Today I did update my Gentoo to KDE-3.5.1, it really worth the compile time :-) It's much more polished than 3.4.3, nice integration with HAL
, more optimizations and nice improvements to some apps, I just tested Kopete so far and it was great.Then I tried to little applications: Katapult and Yakuake.
The first is a nice application that have no main screen, it stay invisible until you press Alt+Space, then it shows a semi-transparent centered that show documents, applications or other catalog data as you type. For example, if you type 1+2 it will use the Calculator catalog and show the result. If you type amarok it will use the Application Launcher catalog and if you hit Enter, it will open it. You can also browse the bookmarks and other stuff. More catalogs will come since Ubuntu guys are maintaining it.
The second is another application without a main screen, when you hit F12 a konsole KPart will show from the top edge like Quake games do. You can use other skins, just browse kde-look, and you can right-click the background to change terminal color and also make it semi-transparent! It will hide as soon as it loose focus, but F12 brings it again in the same state!