KDE 3.1 Beta Released

shadow303 writes "KDE 3.1 beta has been released. There are numerous improvements, including tabbed browsing with Konqueror." I still can't say I care for tabbed browsing, but a lot of people swear by it. The new style/theme looks quite excellent, as do the various improved dialog boxes.

Comments

3.1?

[SpanishInquisition]

Gnome is only 2.0 so I guess KDE is better right?

Re:3.1?

[plugger]

I think I'll wait for KDE 3.11 for workgroups.

Re:3.1?

[red_dragon]

I think I'll wait for KDE 3.11 for workgroups.

But we'll have to wait 93 years for the release of KDE '95.

Tabbed browsing

[LunarOne]

Tabbed browsing is, of course, the bomb! I can't use IE anymore because of it. I middle click on links with IE and when nothing happens, it is just so annoying. It's like browsing in a dark place.

Frsit Psot?

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Dr. Spork]

I'm sorry, but tabs are a feature I always turn off. I mean, I'm not mad they're there, but I tried using them and didn't like them. The basic problem with tabs is that they force you to switch windows at two totally different places on your desktop.

I imagine that I am fairly typical in that I have several browser pages up at any one time, and in addition to that, I have some other apps open (music player, IRC, news program, file manager, etc). The reason I have all that stuff open is because I switch between them, and I want to do this efficiently.

However, to switch from my newsreader to a "submerged" tab on Konqueror or Mozilla, I first have to use my WM to swith to the browser, and then use the browser interface to switch to the proper tab. What makes this process even more lame is that at least in Mozilla, the tabs are on the opposite end of the screen from where I switch tasks on my WM. This means I have to do a lot of unnecessary mousing around.

A much more sensible approach is to open new browser windows rather than tabs, and then do all of your switching using the WM. One of the many advantages of this is that you can use keyboard shortcuts to cycle through all your windows, browser and the rest.

All in all, I find myself wishing that Konqueror developers would concentrate more on rendering performance and standards compliance. I suspect that tabs are a gimmick that will be requested only by a tiny but vocal minority. It's my opinion that if you feel like you need tabs, there is something wrong with your window manager (or you don't know how to use it right).

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Teancom]

Actually, they were almost completely implemented by somebody that is not a "hardcore" konq/khtml developer. I.e., somebody decided they really wanted them, wrote them up, and then several other people helped with the debugging and configuration. I really wish I remembered the guy's name, but it's actually been a few months, and my memory is poor :-P But here, like in all other open source projects, the stuff gets done that people want. If the vocal minority includes somebody with the talent to implement tabs, then, guess what, here you go :-) And enough different people have piped up about loving tabs, that I think it is more than just a matter of "not knowing how to use their window manager".

All that said, I dislike tabs, tried them, and haven't used them since B-)

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Masem]

While I can't argue with the concept of more work to get to given tabbed page from outside the application, the use of tabs currently solves a problem that until recently most GUI elements has with task switching, in that every instance of a SDI (single document interface) application would be listed in the task bar-like area. Thus, if you had multiple browser windows open, your task bar would be swamped with each window's title, and given all the other likely stuff you'd be running it would be difficult to determine the distinction of the different windows without some other mechanism or checking each one separately. Even without the task bar, using some application switcher may generate an overly long list, which could be hard to navigate or slower to use than normal tab switching. Newer GUIs (including XP and KDE2/3) are more intelligent now and will group multiple instances of the same application into the same task 'button', providing a popup menu to select the specific instance of that application. But when Opera and Mozilla were being developed into their current reincarnations, this wasn't a feature, and given that most developers or users will have several browser windows open at a time, compared to any other SDI-type application besides editors, it's not a suprise this feature was added. (And even in the case of editors, I noticed that a lot of the windows shareware and commercial packages have had the options of tabs to switch between open files, showing the same problem as multiple browser windows.)

Now, I dont' have Moz handy currently, but I do know that Opera allows you to place the tabs at the bottom of the page; I want to say Moz does too. Thus, in your case, you could jump to the Opera app from the bottom task bar, then use bottom tabs to find the right tab; mouse movement is limited, and locating the right page should be faster. Tab location (above, below, off) has almost always been an option in any program that I've seen them used effectively.

