Submitted by “The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the second alpha release of the K Desktop Environment. This release comes straight out of Glasgow, the largest city in Scotland where aKademy is currently taking place. For the bravehearts who want to try KDE 4.0 Alpha2, please refer to the alpha 2 info page to find ways to have a peek at the current status yourself.”
What can I say: you guys rock. KDE 4 will be great!
I use Arch Linux and Kdemod.Looking forward to both KDE4 and its Arch variation.
screenshots of the systems settings http://vizzzion.org/stuff/screenshots/kde-4.0-alpha2/systemsettings… and dolphin http://vizzzion.org/stuff/screenshots/kde-4.0-alpha2/dolphin-nepomu…
They look aesthetically pleasant to my eyes
Edited 2007-07-04 20:20
oh please FSCK NO this is *SEEERIOUSLY* fscked up..
this looks so gnomish my eyes hurt… and what did they DO to the control center? Make a VISTA CONTROL PANEL FROM IT??? Also noone listened to my repeated bringing up of icons unrecognizable on light backgrounds and in small versions.. that small folder icon still looks UGLY.. </spontaneous_rant>
I just hope noone has removed the old control center code, although it seems I’ll happily stay with the Crystal icon set. I mean yes there has gone a lot of creative energy into this and so, but this really needs some luvin’ – and probably someone listening to good arguments. I am still in favor for a public voting system for the whole Oxygen icon set so people can show their appreciation for certain icon revisions AND COMMENT ON THEM… I really hope someone recognizes these issues (=> folder icon at small sizes sucks, icons have too little contrast and no proper border…) and has the insistence to fight through this battle.
I know KDE4 will be great. Technically it already is. But this Oxygen style and some of the so-called ‘usability improvements’ really scare the shit out of me. I thought that is the road KDE does not want to go down…
Edited 2007-07-04 20:43
Calm down. The “System Settings” app has been this way for a while…
As for visuals, I think it’s clear that they are still being worked on.
So your eyes are hurt because it’s “gnomish”. Mmmh….how profound reasons.
By the way, this system preferences app (not a “control center”, control center is a STUPID name) looks inspired in http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/systempreferences/ , not in gnome.
Edited 2007-07-04 21:09
By the way, this system preferences app (not a “control center”, control center is a STUPID name) looks inspired in http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/systempreferences/ , not in gnome.
Yup, that’s where it came from. It’s been in Kubuntu for quite a while as a replacement for kcontrol, and now its migrating to be the default. With a bit of polish it could be very nice.
Personally I hope something like kickoff http://home.kde.org/~binner/kickoff/sneak_preview.html the Suse kmenu replacement will also make it into kde4, but that doesn’t look very likely from what I’ve heard.
Kickoff has been a love-it or hate-it type of thing, I’m not sure making it standard would be the best route. I use it, but I’m still undecided as to how I feel about it. It certainly lacks an integrated feel with KDE in terms of the interface and behavior.
However, since kicker/kdesktop are going to be supplanted by the plasma framework, it should be very easy to provide or create customized elements such as kmenu replacements. If I’ve been following plasma correctly, you’ll even be able to create the plasmoids with quick-to-code scripting languages once the interfaces are done.
I’m almost shuddering at the thought of what’s going to appear on kde-look/kde-apps now…
yeah whatever score me down because I had an emotional reaction and just ignore the valid arguments following (: folder icon at small sizes sucks, icons have too little contrast and no proper border)…
those who want to understand _will_ understand my use of the word ‘gnomish’ and I explicitly stated the control center now looks like Vista not like Gnome, although Apple definitly has probably been the first layouting their settings like that. I really like the current 3.5 control center, it’s functional and efficient, the tree menu and the expanding panel button are most pleasantly to use and I see absolutly almost no improvement in that new version, it could all have been incorporated into the old control center. Some usability experts are seriously fscking up efficiency here. How good that they don’t rule FOSS and anyone has the right to change and fork..
I thought all the windows and mac people would be introduced to a DE for professionals with KDE4, teaching (or rather bestowing) them efficient use of their computer. Instead, the ‘usability experts’ import all this nasty evil bloat unfunctional design into KDE – well happy headshooting….
I really like the current 3.5 control center, it’s functional and efficient, the tree menu and the expanding panel button are most pleasantly to use
I have to say, that’s usually not the description that pops into my head when I’m thinking about the control center.
I don’t think a tree panel really has any place in the settings app, though. It is kind of necessary in 3.5 because you have to pop all over the place to find the setting you want to change, but for the most part when people open it up they want to change a single setting, not browse through all of them. The new design is better for that because the icons and spatial locations allow people to better recognize where they want to go without having to carefully search through a big list.
