Quanta 3.3 BE 2 Released!

New BE 2 screenshots

The Quanta team is proud to release our second Bleeding Edge technology preview. If you're not familiar with Quanta Bleeding Edge here's the idea. It's a development preview that has been extensively tested to make sure it's stable and usable and it's got a lot of cool new things the official release doesn't. So it's not going to be a problem to use but it may have a small annoyances. The great thing is there's no risk because it installs along side Quanta Plus! That means you can enjoy all the new features, but if there's a problem you don't lose any time, just fire up your 3.2.2 version.

So what's new since 3.2x? Well the list is rather long. First there are several new applications, KImageMapEditor and KLinkStatus. You can probably guess what they do. You can create image maps visually and check your site links now from within Quanta. Inside Quanta there is the exciting new embedded debugging interface which initially focuses on PHP, but can have plugins for any language. Our first debugger is Gubed and there is a howto for setting up Gubed to debug done by Werner Joss. Many thanks to a great Quanta supporter.

Other new and exciting features indlude new CSS dialog system enhancements and enhanced access to CSS. You can invoke the dialog to manage the page styles by placing the cursor inside the <style> tags as well as inline. CSS auto completion is also improved, but something exciting I've wanted for years... the tag dialogs (as well as the attribute editor) can access the CSS dialog for style attributes and there are combo boxes for Id and class attributes! This makes CSS more accessable for VPL. Along with this the toolbars have been revised as it seems like a good idea to update them after all these years.The Font toolbar is now replaced by the Style toolbar and there are buttons for span and tags within the head of the document too. There have also been updates to the new table editor.

Our plug ins have been updated including a much nicer invocation of KFileReplace and a number or updates to KXSL Dbg too. There is a new feature in the project tree allowing you to save and view short descriptions of files. You can optionally hide or show hidden files in treeviews and open files are shown in bold in the project tree. You can close them from there too. There are new context menus on file tabs... oh yeah, too many new things. The big one is that Quanta now has KMDI! So the look is really new, like Kdevelop.

Kommander is another very exciting part of Quanta's new kdewebdev CVS module and now that Michal Rudolf is on board he's also giving some much needed attention to Kommander. Kommander has the most potential of any tool to become the dialog and scripting application builder for inexperienced users as well as an excellent prototyping tool and extention for developers. Kommander now has the ability to use DCOP to control it as well as new features to get the dcopid of the current dialog or the appliation that called it. It also has some initial improvements to the editor. Look for a separate release of Kommander in around a month with a lot of new features and documentation on how to use it.

I'll close this part now with a copy of our internal notes on changes that is a bit more complete. You can get the latest version here and don't forget that you will also need to get a copy of the latest Gubed if you want to try out the new debugger. Many thanks to Linus McCabe for all his work there.

Finally I would like to remind you that a small fraction of a percent of our users help me to sponsor the two developers that are the backbone of our team. If you would like to help us keep our effort strong and our systems compiling fast (Michal is still running an Athlon Duron 1000) you can sponsor or contribute to Quanta development.

General:
- recommended platform is KDE 3.2.2 and Qt 3.2.x
- last release working on KDE 3.1.x
- some features require KDE 3.3 (CVS HEAD)
- as KDE CVS HEAD is moving target, the avabiality of some 
features highly depends on the date when you have updated
kdelibs from the CVS

KDEWEBDEV:
- KLinkStatus by Paulo Moura Guedes  added
- KImageMapEditor by Jan Schaefer added

Kommander:
- new maintainer: Michal Rudolf
- DCOP interfaces to modify the widgets
- .kmdr files are associated with Kommander editor and executor
- added new commands: @parentPid, @pid, @dcopid
- added ChooseWidget dialog
- added support for shebang (#!/bin/sh) for both ExecButton
script and @execBegin scripts
- rebuilt Kommander Text (previously Associated Text) editor

