We’re up to week 77 in KDE’s Usability & Productivity initiative! This week’s report encompasses the latter half of the Usability & Productivity sprint. Quite a lot of great work got done, and two features I’m particularly excited about are in progress with patches submitted and under review: image annotation support in Spectacle, and customizable sort ordering for wallpaper slideshows. These are not done yet, but should be soon! Meanwhile, check out what’s already landed:

New Features

When trying to access a network with a captive portal (e.g. an airport or hotel wifi network that requires you to log in or click a “yes I accept the terms of use bla bla bla” button), an icon in the system tray allows you to access it again in case you miss the page the first time around (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, KDE Plasma 5.17.0)

Dolphin’s Information Panel can now optionally auto-play media files; the setting is in the Information Panel’s context menu (Méven Car, Dolphin 19.08.0)

Bugfixes & Performance Improvements

User Interface Improvements

Pretty freakin’ sweet, huh?! It was a great development sprint and I’m really happy with how it went. I’ll be writing another more in-depth article about it, so stay tuned.

Next week, your name could be in this list! Not sure how? Just ask! I’ve helped mentor a number of new contributors recently and I’d love to help you, too! You can also check out https://community.kde.org/Get_Involved, and find out how you can help be a part of something that really matters. You don’t have to already be a programmer. I wasn’t when I got started. Try it, you’ll like it! We don’t bite!

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