As far as all the visuals go, I don’t know how many times we’ve been told that they are not the final versions, that lots of new stuff is still being developed and the final version may not look anything like the alpha does. Nobody ever seems to listen though.
Edited 2007-07-05 02:22
As someone who’s actually USED Vista, that looks absolutely nothing like the Vista control panel.
Otherwise, I agree– while some of the placement was (to me) illogical, having a top level and a secondary level of configuration made things simpler.
Adopting the OSX/Gnome control center paradigm will make finding configuration options harder, not easier.
How so. New user will know exactly where to find the control panel and how to navigate through it because they’ve seen one before in other DE. The point of this release is to make it easier for new users to get a hold of KDE. Most people use Gnome not because its necessarily better but because its easier to use, the same can be said about MacOSX. I actually like the look they got going though I do agree that they need to separate the forms to be easier to read.
Personally I’m in agreement about the design of the Settings app… in my limited use of OS X, the System Preferences dialog was one of the things I really detested. Why add another step of going backwards when you have to perform another task? Nothing terribly usable about that.
The tree-menu is unobtrusive and convenient. You can see everything at once (I *think* there’s a setting to make it open fully expanded, but don’t quote me) and the groupings are quite logical.
The whole UI exercise that is KDE4 is beginning to depress me. KDE has so often been slated for being derivative (of Windows mostly), now they’re responding by mugging a ton of UI ideas from Gnome and Apple? Criticisms aside, it actually baffles me how this happened.
/doesn’t want to use a Gnome clone blog
I’d say the opposite. KDE4 is shaping up to something i might very well use as my primary DE, unlike earlier versions.
I agree that KDE4 is shaping up to be something great. Although it has a bit of a way to go to get everything working and looking good.
I agree with a previous poster in that all borders seem to have been removed (based on dolphin screenshots) to the point where there is no separation of the different parts of the window.
I wonder how quickly they will be able to get 4.0 into PC-BSD. I would honestly consider using PC-BSD more frequently than OS X with a UI that looks as slick as that, as long is it performs well too. Heck, I use NeoOffice now for a lot of my documentation work, and CVS runs on anything as does Java.
-digression-
I am not sure I like the way Apple is going with Leopard.
But then, I still like the old pinstripes look from 10.0-10.2. I wish I could get the pinstripes back now on Tiger.
Here is a kde4 livecd for those of you who want to try it it: http://home.kde.org/~binner/kde-four-live/
Looks like kde’s lofty goals for kde4 are really starting to materialize, most of the foundational technologies that were promised are in there now, only the kicker replacement is still MIA. but making great strides with alot of heavy development going in to it atm.
“…, only the kicker replacement is still MIA”
No, the kicker Replacement is plasma too (the replacement for KDesktop).It hasnt any Panel, but it shouldnt be hard to implement for devs.please give more time.
Awesome news! Now I’ll wait a few hours to download the livecd, those servers will get slammed in no time
Hope someone submits a .torrent to LinuxTracker, so we can share it faster.
No worries, there are LOTS of fast mirrors in the list 🙂
Well, they are from the SVN of yesterday. The lastest style have aparently not be commited yet so it is a little different but the windeco is here( and not in alpha 2)
http://img519.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc1nf8.png
http://img266.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc2oa5.png
http://img503.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc3yo6.png
http://img503.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc4du0.png
http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc5cg2.png
http://img515.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc6ht7.png
http://img405.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cc7lp4.png
I don’t want to criticize too much at this early stage of the artwork, but it looks like everyone complained so much about unnecessary borders that they went nuts and took out all borders until everything just looks like a jumble of widgets and text.
There is no visual separation between the application interface and application content, which makes everything appear very messy. Hopefully that will change, along with the window maximize/close/restore controls.
Since there are several comments about this ‘border’ issue, i think it’s worth mentioning, yet again, that the theme used in these releases is the old 3.5 theme FOR DEVELOPMENT PURPOSES ONLY. The final look and feel won’t appear until the underlying architecture is in place. The lack of borders does not impede the development of KDE so there’s probably no reason for anyone to waste any time on making it pretty for you.
A little bit of patience people! There’ll be more than enough eye-candy soon…
It looks like they are putting a hellish amount of work into this. And this will really be a “first version”, opening up all sorts of interesting possibilities.
At this point, just looking at the changes they are making to KDE I can say I would definitely prefer using it over GNOME and I am interested to see a screenshot of their column view… anyone have that? I realy like column view in MAC OS X and prefer it over the other modes… but there are definitely some features that could be added.
Can someone please explain to me how reducing the available viewing area for your files and giving more room to file navigation is aiding useability? Look how much dead real estate their is around the window.I have the same criticism for the Suse KDE menu, how is having to click your way around it more useable than just moving the cursor?
