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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.
I think I'll wait for KDE 3.11 for workgroups.
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.
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.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
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).
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-)
Gestures are cool! I've set Mozilla to automatically press the submit button for me when I move my mouse like thi