KDE Frameworks 5.81 Released with KHamburgerMenu, Various Improvements

KDE Frameworks 5.81

The KDE Project released today KDE Frameworks 5.81 as a new monthly update to their open-source software collection of over 80 add-on libraries to Qt that provide a wide range of common functionality needed for KDE Apps and the KDE Plasma desktop environment.

The biggest new feature in the KDE Frameworks 5.81 release is the implementation of a new, custom hamburger menu called KHamburgerMenu, which will be shown on QWidgets-based apps whenever the main menubar is hidden.

The KDE Project plans to adopt the KHamburgerMenu for all KDE apps as it offers several advantages, including an alternative app menu in case you hide the default menubar by accident, more freedom when you want to take full advantage of the maximum vertical space, more compact design with only relevant menu items, as well as support for relocating, renaming, removing, or even changing its icon.

Renowned KDE developer Nate Graham notes on his personal blog that KHamburgerMenu is an improvement to the KDE apps and Plasma desktop environment, not a new feature design to replace the menubar. The KDE Project’s doesn’t plan to replace the traditional menubar anytime soon.

In addition to the KHamburgerMenu, the KDE Frameworks 5.81 release brings various improvements to your favorite KDE apps, such as the ability to create new files on a writable FTP share using Dolphin’s “Create New…” menu item, a more reliable Baloo file indexer when renaming or moving files, as well as better support for the active color scheme for the scrollbar mini-map in the Kate text editor and other KTextEditor-based apps.

Moreover, Kate, KWrite, and other KTextEditor-based apps will no longer prompt users to save their changes in a blank and unsaved document when they attempt to close it, the search fields in the Plasma Discover package manager and the “Get New [thing]” dialogs now automatically initiate a search immediately after you finish typing, and headsets with an integrated Play/Pause button now act as expected when pressing that button.

As expected, various bugs were squashed in this release to address a crash in the image thumbnailer when taking a screenshot, fix a crash in System Settings when installing new themes, fix a hang when uninstalling an item from a “Get New [thing]” window, prevent KRunner from launching apps as the wrong user, and make file dialogs add the right filename extension when saving a document whose filename ends with a period.

Also fixed is an issue that made the unmounting operation of a mounted volume to get stuck after opening and closing files on the respective volume, as well as a visual issue with the panel margins, which were changed when compositing was disabled.

Last but not least, all of the Breeze icons that show locked or unlocked states were updated to follow the same visual convention of locked icons, with a filled body, as well as of unlocked icons, with a hollow body. The full changelog is available here for more details.

KDE Frameworks 5.81 will soon arrive in the stable software repositories of some of the most popular rolling-release GNU/Linux distributions, such as KDE neon, Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed or Solus. If you’re using the KDE Plasma desktop environment, make sure you update to this release as soon as possible to enjoy a better KDE apps and desktop experience.

Image credits: Nate Graham

Last updated 3 years ago

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