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)
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.
