Functional Programming in C++

News in KDE 4.3

Published by Ivan Čukić in the KDE development and artwork section, on 11 April 2009

Air Theme

So, since Air is coming along nicely (thanks Nuno), it was the time to make the files Lancelot needs for it. Although there are a few things yet to do, I’m quite satisfied with it. I’m even using Air as my Plasma theme now.

Scroll-bars

The second thing that all theme makers that support Lancelot should know, is that Lancelot now uses Plasma’s scroll-bars. So, you don’t need to make files for scroll-bars anymore.

Keyboard support

Lancelot in KDE 4.2 introduced keyboard support. Now it is taken even further - now you can do /anything/ in L by using only the keyboard. The section and system buttons now can be accessed through standard accelerators (Alt + the underlined letter). For opening the context menu for an item in the menu, select it and press Alt+Enter.

KRunner actions

As you should already know, runners can now support various actions for results. You can access them in Lancelot via a context menu. Well, that was the good news, the bad is that I know not of any runner that provides any special actions. :(

Other things

There is now a logging system that remembers applications you launch, what you search for etc. Some new configuration options are also present, and the parts applet works better. There are probably other changes, but I can not remember them at the moment. :)

So, cheerio!

JC
Some people want this to look more like Vista? Looks already more like Windoze than Kicker...
I found Lancelot indeed to be an improvement over Kicker, although not a huge one. Moving the categories from the bottom to the side at first looks like a minor and inconsequential difference, but it does work better since the menu now consistently expands to the right. The columns of menu and submenu items are also neat, although once you get to a third level, the top level kind of disappears instead of the menu expanding, which takes away some of the gains of this system. What I am missing is an ability to switch off Recent Documents and to be able to send menu items to the panel, like you can do in Kicker.
But I think I'll just stick to the Classic Menu, that is still the best (for me).
Ivan Čukić
@<a href="#comment-8156" rel="nofollow">JC</a>: I don't get the Vista comment. What looks like what?
BTW, it is not Kicker, it is Kickoff. Kicker was the panel (not the menu) in KDE 3.x.
You can drag and drop menu items to panel.
Marius
The complete keyboard control of L is a great addition, i really liked how much of kde 3.5.x was controllable from the keyboard.
And i would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the whole kde crew on a great new DE. I was a big fan during the latter part of the 3-series, but the initial versions of 4 turned me off. But trying 4.2.2 in mandriva 2009 spring RC2 today i was blown away. Great work!
GNuBOi
I found lancelot not good as kickoff but the krunner needs a good file searching mechanism, as a whole KDE's any menu needs a fast realtime search. PS: Strigi search daemeon never starts
Dread Knight
Looks great :)