I also miss the single click to hide and unhide the panel. Used it extensively while using a virtual machine. A single click and the kde panel would slide away making the virtual machine panel accessible, and a single click to reactivate the kde panel.
I think I saw on bugs.kde.org a wish for that, but I’m not sure. Take a search or report new
All things are possible with KDE 4. I don’t think that it would be a big problem to add that little button from Kicker to the new panel so if you really need it that much then maybe you could request it from the KDE guys. I am not sure if you would get it before KDE 4.4 though.
I personally would like to et some animated icons in the panel but I don’t know when my wish will be fulfilled.
@Tony : If I were you, I will specify a desktop for that lame Jave program. Just plain desktop with one icon for lunch the program without any panel. So when I want to run that program, I will go from main desktop to Java desktop. It is easy and clean, isn’t it?
Hello Zayed……before you call it a “lame Java program” be aware that the Java program I refer to, is one of the most important biological key generation programs in existence…..Lucid is most certainly NOT a “lame program”, it runs on Windows, Macs and Linux, and I happen to be one of the beta testers for the program. It is an incredibly complex and brilliant piece of software and has been about 10 years in steady development from a Windows only package to a Java based multiplatform application. And yes, it costs a lot of dollars to purchase. To find out more:
http://www.lucidcentral.org/
As to the suggestion……it might work…..but then, and let’s get serious for a moment, do you find anything wrong with my making the suggestion that the panel have a “one click sideways disappear/reappear” button ? To me, that sounds even MORE simple.
http://www.lucidcentral.org/Software/Lucid3/Lucid3PurchaseOptions/tabid/224/Default.aspx
One can look in horror at what one writes …afterwards…Purely because it can be misinterpreted. For clarification: by “a lot of dollars”, I do not mean 1000’s. In fact most Lucid packages are well under the $1000 mark. When I wrote that note above, I was thinking only of the idea that Lucid was not just one of the “back street software houses”, but a very respectable organisation within the ambit of Queensland University. Hope that clears it up.
hi Tony, I’m sorry, I do not mean that Lucid is bad because you do not mention it in the question :). I think forcing the user to hide his panel to work probably is LAME behavior from the program. Please, ask them to fix their bug.
Regarding, my suggestion it is just suggestion and I’m serious when I suggest it. If you count number of clicks required , it is same: if you have hide panel button:
1- click hide panel button.
2- run the program.
3- when you finish toggle hide panel button again.
In case if you use a specific desktop for this activate:
1- click the desktop number in the pager.
3- run the program
3- click the main desktop number again.
I hope someone will make “hide panel” button but till that time consider my suggestion.
Hi Zayed……no problems and fully understood - wretched English language can produce problems as you write and you end up with all sorts of misinterpretations that were never intended. I had never considered the Java program panel problem in the light of a bug before, but I think you are right. It will be a display problem somewhere, but I wouldn’t like to find it.
I have been working my way through your suggestion and it’s a fairly simple thing to do, and a good one. It certainly would fill the bill for the moment. Thankyou very much for your concern and help. Still, like you, I hope that the KDE team does eventually put together the “hide panel” button. It is just toooooooooooo convenient.
hey guys does anyone here have a problem with the screen powersaving in Beta 2? Once my screen shuts off as per configured in power devil it just wont go back.. i have to hard reset not even an X restart will work. screen blanking works fine in my gnome so i dont think its my display driver.. but i do hate using gnome.. not as fancy.