KDE 3.1 Beta Released

shadow303 writes "KDE 3.1 beta has been released. There are numerous improvements, including tabbed browsing with Konqueror." I still can't say I care for tabbed browsing, but a lot of people swear by it. The new style/theme looks quite excellent, as do the various improved dialog boxes.

Tabbed browsing

[LunarOne]

Tabbed browsing is, of course, the bomb! I can't use IE anymore because of it. I middle click on links with IE and when nothing happens, it is just so annoying. It's like browsing in a dark place.

Frsit Psot?

Emace or VI or.... Kate?

[zulux]

Kate has been a god send 'round here - Programmers who are just starting out the *NIX way need a editor that behaves kinda-like Windows notepad or other Windows IDE editors, but has cool features, and Kate fits the bill. The code folding works well and the whole package is just a joy to use.

Eventually they all should move to Emacs or VI for better productivity, but for the small, insignificant, time it takes to learn Kate, it's suprisingly productive.

Perhaps Kate will evolve to add the features of Emace, but I hope those features are 'hidden' and don't destroy the easy to learn interface of the curent Kate.

Bit-o-somthing: All out instances of Kate run on one BSD box and are viewed on Windows destops via VNC. It's the same soluton that we use for our clients that want to keep their Windows but use out *NIX apps that we make for them. It makes us both happy; they get to keep Windows Solitare and viruses, and out app is safly running on a real operating system.

Re:KDE and the new America

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing I love about 'patriots' is how incredibly good they are at failing to recognize what helps and what does not help their cause. It's hilarious .. cute, almost.

Re:Transparency?

[Raster Burn]

I believe it just takes a quick screen shot to create the transparency effect. It does cause a little lag to render the transparency, but I do like the effect. It's not enough of a lag to be annoying on my 850MHz PC.

No more Komplaining about iApps

[BeeShoo]

I think that it's official now - anyone using KDE has to surrender the right to complain about Apple's naming of iApps. Kolf????? Hmm...

Re:still ugly

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I agree. No offense to the KDE artwork people but things need to be improved. Howecome we can't mimic cool, futuristic interfaces like the ones seen in Minority Report? I'd really like to see people stop trying to copy OS X and XP. Let me put my money where my mouth is. Email me at [e-mail] if you want me to get involved with some K artwork and show yall what its all about!

johnfive

Re:Tabbed browsing

[Dr. Spork]

I'm sorry, but tabs are a feature I always turn off. I mean, I'm not mad they're there, but I tried using them and didn't like them. The basic problem with tabs is that they force you to switch windows at two totally different places on your desktop.

I imagine that I am fairly typical in that I have several browser pages up at any one time, and in addition to that, I have some other apps open (music player, IRC, news program, file manager, etc). The reason I have all that stuff open is because I switch between them, and I want to do this efficiently.

However, to switch from my newsreader to a "submerged" tab on Konqueror or Mozilla, I first have to use my WM to swith to the browser, and then use the browser interface to switch to the proper tab. What makes this process even more lame is that at least in Mozilla, the tabs are on the opposite end of the screen from where I switch tasks on my WM. This means I have to do a lot of unnecessary mousing around.

A much more sensible approach is to open new browser windows rather than tabs, and then do all of your switching using the WM. One of the many advantages of this is that you can use keyboard shortcuts to cycle through all your windows, browser and the rest.

All in all, I find myself wishing that Konqueror developers would concentrate more on rendering performance and standards compliance. I suspect that tabs are a gimmick that will be requested only by a tiny but vocal minority. It's my opinion that if you feel like you need tabs, there is something wrong with your window manager (or you don't know how to use it right).

Re:still ugly

[Damek]

I may be spoiled by Mac OS X (ok, ok, I KNOW I'm spoiled by Mac OS X), but I think KDE is still an ugly interface. What's up with that? They could make it purty,,,why don't they?

How is this insightful? Insightful would be examples and suggestions - if you noted specific areas where it needed improvement. Simply saying you think it is ugly, especially when admitting you're biased towards a proprietary interface, should not merit insightful mods. No, this is most definitely a troll.

Some people relentlessly insist on missing the point of open source software: you can contribute. If you have nothing to contribute, then don't complain. Complaining is not contributing. Complaining with specific observations and suggestions could be taken as contributing, in the sense of "constructive criticism". But the parent post is merely criticizing, and badly at that.

Besides, if you don't like the new "Keramik" interface style, then pick a different one. Can you do that on OS X? (BTW, that's an honest question - I won't be buying one any time soon, and haven't had the opportunity to use one, so I don't know). My own personal favorite "look" for KDE is the "Light style, rev. 3", which came built-in with the KDE 3 packages I downloaded for my distribution.

More tabbed goodness

[INT 21h]

Furthermore, in Galeon you can:

1. reorder the tabs for optimum browsing (by click+draw), then you select the first (or last) tab, read it, close it, and Hey! Presto! find yourself already reading the tab that is now first (last)
2. save all tabs and windows as sessions and thus swap between several readymade sets of pages (in case the boss comes over, just load the work-session)
3. open all bookmarks in bookmark-folder as tabs, in the background (right-click on folder, choose "Open whole folder as tabs"), go to the water-cooler and come back to, say, all your webcomics ready loaded
4. if you really need a new window you can pull a tab off (drop it outside the window) and it'll be a separate window. If you want to reattach it there's "Move to another window" in the "Tab"-menu

It really, really hurts browsing with something else than Galeon now, I never should have installed it :)

BTW, anyone got a quick fix for getting non-ascii titles to display correctly?

Re:Tabbed browsing

[ichimunki]

Actually, the only thing missing from the GUI browsers that would make them more keyboard friendly is a sense of getting TAB to go to the first link on that page-- not the next link in the document. Example: I can read a Slashdot thread just fine using page up/down, I can back up a page using Alt-left-arrow, but if I press tab to get to a link, I have to cycle through EVERY link on a page. Bad news. If tab started with the first visible link on the page, this would not be a problem. I can do an awful lot of browsing already without ever touching my mouse.

Links, a text mode browser, operates in this fashion.