KFileReplace:
- new maintainer: Emiliano Guilmini
- new, more usable New Project dialog

KXslDbg:
- I don't remember the specific changes, but I remember that
there were some commits by Keith

Quanta:
1. new features:
      - support for PHP debuggers (currently Gubed - 
      http://gubed.sf.net is supported). Howto created by 
      Werner: http://www.hoernerfranzracing.de/kde/gubed.html
      - preview, documentation and plugins can appear in a new 
      tab or a separate toolview
      - list the opened files as bold in the treeviews
      - allow closing of opened files from the treeviews
      - option to control the visibility of hidden files in the 
      treeviews
      - add description field for project files
      - option to control loading of last opened files/project 
      on startup
      - Select Current Tag Area action created
      - Next / Previous Bookmark actions (requires KDE CVS HEAD 
      for full functionality)
      - add a toolbar for CSS
      - new DCOP interfaces and methods:
        - QuantaIf: selectors() and idSelectors()
        - SettingsIf: dtep(), encoding(), quotationChar()

2. general enhancements:
      - improve multiline script autocompletion
      - improve (X)HTML toolbars
      - warn if there is a closing tag without opening tag in 
      the document
      - show also the column number in the error reporting 
      dialog
      - multiline, formatted CSS insertion from the CSS editor 
      dialog
      - possibility to invoke the CSS editor from the tag 
      dialogs and 
      the attribute editor
      - CSS autocompletion improvements
      - list the defined CSS selectors in the autocompletion 
      and tag 
      dialogs for class and id attributes
      - added some useful templates and template examples
      - added installation script for Gubed PHP debugger
      - added descriptions for all scripts

3. behavioral/user interface changes:
      - new UI with more MDI modes: Toplevel / Childframe / Tab 
      Page
(like the old one ) and the new default IDEAl mode
      - expand abbreviation is CTRL-SHIFT-J
      - Project Properties is SHIFT-F7
      - some menu items were restructured:
            - File: Close/Close All moved under Window
            - Edit: Indent/Unindent/Clean
            Indentation/Comment/Uncomment/Spelling moved under 
            Tools
            - View: Tree Views/Show Messages/Show Problem 
            Reporter
            replaced with Tool Views
            - Project: Project Options renamed to Project 
            Properties
            - Plugins: Edit moved to Settings->Configure Plugins
                Validate removed (plugins are automatically
                validates when you configure them)
            - Tools: List Opened Files replaced with the Window 
            menu
            - editor context menu: Close/Close Other
            Tabs/Reload/Upload/Delete File moved to the tab 
            context 
            menu
            - new tab context menu containing the above and 
            Close
All/Switch To...
      - some dialogs were restructured:
            - Configure Quanta: Environment->Show close buttons 
            on tabs
            moved to User Interface
                Layout renamed to User Interface
                Layout->Window Layout replaced
                with Reset window layout to the default...


4. Bugfixes:
        - VPL:
            - show the parent tag in the tag attribute view when 
            editing text
            - stop inserting &nbsp; everywhere [#72535]
            - fix some various crashes [#72532]
        - correctly close tags with namespaces when entering 
        ")
        - make the New Project wizard usable on lower 
        resolutions [#75192]
        - report bugs for "quanta" module, not for "quanta_be"
        - fix restoration of the toolbar visibility setting 
        [#79082]
        - hide/show the plugin toolbar as well when Show 
        Toolbar is
        unchecked/checked [#79082]
        - don't ask for copying a file to the project if it is 
        under the
        project directory (happened
          with symlinked files and projects)
        - color with bold in the Files Tree the opened files, 
        even if
        they are under a symlinked directory
        - don't save the shortcuts as localized strings [#80115]
        - don't crash when canceling a failed upload
        - don't hang for 3 minutes if a filtering script action
        cannot be found
        - various parsing fixes

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Contacts:
Project Leader:
  Eric Laffoon
Lead Developer:
  Andras Mantia


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