Hot New Web Dev – February 2024

Welcome to Hot Web Dev February 2024, featuring the latest technology and web development news. This month’s edition features the new release of KDE Plasma for all of you Linux fans. We have some new learning opportunities as well as web design resources. Our tool of the month is the ultimate productivity privacy-focused browser you won’t regret installing.

Table of contents

KDE Plasma 6 Released
Learning Resources
Web Design Resources
Web Tool of the Month
The Best of the Rest in February 2024

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KDE Plasma 6 Released

If you are a Linux fan, like me, you have your favourite desktop environment. Whether it’s KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, Xfce or Mate there is always something available for your taste or to suit the specifications of your hardware.

I have used several desktop environments over the years, favouring Gnome and Cinnamon most of the time. This was until I installed Garuda Linux in 2022, which featured KDE Plasma 5.

This version had more stability and ran smoothly on my 7-year-old Lenovo Yoga without the bugs that had plagued it in the previous versions, leading Gnome and Cinnamon to be long-term favourites.

Plasma 6 has been introduced this month, featuring support for Wayland, a windowing system replacement for the old but stable X Window. The latest features better speed, security and support for modern hardware under the hood.

The KDE desktop apps, including kdenlive and kmail, have received updates on top of the QT application framework. The desktop comes with floating panels and an improved search feature. The settings app has been revamped and the Dolphin file manager has accessibility and a split view feature.

If you have avoided previous buggy versions, it may be time to give KDE another go.

Source
OMG Ubuntu

Learning Resources

This month’s pick of learning resources comes from Replit with its free 100 days of Python course. If you are looking for certification courses you can find a great selection of free courses from Harvard, MIT, Udemy, skillshare and many more.

For those currently using GitHub, you may find FreeCodeCamps Pass the GitHub Foundations Certification useful.

Web Design Resources

Are you a fan of ultra minimalism, Neumorphic design and typography? If you like to keep up and follow the trends in web design you can get an in-depth view of the latest trends on Sitepoint. If you are in the process of designing a new website and want it to last in this quickly changing web design world you can aim to build a future-proof website.

Web Tool Of The Month

Are you a consumer of multiple browsers? The tool of the month is a free web browser with a difference. Arc aims to improve productivity whilst browsing the web as well as being privacy-orientated. Currently, it’s only available for Macs but there is a waiting list for Windows and possible Linux versions in the pipeline.

Arc is based on Chromium, which powers Google Chrome. It’s more lightweight due to it being stripped of all the Google-related junk and the company won’t sell or misuse your data either.

One of its main features is spaces which allows you to separate and keep your websites together. I have separate spaces for each of my projects and my university course. The split-screen view allows you to look at two websites at the same time.

The developer mode is quite handy too. Giving you quick access to the browser developer tools and capturing screenshots with ease. Other notable features include note-taking and even a drawing easel.