<h1>Plasma Active 3 Improves Performance, Brings New Apps</h1>
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KDE has released the 3rd stable version of Plasma Active, KDE's device-independent user experience. Plasma Active user interface is touch-friendly and works well across a range of devices. Its activity-driven workflows enable the user to organise and consume digital assets more naturally.
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<h2>New Apps: Files, Reader, Microblog</h2>
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<strong>Files</strong> is a new application in the default set of Plasma Active's applications. Files is a file manager, but isn't based on folders, but allows accessing and searching your documents by file type, creation time and semantic information such as Tags. Files does not use the file system directly, but employs Nepomuk, Plasma Active's underlying semantic engine to organize documents. The new Microblog app offers an easy and intuitive way for users to keep tabs on Social Networks such as Twitter and Identi.ca.
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Okular Active is Plasma Active's new Ebook Reader. Okular Active is built on the technology which also drives the desktop version of the popular Document viewer, and is optimized for reading documents. Okular Active supports a wide range of file formats, such as PDF, EPub, Open Document, and many others.
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Through Plasma Active's <strong>Bodega store</strong>, thousands of ebooks are available for free, with for-pay applications and content upcoming.
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The new Microblog app offers an easy and intuitive way for users to keep tabs on Social Networks such as Twitter and Identi.ca.
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<h2>Champions: Kontact and Calligra</h2>
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With Calligra Active and Kontact Touch, Plasma Active delivers scalable and proven applications for office and groupware tasks, which focus on interoperability. Kontact Touch supports a wide number of groupware solutions, while Calligra Active brings excellent support for office file formats such as OpenDocument and Microsoft's .doc and .docx families. To the user, Kontact Touch brings calendaring, emails, contacts among other features. Calligra sports wordprocessor, spreadsheet, presentations and a number of other applications geared towards professional, but also recreative use.
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The KDE developers have also been putting a lot of effort into improving performance of the user experience, its applications and underlying libraries. These improvements bring a noticably snappier user interface and make using Plasma Active a more enjoyable experience.
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<h2>Roadmap: More Apps, Qt5 and File Synchronization</h2>
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In the following releases, the user may expect support for a wider range of devices, easier synchronization of data across devices, an improved user experience through the use of Qt5 and KDE Frameworks 5 and a more diverse set of applications to cover popular use cases.<br />
The KDE team is currently working on bringing a Plasma Active-based tablet to the market which shows its capabilities and offers users a fresh and more open alternative to existing mobile operating systems.
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Plasma Active is Free software and openly developed. Plasma Active's reference implementation builds on the Mer operating system and runs on a number of <a href="FIXME: devices">devices</a>, including popular x86-based tablet computers and ARM-based hardware such as the Archos G9 series. Plasma Active can be used as a base for creating custom user experiences, as well as as multi-purpose user experience for emerging devices.
Participation in Plasma Active is welcomed, either through individual contributions or by joining the <a href="">Make * Play * Live</a> partner network as official support or distribution partner.
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