KDE 4 shining points..

Originally posted by bluestorm

KDE4 Libraries have witnessed major changes in order to make coding KDE applications an easier task. Many shining points in this new edition which make of the future of KDE more promising.

Oxygen:

Oxygen has remarkably changed. It's the standard graphic kit of KDE, developed by KDE designers. Oxygen Includes Wallpapers, buttons and themes... You can change any theme you want but Oxygen is the standard theme of KDE4. May be some screenshots could describe better than words: (by SDZ)

and here are some Oxygen designers :

• (en) Riccardo Iaconelli (Italy)
• (en) Nuno Pinheiro (Portugal)
• (en) David Vignoni (Italy-California)
• (en) Kenneth Wimer (Germany)

Qt4:

The graphic library used by KDE users to code most applications. QT4 wasn't compatible with the previous editions of KDE. Now, KDE4 is using Qt4.

Qt4 will allow KDE developers to make better graphic applications. Qt library was optimized to reduce its appetite to memory and hardware resources (RAM,CPU..etc). This optimization is still not complete. Qt developers are focusing to make the use of Qt4 easier than they will continue this optimization.

Qt4 is portable through KDE. We previously explained that Qt4 was distributed under both proprietary and GPL license. From now on Qt4 will be distributed with KDE which will make it accessible to everyone.

Plasma:
Plasma is a KDE library dedicated to the desktop : background, menus... Plasma was tweaked to become more personalized. You can change your desktop by adding widgets and plasmoids on your Dashboad, add RSS wires, and many other features.
These plasmoids are independent from each other which makes them easier to create. You can code your own plasmoids using C++ or Javascript.

Phonon:

Phonon is a multimedia library which I previously talked about ( Phonon : where Qt and KDE meet) dedicated for Sound and video. This library will allow KDE developers to include sounds and video effects to their KDE graphic applications smoothly. this is the blog of Matthias Kretz the Phonon creator.

900 fixed bugs with Mozilla Firefox 3 beta 2

Firefox 3 developers are taking all the time that they need to accomplish their new Firefox. After the Beta 1 Mozilla has released Firefox 3 beta 2 to get more feedbacks about bugs from its testing community. Bugzilla was a little bit busy lately since the beta 1 thousands of bugs fortunately 900 of them are fixed. Firefox developers are trying to reveal more bugs to make their Firefox 3 better. The Beta 2 features are very promising and the Firefox 3 will definitely beat all competitors.

What's new in Firefox 3 :

Security :
I think that the previous reported vulnerabilities in Firefox made them more determinant to improve the security of Firefox users. The most important improvements in this issues were the the protection against cross-site JSON data leaks,anti-virus integration, malware protection, add-ons version check and the one click site info.
Easier to use :
developers added new buttons to save time when bookmarking. The ability to put some tags about the page you're bookmarking. You can also search your bookmarks through a Places Organizer.Tabs will also be easier to locate and better integration with Vista, Mac and Linux.

Performance :
Mozilla developers are dealing with Firefox's appetite for Memory. Around 30 memory improvements were included in the Beta 2 and developers are still working on optimizing the Firefox memory use, speed and reliability.

Related links :
SDZ news article by misterti (Fr)
All the features presented by Mozilla
The Beta 2 release notes
Firefox security add-ons

Mozilla Weave... Mozilla is trying to be more social

The newest Project of Mozilla labs was "Weave". It allows the user to save his browser settings on Mozilla servers (Favorites, sessions ,passwords...etc..) and be able to load it wherever he is.

What are they preparing ?
Mozilla labs are trying to make some Mozilla-hosted online services which means that Mozilla is trying to be more social. Weave project still a prototype and Mozilla labs are planning for the future. Early in 2008, Mozilla Labs will try to offer some initial Web service APIs for developers to build on and will enable sharing on applicable interfaces.

Privacy : The biggest challenge
Many visitors asked about Privacy in Mozilla Labs Blog. Developers were very conscious of this issue because putting such important individual data on the web is risky. Weave developers answered these questions:

• We currently encrypt on the client all data that gets placed on the server, with an encryption passphrase that only the user knows.
• We kept the server intentionally dumb and standards-based, so that anyone can set up a server for themselves and/or their friends or company.

How to use it?
First you have to create an account in this website https://services.mozilla.com/ then you download Weave extention. Once you sign in you can install the extension then you need to save your settings on you hard disk. You risk loosing them. It's still a prototype!
Second, The software will ask you to put your email and password. Then will ask you to put a passphrase to encrypte all your data.
Finally, you make your first synchronisation then it will be automatically done every 30 minuts.

Related Links
Create a Mozilla Weave account
Introducing Weave