KDE 4.0 RC1 has been released. "The KDE Community is happy to announce the immediate availability of the first release candidate for KDE 4.0. This release candidate marks that the majority of the components of KDE 4.0 are now approaching release quality. While the final bits of Plasma, the brand new desktop shell and panel in KDE 4, are falling into place, the KDE community decided to publish a first release candidate for the KDE 4.0 Desktop. Release Candidate 1 is the first preview of KDE 4.0 which is suitable for general use and discovering the improvements that have taken place all over the KDE codebase. The KDE Development Platform, comprising the basis for developing KDE applications, is frozen and is now of release quality." You want see Plasma panel? You get see Plasma panel!
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Member since:2005-07-06
> looks same with Vista's default menu
i've used vista's menu, and hate it.
i've used kickoff, and i'm not on the verge of tears yet. note that kickoff actually has real world usability testing done it by actual real world usability people using actual real world desktop computer users.
that said, i'm still not happy with the application browser list (second button) yet.
Member since:2006-04-28
What I don't like about this menu is that it's very slow to find an app you're looking for and it requires many clicks. The old one (current one) is much faster and does not requires clicking back and forth. I hope it's still a choice in KDE4.
That said, congrats for all the hard work put into this. Surely once it's actually released many things will keep improving and everyone will be happy eventually. Better to release as soon as it's usable than waiting until it's absolutely complete/stable. Then people can choose to use it or wait a bit.
Member since:2005-11-11
i've used vista's menu, and hate it.
i've used kickoff, and i'm not on the verge of tears yet. note that kickoff actually has real world usability testing done it by actual real world usability people using actual real world desktop computer users.
1: the implicit implication that Microsoft did not do any usability testing is probably specious.
2: the more people support stuff like Kickoff with the assertion that it was created through usability testing, the more I'm likely to ignore/mistrust anything to do with usability testing.
If usability testing is so all fired important, why haven't you switched the button order in dialogs like Gnome did? FYI: I'm glad you haven't, and Gnome saying they did so on the basis of usability studies doesn't make me like their dialog button order. It doesn't make me like Kickoff either.
Your points about change are good. A lot of people tend to reflexively dislike change. So I would hope there would be some tangible benefit that outweighs provoking such dislike. I'll try to find out if that's the case for myself by trying a liveCD. Whether its the case in general for the userbase as a whole will be seen shortly. I hope it pays off.
There have been people who laud every mockup and roadplan, there have been change hating fools like me. KDE4 seems to be a bit of a gamble, and whatever happens I salute the KDE team for undertaking it.
"So in summary... Google has pulled the plug on support on a protocol they've helped popularize, after years of promising interoperability, for reasons that are dubious at best, and in a way that leaves people who don't jump to the new Hangouts app unable to talk to their contacts without any feedback that their IMs aren't getting through... And they've done that with no warning to anyone. I imagine there's a bunch of people out there wondering where some of their buddies have gone, or why their messages aren't getting responses, because this isn't documented anywhere." Google really messed this up. Such a dick move.
The Tizen Greek Community has some screenshots of a very recent build of Tizen running on a Samsung GT-i8800. It looks wholly unremarkable.Joint statement to The Next Web from Microsoft and Google: "Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube's API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks. Microsoft will replace the existing YouTube app in Windows Phone Store with the previous version during this time." Good to know these children stopped acting like little pricks. Can we have full Google support in Windows 8 now, please?
Yahoo is acquiring Tumblr, the microblogging and social networking website, for $1.1 billion USD. Tumblr offers little revenue but lots of eyeballs if Yahoo can monetarize them. Now Yahoo is bidding for Hulu, the streaming video service. After years of ineffective responses while Google, Facebook, and others took large chunks of the online advertising market, Yahoo is fighting back. Can Yahoo reignite the momentum it had at the turn of the century? What do you think?
"Sources have described iOS 7 as 'black, white, and flat all over'. This refers to the dropping of heavy textures and the addition of several new black and white user interface elements." I couldn't be happier.
"Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org's security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues."
"Google is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said." Sucks to be Google today, apparently."In the midst of the major press blitz surrounding its annual I/O Conference, Google dropped some unfortunate news about its instant messaging plans. In several places around the web, the company is replacing the existing 'Talk' platform with a new one called 'Hangouts' that sharply diminishes support for the open messaging protocol known as XMPP (or sometimes informally Jabber), and also removes the option to disable the archiving of all chat communications. These changes represent a switch from open protocols to proprietary ones, and a clear step backward for many users." That's why I always say: only suckers trust companies."The wave of departures is a sign of internal struggle, but amidst all the bad news, there is a glimmer of hope. According to an anonymous HTC executive cited by WSJ, the crucial HTC One is selling 'pretty good so far'. The executive revealed that HTC sold about five million One units since launch, a performance that is deemed encouraging. However, sales have been limited by the persisting supply issues that still plague the production of the HTC One." Finally some good news for HTC. Five million units amidst supply constraints is very impressive.
"Sony gave the PS4 50% more raw shader performance, plain and simple (768 SPs @ 800MHz vs. 1152 SPs & 800MHz). Unlike last generation, you don't need to be some sort of Jedi to extract the PS4's potential here. The Xbox One and PS4 architectures are quite similar, Sony just has more hardware under the hood. Weâll have to wait and see how this hardware delta gets exposed in games over time, but the gap is definitely there. The funny thing about game consoles is that itâs usually the lowest common denominator that determines the bulk of the experience across all platforms. On the plus side, the Xbox One should enjoy better power/thermal characteristics compared to the PlayStation 4. Even compared to the Xbox 360 we should see improvement in many use cases thanks to modern power management techniques." AnandTech does its usual in-depth thing.
Member since:
2005-06-29
Am I alone that dislike the menu? I haven't play with KDE, but from what I have seen in the screenshot at http://tinyurl.com/yppe9r and it looks same with Vista's default menu. I totally hate it and I think it is downgrade. The scroll in menu is making more difficult to select things in there.