I hope I am being premature with my criticism. Different does not mean better.
You don’t have to have those panes displayed, thus restoring your real estate for files…
I guess what you see is simply the default look… default are meant to be changed though
I have the same criticism for the Suse KDE menu, how is having to click your way around it more useable than just moving the cursor?
Obviously you haven’t actually used the Suse KDE menu. There is no clicking to activate the different panes, you just mouseover the tabs to switch to them. It works quite well in practice.
Obviously?
Please open Kaffiene using the suse kde menu without clicking and then please explain how you did it.
Even worse is when you are looking for something when you’re not sure what category it is in eg. multimedia or graphics, if you get it wrong you have to click back to start again.
Please explain the “obvious” benefits of this too
1. SmartCard support (with Kwallet integration).
2. Kmail sent mail folders for IMAP by default (not local filesystem).
3. Multicolumn view in Konqueror filemanager with automatic width or at least slider.
4. Browser back button as BACKSPACE not ALT+Left_Arrow (this is seriously lame key combination IMHO).
5. Kmenu editing tool messing up menu structure after some modifications (lame bug- marked as non-serious???).
6. SVG icons ONLY- not 50+MB of PNGs all over the place.
7. Xorg configuration application (configure without restarting X).
8. Proper HALd and Fuse-FS support.
9. Show real applications memory usage not with shared memory included.
10. Make themes installation easier (no compilations and manual file copying).
11. Too many missing icons (for years already).
12. Sticky window borders, related to mouse cursor not screen edges- too many times I failed (missed border for some awry reason) with window resizing because of some delay between mouse button press and actual operation done with window. If I got application full-screen then why there is window borders for resizing???
13. etc…
Those are missing bits that I encounter every freaking day.
@antik Good suggestions (have you checked bugs.kde.org to make sure they are filed as wishlist items?), but I have some comments.
4. Browser back button as BACKSPACE not ALT+Left_Arrow (this is seriously lame key combination IMHO).
It’d be nice if backspace worked as well, but every browser supports Alt-Left and Alt-Right.
6. SVG icons ONLY- not 50+MB of PNGs all over the place.
That would be a performance nightmare. Imagine having to render 50 icons from SVG when your app starts up. PNG is way faster to display.
7. Xorg configuration application (configure without restarting X).
What do you want to configure? Screen resolution already works (if X detects your card/monitor properly). You shouldn’t have to configure anything else.
8. Proper HALd and Fuse-FS support.
HAL support in KDE 3.5.7 seems fine to me. USB storage is detected via HAL, knetworkmanager handles network hotplugging with HAL, kpowersave handles power management with HAL. What else is missing? I don’t know about FUSE-FS. I’ve never had a problem with filesystems based on FUSE.
9. Show real applications memory usage not with shared memory included.
KSysguard shows both (disregarding for the moment that measuring memory is a bit more complicated than that).
11. Too many missing icons (for years already).
For what? You have all the icons that your theme pack provides. The default icons have basically 100% coverage.
If I got application full-screen then why there is window borders for resizing???
Go to Control Centre, then Desktop, Window Behavior, click the “Moving” tab, and uncheck “Allow moving and resizing of maximized windows”. Dunno why that isn’t the default, but it is at least an option
If I had to guess, the lack of backspace support probably has it’s roots in the fact that Konq shares bindings for file management and web browsing.
Easy fix is to use Settings -> Configure Shortcuts and then change the option for “Back” under Konqueror. I actually prefer backspace when surfing through folders, as well as web pages.
If I had to guess, the lack of backspace support probably has it’s roots in the fact that Konq shares bindings for file management and web browsing.
I think the “lack” of backspace support comes from the fact that Konqueror is a web browser. The backspace key already have a important function, as backspace. And you usually use it when typing in forms, just like the one I use to write this. Jumping a page back, instead of deleting, like the key has been used for in decades sounds rather confusing to me. Or should it only do back when no inputfield is active? That’s even more confusing I think, a shortcut that only sometimes work, depending your previous action in the browser window.
Edited 2007-07-05 06:57
*sigh* FF, Opera and IE traverse back a page when the backspace key is pressed. That doesn’t mean it’s the most logical or HIG-blessed method, doesn’t mean a team of scientists determined it was the ideal key-function relationship in the context of the required action, it doesn’t magically make browsing somehow become more powerful, it’s certainly not an ISO standard that all browsers must comply to, but it is what it is. Hence the comments I often see from users of Konq when they find it doesn’t work for web browsing.
Of course backspace works as a backspace in a form, as it does in every other browser, as long as the form field has focus. If not, the page traverses back. Does backspace work for you in a form when the field doesn’t have focus?
