Markus Mauder: A First Look at the Unreleased KDE 4.0.0



Did she cheat on you?


She used to much Time at bath, and did'nt spend enough time for my personal needs :-9

By Chaoswind at Fri, 2008/01/11 - 6:00am

Looks cool. However, why is the "search bar" on the top of the menu and not at the bottom where is closest to the just-depressed-K-button?

By NabLa at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

The search bar receives focus when you open the menu. So it's like "click on the K-button and start typing", without having to click again. Also, results appear from top to bottom, just under the search bar.


> However, why is the "search bar" on the top of the menu

The SuSE team who developed the UI originally found that people did not find the search bar if it was on the bottom.

Its a slightly surprising result, but it shows the value of testing things in the real world.

Either way, the search bar has keyboard focus as soon as you open the menu, and any key presses to the tab bar or menu area which wouldn't have any effect (eg. letters) are directed there.


Reminds me of a book I read about how to make efficient presentations : it said that when a slide appears onscreen, people automatically look at the middle, so always put in the middle the real important thing you want people to consider in that particular slide. I've been following this motto since then and it seemed indeed to make my slides easily read by attenders.
To come back to the menu, I suppose that the eye is more easily attracted to the top of the window than to the bottom (at least in western cultures where we read from top to bottom), especially if there is an animation making the menu coming up from the taskbar.

By Richard Van Den Boom at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

And what if we put the bar at the top of the screen instead ?
(I know it is not now possible with the UI for plasma in 4.0)
Should then the menu layout be modified in function of its position on the screen ?

I have had some bad surprises with kicker in the time when I used to put it on the left edge...

By Aldoo at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

These images are posted on a website that doesn't work in Konqueror.

By Michael at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

Sigh, poor Konqui. People stopped using it when Firefox extensions became too useful to be ignored, and it didn't get much love since it started choking on GMail.

By giacomo at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

I dunno, as someone who has moved more or less from Firefox to Konq over the past year or so (all I really use firefox for is scrabble on facebook - and only recently while the new proprietary flash is broken in 64 bit konq in kde3) I find the advantages outweigh the problems. There are other sites/services/banks you can use if your current ones can't be bothered to make crossbrowser compatible sites.

By Simon at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

It doesn't work in KDE3 konq but I just checked and they do indeed work in KDE4 konq. I was wondering how long it was going to take for someone to notice.

I guess this points out the general lack of use of konqueror for normal people browsing. Google is by far the biggest offender for bad sites that are somewhat popular since they seem to code for firefox first and current standards second.

I'm sticking with konq until something better (qt or kde) comes along and living with what doesn't work.

By fuegofoto at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

Picasa works for me (as in i can see/browse the album) in Konqui 3.5.8 when setting Browser Ident to Mozilla 1.7.3 on XP

By Rischwa at Thu, 2008/01/10 - 6:00am

I truly appreciate all the great work that's under the hood of KDE. I'm glad there's a desktop alternative that isn't a few separate desktop apps cobbled together with the window manager du jour, that has a consistent design under the hood. KDE has come a long way over the years, not necessarily having the last bit of spit and polish, but certainly having the most power, and making the most efficient use and reuse of libraries to get it.

I think KDE4 is where this changes and that sense of design shines through, even at a glance. This is payoff. I hope to see KDE go toe to toe with OSX this year for the best, most productive desktop. I have machines running either of them, and I'll be interested to see how it feels to switch back and forth.

Go devs! I'd join up and bang on that code too if I could pay the bills doing what you do.

By Daniel Rollings at Wed, 2008/01/09 - 6:00am

It may rock, but will it be rock stable?

By szlam at Thu, 2008/01/10 - 6:00am

A *major* break from a very large existing code-base being stable on it's very first release?

It's never happened before and, while the KDE guys are great, they are not miracle workers ;)


It's not yet full featured, meaning that it's just the beginning of the KDE4 series and quite a few programmes are still not ported but it's already very stable, at least the current RC that I am using. I can't remember the last time that a programme crashed and I use the RC2+ everyday.



I've tried it, tried workaround and it's useless. To bad such thing is considered less important to be fixed. Using dualhead is the primary thing I use computer (and Linux) for.

By Robert at Thu, 2008/01/10 - 6:00am