The other consideration is that maybe, there needs to be a way for apps to communicate to the task-bar/applications list as to describe all the current instances that are open. Thus, regardless if the program is tabbed or not, clicking on the task bar button for that program would should all instances of it, and selecting the appropriate instance would either go to that window, or bring the right tab forward. This, of course, is not trivial to work back into most GUI frameworks currently.

But, most important, tabs should be optional: some people love multiple windows, some don't. Appropriately written, the additional feature of tabs should be very light weight and ignorable when not used.

Re:Tabbed browsing

[uchian]

Gestures are cool! I've set Mozilla to automatically press the submit button for me when I move my mouse like thi

KDE and the new America

[Anonymous Coward]

One has to wonder if it is decent or even moral to use KDE these days. Since the 11th of September, we as Americans have had an opportunity to examine ourselves and our core values, and the question must be asked: does KDE fit into these core values, and is it something that ought to be a part of our day-to-day lives as we come to grips with the new reality that has been thrust upon us?

One thing must be understood: KDE is virtually 100% foreign technology. The foundation of KDE is the Qt toolkit, a set of GUI widgets developed by TrollTech, a Norwegian company. Norway, like the rest of Scandanavia and Europe in general, is an extremely socialist country. Socialism is something that Americans decided long ago would not be allowed in our nation, and yet millions of Linux users are downloading it without so much as a second thought. Beyond that, Norway's liberal immigration laws have allowed all sorts of unsavory characters into their nation... including the Muslims with which we are currently at war.

The rest of the KDE intrinsics are developed by primarily European agitators, folks who would not bat an eyelash at knocking down the capitalist foundation upon which our nation has been built. Bashing Microsoft is a popular sport in this forum, but the truth must be told: MSFT is an American company that employs American citizens with American families. Joke all you want about Microsoft employees, but they need to eat just like the rest of us do. For the life of me, I cannot understand why one would eschew Microsoft products in favor of things such as KDE.

Now, MSFT products are not perfect, but the last time I checked, neither was KDE! So in a very real sense, we are talking about choosing the lesser of two evils, and in this case the choice could not be clearer (at least, in the opinion of this patriot.) Using KDE doesn't help this country one bit, but purchasing dutifully from Microsoft helps to ensure our economic vitality (and, by extension, our nation, our military, and our way of life.)

I doubt that Osama bin Laden owns a PC, but if he did, he'd probably be running KDE. Does this make you comfortable? It shouldn't.

tabbed browsing.

[garcia]

how could you not like it? Instead of having to open 5 different windows of Mozilla I have just one and easy access to each (I use E and don't have the option of a taskbar or icons).

I can have Slashdot open, my banking open, and porn (three different ones usually).

Also probably conserves on my short memory usage ;)

Re:okay...

[LunarOne]

Well, you know what tabs are (eg. right click on "My Computer" on Windows and the tabs at the top are General, Device Manager, Hardware Profiles, Performance).

Well, in Mozilla, you can set it up so that you can:
a) right-click on a link and instead of open the page in another window, you can open it in another tab.
b) middle click on a link and it will open up the additional page in a tab.
c) type a url in the address bar and instead of pressing ENTER, press CTRL-ENTER and the page will be opened in a tab.

Thus, you have one copy of Mozilla running, but within the browser, a tab for each page that you want to view. No more billions of sessions open in the task bar at the bottom of your UI.

Best of all, you can set your preferences so that Mozilla loads the tabs in the background. A great application of this is: open the Slashdot page. Middle-click on all the "Read more..." links of stories you are interested in. You will have, within your browser, tabs with headings that you can look at, one at a time. Then, you can read each story, close the tab and look at the next and so on.

If you haven't or won't use this feature, force yourself to. You'll never go back.

I don't get it...

[Quasar1999]

I've only used Linux via the GUI for a few months (ya, ya I know...)... but why is there KDE and Gnome? Why are the two not one. The only differences I see between the two are skins, very minor UI functionality, and some utils that are unique to either or. But why can't KDE and Gnome be merged, and allow the end user to customize everything the way they want? And use the utilities they want. I like KDE's appearence, but I hate it's 'feel' when actually doing tasks.

