Schedules/KDE4/4.1 Announcements/KDE4/4.1 Alpha1

I already went through the commit digest issues 98, 99 and 100. If you want to help, try to add the most important improvements from earlier issues (and mention here you did) or try to answer the questions in the current text.

Plasma

• Drag'n'drop got improved. For example, you can now drag'n'drop applets from and to other containments (like the panels), and drag items from Kickoff to the desktop or panel. Or drag a removable drive to the trash to eject it.
• Plasma now has an easy way to install new widgets from files. Aside form native plasmoids, which you can also download and install through a GNX interface, Plasma now supports Apple's Dashboard widgets, Yahoo widgets (NOT YET?), Vista widgets (NOT YET?), Opera widgets (NOT YET?) and more (???). Superkaramba widgets can now support some of the more powerful Plasma functionality. Also, Plasma widgets now support HTML and Javascript, and you can access the advanced Plasma functionality (like the dataengines and animations) from Javascript.
• KRunner, the quickstart dialog which you can summon with ALT-F2 (default) became faster and now uses threads extensively to take advantage of modern multicore systems. The results are now ordered by relevance, and some new runners were introduced (WHICH ONES?).
• The Kickoff menu was greatly improved, both in terms of look and functionality. We urge you to give it a new try if you didn't like it at first!
• Plasma now gracefully degrades its graphics when compositing is not available, so you don't get ugly corners and weird looking popups.
• Plasma now has new dataengines and plasmoids which take advantage of the new frameworks in KDE 4, like Decibel and Akonadi. You can now see contacts on your desktop, drag'n'drop files there to send them or click to send an email or open a chat channel. (NOT YET?)
• And most importantly, the many clocks in Plasma got several improvements and new features. Plasma is clearly a timely innovation!

kdebase

• Dolphin's categorization feature got smarter. For example, if you categorize on date, it will show more recent files with greater granularity.
• Dolphin shares file view dialog with Konqueror
• Dolphin's faster thumbnails with frames
• Konsole re-introduced features from KDE 3 like the powerful 'send input to all terminals' (NOT YET?) and ...
• KWin received many performance optimizations and new plugins like alternative application switchers and ...

kdepim

• The basic KDE PIM Kontact applications got re-introduced. They use Akonadi through an intermediate layer, pending full integration.
• KGPG is now fully ported to KDE 4, and received some usability improvements.

kdemultimedia

• KSCD got reintroduced. Thanks to a group of *** students (improve this) *** working on it, it now uses Solid and Phonon, and has full SVG theming support.
• Dragon player is in the kdemultimedia

kdegraphics

• Gwenview got back some of the features lost during the KDE 4 rewrite, and usability was improved. The interface became simpler, yet more powerful and it behaves more consistent with for example Dolphin. (Thubmnail bar should be mentioned)
• Okular now supports encrypted documents and more fileformats like epub ???.
• Kooka is alive again, with much improved OCR engine support. Unfortunately the world of Free Software didn't come up with a great OCR system yet, but Kooka will be ready for it when it does.

kdenetwork

• KGet gained an webinterface, so you can control your downloads from a remote location. KGet also supports torrent files now, thanks to the shared library developed with the KTorrent developers.
• Kopete is reintroduced, not only ported to KDE 4 but also ...
• Emoticons can now be globally configured through an Emoticon theme configuration in Systemsettings.

kdeadmin

• KCron is back with an almost full redesign. The interface is much easier to use now, and
• KSystemLog is in the kdeadmin

kdeedu

• Step is in kdeedu
• Marble received many improvements like GPS support and the ability to use overlays over the globe to show additional data like clouds or the number of KDE patches being send in from a certain location (??? I know they want to do this...). It also has new projections for the map, so you can view it in different ways.

KDE Games

• Kollision
• KDiamond
• Kubrick
• KBreakout
• Ksirk

kdelibs

• Add the possibility for KShortcutEditor to import / export configurations. In contrast to saving it's settings these take into account global shortcuts. It now also has undo and save functionality and became much more stable.
• Added ability to enable and disable animations systemwide. This is good for slower computers or remote desktops.
• Nepomuk introduced many features and improvements which are visible through the applications using the Semantic framework. Standard rating widgets, a tagcloud and ... are among the new and improved widgets, already used by Dolphin and .....
• The KDE Print subsystem became a lot better and more complete, partially thanks to the work of Trolltech.
• Zack Russin was kind enough to allow individuals NOT named Zack to have working WebKit support.