Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 13th Dec 2007 22:51 UTC, submitted by andrewg
Ars takes a look at the new RC2 release of KDE 4.0. "Transitions are always hard, but when the dust settles, a clean break between versions and an opportunity to introduce some innovative new ideas should lead to a stronger user experience. After years of development, unnecessary cruft builds up and things tend to get disorganized. The KDE 4 transition, though it will definitely be rocky at first, gives developers the ability to cut away the cruft and reorganize code in a manner that makes the whole environment more future-proof and easier to maintain."
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Member since:2005-09-21
2) More drag and drop control of the toolbar. I really want to just throw plasmoids into there without a second thought.
Plasmoids in toolbars? You mean the panel? That's coming. But I'd really like to see easier toolbar editing in apps as well. Something like what Firefox does in all apps would be nice.
Member since:2005-07-06
> 1) Centrally-defined cross-application shortcuts
> that really work.
being worked on. probably 4.1 stuff at this point, though.
> 2) More drag and drop control of the toolbar.
*urrgggg* yes, it's coming. that was actually the original seed idea that started me down the plasma path.
> 3) I want the old Mac-style menubar at the top. It
> is nicely consistent and wastes less screen real
> estate.
afaik, kwin still supports this. however, your "wastes less screen real estate" comment is completely bogus. i'l leave it up to the reader to determine why.
> 4) The plasmoid's borders should only appear when
> you hit that wrench icon.
and then how would you get to those borders? or discover them? or turn them off? hover interfaces are the future.
> They also need resize handles.
there's already a resize tool right there.
> Speaking of, the wrench icon could use some work
> itself.
yeah.
RE[2]: Very strong start
by Damnshock on Fri 14th Dec 2007 10:44
in reply to "RE: Very strong start"
Member since:2006-09-15
"afaik, kwin still supports this. however, your "wastes less screen real estate" comment is completely bogus. i'l leave it up to the reader to determine why."
Well, it wastes less space because you don't need another line in every window with the menus 
I hardly use the menus, everything is done by key shortcuts so... what do I need the menus for? 
Damnshock
Member since:2007-04-05
Thanks for the reply, aseigo, I do really like KDE.
> 3) I want the old Mac-style menubar at the top. It
> is nicely consistent and wastes less screen real
> estate.
afaik, kwin still supports this. however, your "wastes less screen real estate" comment is completely bogus. i'l leave it up to the reader to determine why.
> is nicely consistent and wastes less screen real
> estate.
afaik, kwin still supports this. however, your "wastes less screen real estate" comment is completely bogus. i'l leave it up to the reader to determine why.
As to this, open up three or more windows of any type that would have their own menubar, especially if they're all the same, and compare the space involved to a single strip at the top. Also consider the relative speed of putting the mouse pointer at a corner of the screen. I don't say imitate the Mac for the sake of imitating the Mac, but KDE's support for this thus far has been a plus.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2007-04-05
I really like what I see in RC2, in that what is there is shaping up very nicely. I do want to see several things:
1) Centrally-defined cross-application shortcuts that really work. KDE3 did this better than any other environment I've used except OSX, with minor snafus. If it took what it did and then implemented consistent shortcuts for manipulating, say, tabbed windows, and preference options for that matter, it'd rise to the top.
2) More drag and drop control of the toolbar. I really want to just throw plasmoids into there without a second thought.
3) I want the old Mac-style menubar at the top. It is nicely consistent and wastes less screen real estate.
4) The plasmoid's borders should only appear when you hit that wrench icon. They also need resize handles. Speaking of, the wrench icon could use some work itself.
That's what jumped out at me. For an RC of a x.0 release, I find Coenig a bit too buggy - but also full of exciting potential. I expect this train to be gaining steam from this point on. The fact that KDE4 apps and the environment itself will be natively ported to OSX and Windows will net it a lot of extra fans.
Cheers, devteam!