What is so fundamentally different between Gnome and KDE that doesn't allow them to be merged into one project? IMHO that's all that is required to finally get a solid Desktop presence for linux.

Re:I don't get it...

[IamTheRealMike]

I've only used Linux via the GUI for a few months (ya, ya I know...)... but why is there KDE and Gnome? Why are the two not one. The only differences I see between the two are skins, very minor UI functionality, and some utils that are unique to either or. But why can't KDE and Gnome be merged, and allow the end user to customize everything the way they want? And use the utilities they want. I like KDE's appearence, but I hate it's 'feel' when actually doing tasks.

Well, this is understandable. It's a phase we all go through, so don't worry. I went through it for instance, after a month or two of using Linux. It takes time, but you will realise the reasons for this. To try and save you time however, here is why, in a nutshell:

In the beginning there was KDE. It was free software (the GPL definition), but it was linked agianst Qt which was non free. This caused a lot of strife the community, as not only was KDE (in theory) illegal to distribute as it broke the terms of the GPL, but also the KDE developers were seen as being unreponsive to the issue. This was an important issue to many, as it would have "polluted" the platform with a core non free component. Why does this matter you say? Just imagine what would have happened if TrollTech had gone bust, or been bought out? One day Qt is there, the next it's not and you're shafted. Actually, project Harmony was set up to clone Qt (iirc), but after some considerable pressure from the community TrollTech GPL'd Qt, and all was well.

In the meantime, Miguel de Icaza had set up the GNOME project. It was based on GTK which was LGPL'd all the way. They also made many different design decisions - for instance GNOME is written in C, whereas KDE is C++. This is more important than it may seem, as (it was claimed) C is easier to bind to other languages, so gnome would be more inclusive. They also based their object model on CORBA rather than C++ for instance. There are many differences.

Today, they are so different there is no hope of merging them, so forget that. They do work together though, check out freestandards.org - the standards they produce there are often better than either of the technologies the individual projects came up with. KDE and GNOME used to be completely incompatible. Today, even the dreaded clipboard problem has been solved. So they do work together, and I for one am very interested in seeing this extended to sharing code as well. We'll have to see if this is possible.

Don't see this as a bad thing, please. Yes there is duplication of effort, sometimes needless. But consider the real world. There is lots of competition in the real world. Lots of different companies compete to provide the same product, but usually in different ways. The competition between KDE and GNOME keeps them sharp.

Do people use GNOME? YES! I just jumped ship from KDE3 to GNOME2.0.1 built from Garnome. I love it to bits, before I hated GTKs flakeyness and uglyness. Now I can't get enough of it. It's beautiful. GNOME2 has had a lot of effort put into usability, and it shows. It's not perfect yet, and there are still missing bits, but I think I'm a convert. Up until now, KDE has been the clear leader really. You said you don't like the "feel" of KDE: well, I know what you mean. To me, GNOME2 just feels better, although it seriously lacks features at the moment. It depends on personal preference though. One friend of mine swears by Enlightenment.

Competition is natural, and good. In the real world, people disagree over how things should be done. As long as competition is bracketed by standards, we will move forward, and this is what's happening.

What is so fundamentally different between Gnome and KDE that doesn't allow them to be merged into one project? IMHO that's all that is required to finally get a solid Desktop presence for linux.

LOL, don't worry, we all have opinions when we move to Linux. We learn later most of those opinions are misinformed ;) Remember - not everything is what it seems. Linux will have a solid desktop presence, but not yet. It's not ready. Both KDE and GNOME need a lot of polish and work, but they are good foundations on which to build. Remember: not everything is what it seems.

Emace or VI or.... Kate?

[zulux]

Kate has been a god send 'round here - Programmers who are just starting out the *NIX way need a editor that behaves kinda-like Windows notepad or other Windows IDE editors, but has cool features, and Kate fits the bill. The code folding works well and the whole package is just a joy to use.

Eventually they all should move to Emacs or VI for better productivity, but for the small, insignificant, time it takes to learn Kate, it's suprisingly productive.

