KDE Blogs 

DataKiosk is a JuK-like database interface tool for generic SQL databases. What does that mean? Essentially, DataKiosk provides a series of wizards (anyone familiar with Qt Designer's database wizards will find them familiar) that allow you to build a custom Juk-like interface for any SQL database with a QtSQL driver. It now resides in kdecvs in the kdeextragear-1 module. Screenshots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and Flash demo here. More below the fold... Read More

One of the cool features of KMail I discovered while running the current development branch is the support for X-Faces. These are small black-and-white pictures which are sent in the mail header. They are popular on the Usenet and when reading mailing lists it's fun to see who sends these X-Faces with which mails. In KMail it looks like this: That's refreshingly old school. It reminds me of the 80's when I did strange things like spending time on drawing pictures on checkered paper, converting them (of course manually) to hex codes and typing the results into a BASIC program on the C64 for finally showing them as sprites on the screen. In KMail it's naturally a bit easier to create an X-Face header. Just go to the configuration dialog, select an identity and activate the "Picture" tab. There you can specify a picture which is converted to an X-Face header: If you prefer to do it the 80's way you can also type in something like that: Read More

The news of a GPled Qt for Windows today let in a round about way to a discussion on IRC about funding Free Software development. Would people pay for easily installable software? Maybe apt could include a payment system, after all that's what Lindows is trying to do. Mobiles seem to manage something similar with ringtones somebody pointed out. And then we realised KDE could do the same thing. KNotify+KNewStuff+Paypal. Genius. 1 euro for a new login sound. 2 euro for Schnappi (the semi-official song of KDE 3.4 beta 1) to be your KMail new mail notify. The plan can't fail. Read More

Over the last week and this weekend I've finally gotten around to making good on my promise to implement as much as possible of the suggestions in the excellent usability analysis of KMail's folder properties handling done by the OpenUsability.org (http://www.openusability.org) team. They've (again) done an outstanding job of analysing the weaknesses in the old interface and coming up with very clean and nice replacements. I love that about the Relevantive people, they don't just complain, they make suggestions how do improve things, and they explain their suggestions, so we can make an informed decision, and present them in a highly professional and digestable way. Have a look at the cleaned up folder RMB menu, for example: You can now move folders around the same way you move messages around, right from the RMB menu via a cascading menu (Carsten implemented that, btw.). Often used entries are towards the top. The folder creation dialog has been massively simplified, we no longer use the big properties dialog for that. Much better. The expiry settings have moved to their own dialog, which has also been simplified quite a bit: And finally, here's the one I like most, the massively cleaned up folder properties dialog itself. Compare it with the old one, if you have the stomach for it. :) Overall I'm very happy with the way this has turned out, and I hope these changes, along with Cornelius' excellent composer and address picker changes, make KMail a bit less overwhelming for new and casual users.

aseigo damn, you need to start a KDE blog aseigo theobroma has canllaith I need to start a KDE blog? aseigo damn straight =P canllaith Ok fine. Where do I sign up. Read More

After I tried to discover what's behind Konquerors new shiny Introduction page, I discovered a feature that I want to share: Konqueror now knows the metaphor of WebFolders, similar to Windows, but actually supporting more protocols. (Warning: Flash movie ahead :)) Read More

It's getting colder. KDE CVS now is in deep freeze for 3.4 beta 2. All messages are frozen so that translators can start to strive for the perfect translation in 79 languages. The day before the freeze saw some frantic activity of people to complete their last-minute feature or to sneak in the messages required for fixing certain bugs. On the kdepim front we got a new Kontact welcome screen and were able to break compilation because of our wicked intra-module dependencies. Read More

My notebook was returned from the repair-shop on thursday. On Friday it locked up hard again. Exact same symptoms as before. I know I shouldn't let a mere computer get me down, but I depend on this thing for finishing university. I haven't the money with which to buy a new one. I don't know how long I can use borrowed hardware. Read More

Today was string freeze day for KDE, over 500 commits were made and lots of people were desperatly trying to make the deadline for i18n(). I was struck down with a cold and couldn't manage much but did add some bits to Kontact's new about screen. Read More

[image:837,right] Today, I finished two the new intro screen that was fairly overdue already. It's meant to look fancy and be useful (to a certain extend at least ;) In other news I finally committed the new exchange wizard with hopefully all relevant strings. I'll be working on it tomorrow to make sure to have something working for the final release. Right now it simply does nothing, so noone is gets hurt, just a bit disappointed maybe. Read More