Really, it’s not that complicated a concept and I guess it must seem surprising that people seem to survive quite fine with it. As far as I know it hasn’t broken the interweb yet or caused people to ditch their systems in frustration for lack of differentiating between entering form fields or surfing pages.
But, whatever. Point is the behavior is easily configurable for those that want to change it. As evidenced by the original post that some people would prefer that. I’ll take choice over any one person or developer’s interpretation of HIG any day.
I’m certain that the resulting bitmaps (since monitors cannot display vectors) get cached. If not yet, then before it gets released. But SVG is more compact on a DVD and it allows you to do thing like have all icons 15% larger for someone with poor eyesight without making things look hideous. If you want to argue that SVG is a bad thing then you are going to have to try harder than that.
I’m certain that the resulting bitmaps (since monitors cannot display vectors) get cached.
Uhh, yes. And where do you think these cached images get stored? Well either in memory or on the hard drive, which brings you back to the exact same situation as before.
By shipping PNG versions of icons at various standard sizes (16×16, 32×32, 48×48, etc), you get fast application startup (much faster to load a PNG than render a SVG) for most cases. If you need a custom icon size, you can always re-render from the source file at the size you want.
If, as you say, the user wants slightly larger toolbar icons, they can use the 48×48 pre-rendered PNG icons, instead of the standard 32×32 size.
By shipping the icons as PNG, you do all the rendering only once, at the cost of slightly bigger files. Rendering at runtime is a waste of cycles most of the time, and if you cache icons, you’ve got the same situation (lots of PNG’s on disk), but with a lot more complexity (you need a cache manager).
If you want to argue that SVG is a bad thing then you are going to have to try harder than that.
I never said SVG was bad, just that shipping pre-rendered PNGs (as they do now) is much smarter than shipping SVGs and letting the client render them at runtime.
There is already a Caching Project from GSoC.People are working to cache SVG’s.
6. SVG icons ONLY- not 50+MB of PNGs all over the place.
The PNG’s actually takes less space than the SVG’s. Significantly less too, over 7 times actually(1). PNG is ~22Mb and SVG is ~164Mb. If you compress the SVG’s you will get a small gain, as the size is reduced to about 18Mb. Still, that gain in size does not come close to justify the performance loss you will get by having to render the SVG’s on the fly.
(1) http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=118210284231107&w=2
Edited 2007-07-05 07:18
Not the place to ask, I know… but they (kde org) are also revamping the basic applications as well, no? Will KMail have tagging and stuff like that, to create better ways to search email?
KDE4 seems to be shaping up very nicely … well done KDE team! The only thing i don’t like is the tab bar in the oxygen theme, it looks like it is bulging out and therefore very odd (especially because the tabs are 3-D as well). I think it would look much better with softer and inverse gradients … like the firefox tab bar. Anyway just my 2 cents.
although i’m not a full-time KDE user, i have always liked having the ability in KDE to configure just about everything. the new ‘control center’ looks like it’s on the way to becoming very nice. i just hope that configurability isn’t sacrificed on behalf of simplification. i don’t want to end up in a gnomish situation where one has to venture to gconf to make relatively minor adjustments.
I seriously hope that the looks improve alot until the final version, but as of today, it isn’t very pleasant.
I also don’t like the icons, because of the lack of borders and the softness of it.
Even Gnome (and Tango) seems better looking than this.
Also, will there be any Compiz/AIGLX stuff integrated into the desktop?
*EDIT* Sorry for the title, it was a little too much for this, given that it is only a pre-release version. I really hope it to become more and more pretty with time
Edited 2007-07-06 15:45
Please don’t panic too much about the widget style. Various KDE developers are well aware of its problems (both aesthetically and technically), and also how important a good style is for the final 4.0 release.
Bear with us
A quick comment about usability since many have expressed concerns. Please do not assume that efforts to improve KDE’s usability will mean following the perceived Gnome strategy. In fact, a couple of the HCI professionals who do work on KDE have been quite critical of aspects of their approach. In KDE there is plenty of room to improve user interfaces in various places without upsetting power users by removing features. The input from professionals is very valuable and there are parts of KDE 4 which will be much better for everyone because of it. Your free desktop will never rock without it.
On a more general note, please do not assume that every aspect of KDE works the way it does because of a design decision somewhere. In many cases it can be seen just as insufficient tweaking and user testing and obviously, there are efforts to do more of that.
By the way, early testing is really welcome, and compiling from source is not necessary. Users of Mandrake and OpenSuSE can get regular ( weekly+ ) snapshots of KDE 4 applications. There is already a slow stream of bug reports from such users, but the more the merrier.