Integration is the Best Feature

Speaker: Inge Wallin

One of the absolute strong points of the KDE desktop is strong integration between different applications and also between an application and the desktop itself. Simple examples of this is cut&paste and drag&drop. More advanced examples of such integrations are plugin architectures, and the use of various frameworks that the KDE libraries offer to the application developer such as KIO and KParts.

With KDE4, the developer has even more and better ways to offer such integration. We will make a survey of the different integration frameworks that exist in KDE and KOffice and how they can be used. We will also offer a way of thinking around these integration features. We will try to make the developer think about how they can be used but most important how s/he can offer his own application as a platform or component for others to build on.

We will make the case that integration *in itself* is one of the strongest features possible for an application, and how integration has been used by other vendors outside KDE to create a strong community and user base.