[Kde-announce-apps] KBFX for Kubuntu Dapper Drake 0.4.9.2rc1

[Felix Forsten]

Name: KBFX for Kubuntu Dapper Drake
Version: 0.4.9.2rc1 
Type: KDE Verbesserung
Depend: KDE 3.4.x
License: GPL
Homepage: http://www.kbfx.org
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=39834

Description:
 Beschreibung:
New : Note : changing Font color Howto
 Changing the font colors can be done like this
 1.) in your skin folder have a file kbfxfontrc
 2.) set the following parameters.
 
 ApplicationText=#e7e7e
 CommentText=#898989
 LineColor=#89849
 GroupText=#dddddd
 FontSize=8
 UserName=#dddddd
 then u will see the fonts change! live
 
 Concepts behind KBFX:
 
 Flat Index Menu vs Hierarchical Menu
 KDE K-Menu is a good example of a flat
hierarchical menu. It organizes application
shortcuts in a tree link structure where it can
expand and branch of based on some logical order.
The order can be Task oriented , or it could be
type oriented. To find and execute an application
the user is required to navigate along the
branches till then reach the leaf (leaf node).
This approach is a direct adoption for Microsoft
Windows start menu. They introduced such a menu
with windows 95/98/Me releases. And continues even
on windows XP and Windows 2000 with slight
alteration by mixing Flat indexed and old
hierarchical menu.
 What KBFX Spinx Menu is offering here is a Flat
indexed menu. And it has a marked difference from
Windows and KDE application menus. A index menu is
a very easy to navigate menu type. Where on the
left hand side you are given the application
categories this can be again task oriented or type
oriented. And on the left hand side all the
available applications under that category is
listed. Advantage here is that, it's fast to
locate applications, the user sees the application
categories at a glance and he can pick it with
direct input from the mouse. This saves time by
not having to travel along a long list till the
end leaf is found. The speed of use is further
enhanced by moving the most used and recently used
application to the top most index, so that the
most used applications are just one click away.
 
 KBFX Development.
 KBFX version 0.4.9 is a four month long
prototypical development Approach. The release is
a complete rewrite eliminating all the negative
points of previous versions. At the start we had a
list of end requirements for version 0.4.9 and we
developed each of the feature unit testing it as
it was developed. Testing each and every class
along the way. Apart from unit testing, the
quality assurance manager would periodically check
the quality of the product and as new releases are
made to the KBFX source repository. QA always
check the product against the requirements that we
had set to maximize quality. This way of
development help us to discover tons of bugs and
fix then then and there, and we debut that KBFX
has any hidden bugs that can't be fixes. And it
was more than helpful to see many users around the
world checking out the development release of KBFX
from CVS, and reporting and posting problems
encountered helping to add more stability and
compatibility between distribution. Because of
this even before KBFX is 0.4.9 is released we know
the supported platforms. KBFX has been tested to
work with all GCC3.x and GCC4.x compliers. And
also on distributions such as Gentoo, Debian,
Ubuntu, Suse, Slack, Mango, Manrake/Mandriva and
Fedora Core systems. But compiling on FreeBSD
systems is yet to be tested, we will port KBFX to
FreeBSD and PcBSD. 
 
 Documentation for KBFX.
 Documentation for KBFX has been a big draw back
in the recent past. Fortunately Gogniat Nathanael
who is a professional, and skilled technical
write, joined KBFX efforts to write a user
friendly environment with maximum eye-candy. Now
users can expect to have some high quality and
well made documents instead of programmers jargon.
This helps Siraj, Mensur and other developers to
take care of other parts of KBFX improvements.
KBFX 0.4.9 has A user's manual, A skin
specification for Spinx bar, and a Installation
guide. 
 
 New KBFX features
 Spinx Menu:
 This is the Alternative menu we introduce to KDE
for launching applications. 
 
 Spinx Bar has 6 Basic Functionalities. 
 1. Selecting an Application Group
 2. Selecting an Application
 3. Type and locate an Application
 4. Logout of the Desktop
 5. Lock the Desktop
 6. Launch KBFX settings manager
 7. Scroll up and down the application list 
 
 Extra features
 1. Double buffered Widgets to minimize flicker.
 2. Animated scroll bars
 3. New Tooltip
 4. Gif/Mng File Support 
 5. New Control Manager 
 
 You can find more details about following topics
from http://www.kbfx.org
 
 1. How to install from source + KBFX Installation
and Setup Guide
 2. How to setup dude icon
 3. How to install skins
 4. Using KBFX settings Manager