The developers behind the KDE project announced today the official release of version 4.9, an update that brings improvements to KDE’s Plasma Workspaces, the KDE application stack, and the underlying KDE platform. The release is dedicated to Claire Lotion, a KDE contributor who recently passed away.

KDE’s Dolphin file manager has received several major improvements in 4.9, including support for displaying file metadata such as image resolutions. It’s also now possible to group and sort files by metadata properties. Other new features that have been added to the file manager include inline file renaming and an updated "places" sidebar. Dolphin’s version control system integration (which already works with git, CVS, and SVN) has been expanded to support Mercurial.

KDE’s Okular has gained improved annotation capabilities, finally making it possible to save and print PDF annotations. The Kontact productivity suite, which includes an address book, calendar, and mail client, was improved with a new import wizard that will allow users to migrate their existing data from Thunderbird and Evolution. This feature will likely be welcomed by some former Thunderbird users on Linux who are looking for a well-maintained alternative in the wake of Mozilla’s decision to cut back on Thunderbird development.

Another noteworthy change in KDE 4.9 is the introduction of support for the MPRIS2 media player API. MPRIS2 is a cross-desktop standard that specifies a consistent D-Bus API for controlling media players and obtaining relevant information about actively-playing media. The standard is now supported in KDE’s Juk audio player and Dragon video player. It’s already supported in many popular open source music players, including Banshee, Rhythmbox, and Clementine.

Applications that support the MPRIS2 standard can be controlled through desktop media interfaces like the music menu in Ubuntu’s Unity shell and the GNOME Shell media player indicator extension. In version 4.9 of the KDE desktop, there is a new Plasma data engine that will support the music player control protocol.

In addition to MPRIS2 compatibility, Juk also gained several additional features, such as support for Last.fm scrobbling. And, it can now extract album cover art that is embedded in MP4 and AAC files.

The KDE developers have begun working on the next-generation KDE platform stack, which is being called Frameworks 5. It will be based on Qt 5, the next version of the open source development toolkit. As we wrote earlier this morning in our report about Nokia’s plans to sell off the toolkit, Qt 5 is expected to be released later this month.

One of the major goals of the Frameworks 5 effort is to simplify the KDE dependency stack and make the individual libraries more granular. This will potentially make it easier for cross-platform application developers who use Qt to adopt (and contribute to) external libraries and frameworks developed by the KDE community.

The KDE 4.9 source code is available for download from the project’s website. Instructions for compiling the source code can be found in the KDE TechBase. For more information about the new version, you can refer to the official release announcement.