On September 26, 2016, the KDE developers proudly announced the availability of the first point release for their recently introduced Kirigami UI framework to create mobile and convergent applications.
The first public release of Kirigami was announced last month, on August 10, 2016, but work on the user interface framework started back in March. On this occasion, we remind you that Kirigami is a versatile UI framework that lets application developers build cross-platform Qt-based apps for mobile and desktop platforms.
The new version, Kirigami 1.1, is a minor point release that attempts to address some of the issues reported by users since the announcement of the first public build, as well as to implement various improvements to some of its core components, including the Menu class, OverlaySheet, Drawer, SwipeListItem, etc.
“The Menu class features some changes and fixes which give greater control over the action triggered by submenus and leaf nodes in the menu tree. Submenus now know which entry is their parent, and allow the submenu’s view to be reset when the application needs it to,” reads the announcement.
There’s now a default shortcut to close a Kirigami app
According to the release notes, Kirigami 1.1 lets developers embed GridView and ListView instances in OverlaySheet, adds banner interaction awareness for applications via a new GlobalDrawer.bannerClicked signal, introduces a Separator component for SwipeListItem, and standardizes the Drawer.
A default keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+Q) has been implemented as well for the application window, allowing you to close a Kirigami app. Other than that, there are many other small bug fixes and under-the-hood improvements to make Kirigami more stable and reliable for application development.
In related news, the KDE team is working hard on the next major release of the popular and modern KDE Plasma desktop environment, version 5.8, which is currently in the Beta stages of development and ships with a revamped Plasma Discover package manager that’s based on Kirigami, so more Kirigami-based apps are coming soon!
