Now KDE 4.10 has been released, the Smoother plasma theme I'm working on will be ready for KDE 4.10. There is nothing major but I'm just making sure it will offer some of the changes in 4.10, specifically new widget handle icons, adapted thin scrollbar design and some other bits that have changed.

It's nice to work on themes that don't break in every release, KDE have done a great job in preserving legacy for theme makers throughout the 4 series and extending customisation, UI options for the users. KDE4 isn't a one size fits all design, so never does it force a hard coded desktop design that's half for PC's and half for other devices(i.e like GNOME3, Windows 8, Unity does), it gives you a desktop the way you want it. KDE also made good decisions at the start of KDE4 with Kwin and desktop compositing, you don't need a separate desktop if you don't have 3D acceleration, in fact KDE4 can use Xrender software acceleration, which gives you some of the features of 3D acceleration(like translucency) and you can switch to 2D mode by just Alt, Shift, F12. KDE4 does some other nice tricks, which really are transparent to the user(pun intended) but the technology behind it is so simple, like translucent widgets without desktop compositing running at all. This is done because the widgets are graphics(SVGs) not windows or top level windows like the panel, which require compositing done by kwin for translucency. Compiz and Mutter(GNOME 3 Window manager) don't work like this, they have to drop back to another window manager like metacity for 2D mode and it's simply not a good experience to have to login to another session just for 2D or 3D mode or if your driver fails.

It wasn't all a smooth ride for KDE4 of course but their design decisions have paid off nicely, especially in regard to kwin and nicely integrates the desktop effects into KDE4 with a UI in the system settings.

What, still not tried KDE4 yet and some of my nice themes? Well if you can get you hands on KDE 4.10 then you might be really happy and it looks to be a nice release with some nice new features, so take a look.

Plasma Workspaces have been refined considerably. Work continues on updating widgets with new ones built with Qt Quick. This effort brings improvements in consistency, layout behavior, stability, ease of use and performance. It is also now easier to build widgets, entirely new Plasma Workspace layouts and other custom enhancements. A new QML-based screen locker makes Workspaces more secure. The wallpaper engine was also updated to QML, so it is easier to write animated wallpapers. (QML is part of the Qt Quick application framework.)

In addition to improvements related to Qt Quick and QML, the task widget received some usability updates, with a smoother look for groups of windows. There also have been improvements to the notifications system, particularly in the area of power management. There is now improved support for high resolution displays and a new Air theme reducing visual clutter and giving Plasma Workspaces a cleaner appearance.

Announcement: [link]

dot.kde.org Announcement [link]

KDE 4.10 Review [link]

Just dumped Windows today and put a shinny new Kubuntu 12.10 64bit on my SSD. As for Windows 8, hahahahahahahahahah, yeah right, as if I'd use that. Got quite bored of gaming on Windows, I'll stick with Steam on Linux.

Kubuntu 12.10 is really nice(KDE4.9.4), looks consistent, fast and nice to see the attention it's deserved been given to it.

Yes, after a break from making themes I'm back. Most of my time was taken up by Eve Online, but I got bored of it. I'm working on a new theme for KDE4 Plasma right now so expect goodies.

So the day has come, I'm 40 today, yes FORTY and my thirties are gone forever. It's just another normal day though isn't it?

The design of this theme is tricky, especially with the hard-coded text shadows so some compromises have been made with the text colour.  Hard-coded means that if the text colour is set to light, the text shadow will render dark and vice-versa, this looks bad with the dark, light grey design of SLAVE.  To overcome this limitation I have had to set the text colour to white(rather than a grey like the SLAVE theme is), which somewhat gets around the hard-coded text shadows on widgets that make the text look unreadable. Unfortunately on some widgets with the grey background, the white text doesn't look ideal but that's the compromise, otherwise the widget backgrounds would have to be dark grey and that just doesn't give the SLAVE theme it's unique look.

Plasma theme making has it's limitations, like GNOME-Shell, party due to using SVG which in it self has limitations.  Just have to get around them.

I've still got some work to do on the theme and due to a few limitations(like I said in my previous journal entry ), I've had to change the panel to a white version. Pretty much everything has been changed for this theme, even the system tray icons have been recoloured, so it's a lot of SVG work.

Released!

One of the things that got me most annoyed about GNOME was the fact that they grouped up items in their theme to share with other elements. KDE have done something similar with the Plasma theme, what looks like hard coding tasks to the same state in the add widgets ,which pretty much breaks my Gaia design look due to it being a dark panel and white widget backgrounds. KDE have done the same for krunner as well, hard coding it to be themed by the top panel. WTF KDE, WHY? krunner has it's own SVG, now it's useless.

It really annoys the hell out of me, it was fine before. One possible reason is that Air looks the same, especially with the theme being the same colour across all widgets but it's just lazy, when developers know full well that we theme makers need as much flexibility as possible. Seems to me that KDE have got lazy and made a retarded design decision, sorry lads but you did.

And no, I'm not going to storm into freenode #KDE IRC chat and tell them what I think, been there done that and have the bruise on my head from the brick wall I smashed it on, though GNOME's brick wall is much, much thicker.