Perhaps Kate will evolve to add the features of Emace, but I hope those features are 'hidden' and don't destroy the easy to learn interface of the curent Kate.

Bit-o-somthing: All out instances of Kate run on one BSD box and are viewed on Windows destops via VNC. It's the same soluton that we use for our clients that want to keep their Windows but use out *NIX apps that we make for them. It makes us both happy; they get to keep Windows Solitare and viruses, and out app is safly running on a real operating system.

Re:Emace or VI or.... Kate?

[Pengo]

Being a little bored with VIM I am trying a few different editors and have had some suprising results. Most of my code I write is Java/Python/VelocityMacro/JSP. For me JEdit has been a godsend as I have found that I can do almost everything in there that I need (sorta sick like emacs) but I have a very elegent and easy to use editor with outstanding tools like a built in jpython, code insight, and class browsing.

There is even a plugin that allows basic VI emulation (command mode) which excites the hell out of me. The syntax highlighting seems a bit more complete than VIM's (it just works better, especially in tricky JSP pages).

Kate was an editor that I tried for a day or two, but with a VERY small syntax-highlighting pallete it's hard to be as productive as I am in VIM or JEdit.

Note, for java people.. JEdit is a nice lite alternative to something like NetBeans or JBuilder. It's probably not the best thing for those weak of heart though, plugins can be touchy and a little fickle to get working. If your comfortable with an Emacs level of configurability, you might like it. (Note, this is comming from a non-emacs user).

Cheers

multitasking with tabs

[mblase]

I use tabs a lot on sites like Slashdot -- especially once I figured out how to use 'em fast. By checking a couple of preferences in Mozilla, I can control-click (or right-click and select) any link and have it open in a new tab, behind my current web page.

Usually I scroll down the Slashdot home page, open up a few story links in new tabs without any other interruptions, and keep scrolling. When I'm done, I close that tab and all the stories I wanted to read are loaded and ready.

You can do the same with multiple windows, I suppose, but it's not as compact and the new browser windows usually load over the one you're currently on, not under it.

Re:Transparency?

[Raster Burn]

I believe it just takes a quick screen shot to create the transparency effect. It does cause a little lag to render the transparency, but I do like the effect. It's not enough of a lag to be annoying on my 850MHz PC.

Re:still ugly

[nikal]

Yes you are spoiled.

1) click on one of the links from www.kde-look.org
2) read the 4 line instructions on how to install your newly downloaded theme
3)install it

Whoops, now your KDE is purty.

Re:still ugly

[Damek]

I may be spoiled by Mac OS X (ok, ok, I KNOW I'm spoiled by Mac OS X), but I think KDE is still an ugly interface. What's up with that? They could make it purty,,,why don't they?

How is this insightful? Insightful would be examples and suggestions - if you noted specific areas where it needed improvement. Simply saying you think it is ugly, especially when admitting you're biased towards a proprietary interface, should not merit insightful mods. No, this is most definitely a troll.

Some people relentlessly insist on missing the point of open source software: you can contribute. If you have nothing to contribute, then don't complain. Complaining is not contributing. Complaining with specific observations and suggestions could be taken as contributing, in the sense of "constructive criticism". But the parent post is merely criticizing, and badly at that.

Besides, if you don't like the new "Keramik" interface style, then pick a different one. Can you do that on OS X? (BTW, that's an honest question - I won't be buying one any time soon, and haven't had the opportunity to use one, so I don't know). My own personal favorite "look" for KDE is the "Light style, rev. 3", which came built-in with the KDE 3 packages I downloaded for my distribution.

Tabs rock

[Ogerman]

I still can't say I care for tabbed browsing, but a lot of people swear by it.

Browser tabs are like mouse wheels. They seem pointless at first, but then you get used to them and it's hard to go back. It's a subtle change, but consider how it affects the way you use the GUI: 1.) all web browsing is contained in a single window frame, thus making it easier to mentally seperate from other tasks, 2.) WM taskbars get shuffled, and make it easy to lose track of which windows belong to which applications. Browser tabs stay in the order that web pages were opened are spacially seperate. 3.) When doing heavy web browsing.. ie.) 10 windows open, it's much easier to have all controls at the top of the screen. instead of jumping around.