Ubuntuland

 K3b 1.0.4 released

K3B is an application that ships in the default KDE packages in most distributions, however it’s a very useful tool that can often be overlooked.

K3B is a CD and DVD burning application that makes it easy to burn data, audio and disc images onto writable CDs and DVDs. It is a very mature, stable and fully featured application.

Open up K3B and you are presented with a split view, with directories listed on the left in a tree structure, the current directory’s contents on the right and a welcome page at the bottom.

On selecting a task, such as creating a data CD, the bottom view turns into a view of the files that will be on your CD (data, in this case, but obviously it will be different for audio and other projects). You then drag and drop files from the filesystem into your project as it’s called. Once you’re done, you can Burn the project.

The whole burning process is very clear and should be easy for anyone familiar burning CDs with software such as Nero over on Windows to pick up and understand.

There are also options for burning images and doing 1-to-1 disc copies available from the Tools menu.

One of the main benefits of K3B is that it is such a mature project. While the tree-like interface might not be to everyone’s tastes and it does occasionally seem a little outdated, the application is simple to use and intuitive for people who have used other burning software before elsewhere. It is extremely stable in my experience, and it gets the job done.

For KDE users, K3B is highly recommended for an easy, yet powerful way to burn data, audio and more to disc. GNOME users may want to try Gnomebaker, and if you’re into using the command line, give cdrecord a try.

How to create a Theme for K3b

K3b is themeable in a restricted way. A theme consists of a bunch of pixmaps in png format used in certain places in K3b as described below and a background and foreground color.

A good starting point is to take a look at the crystal theme that comes with K3b.

Following a list of the pixmaps that need to be created for a theme.

The Media info pixmaps:
All media info pixmaps should have the same size.

• media_none.png
  A pixmap used in the media info header when no media is inserted.
• media_empty.png
  A pixmap used in the media info header when an empty media is inserted.
• media_audio.png (Example)
  A pixmap used in the media info header when an audio CD is inserted.
• media_data.png
  A pixmap used in the media info header when a data CD or DVD is inserted.
• media_mixed.png
  A pixmap used in the media info header when a mixed mode CD is inserted.
• media_video.png
  A pixmap used in the media info header when a Video DVD is inserted.
• media_left.png
  A pixmap used in the media info header on the left side.

Progress Dialog pixmaps:

• progress_working.png (Example)
  A pixmap shown in the top right of the progress dialog while K3b is working.
• progress_success.png
  A pixmap shown in the progress dialog in case of progress_working.png when the process succeeded. This pixmap should have the same size as progress_working.png.
• progress_fail.png
  A pixmap shown in the progress dialog in case of progress_working.png when the process failed. This pixmap should have the same size as progress_working.png.
• progress_right.png (Example)
  A pixmap shown in the progress dialog on the right side.

Project header pixmaps:

• project_left.png
  A pixmap shown on the left side of the project header.
• project_right.png
  A pixmap shown on the right side of the project header. This pixmap should have the same size as project_left.png.

Action Dialog pixmaps:
(In the themes that come with K3b these are the same as media_left and media_none.)

• dialog_left.png (Example)
  A pixmap shown in the upper left of every K3b action dialog (for example the CD Copy dialog).
• dialog_right.png (Example)
  A pixmap shown in the upper right of every K3b action dialog.

Miscellenous pixmaps:

• splash.png
  The K3b splash screen. The splash screen's size will be adjusted according to the pixmaps's size.
• welcome_bg.png
  A pixmap used as background for the welcome window. This pixmap can have an arbitrary size as it is used to tile the background of the welcome window.

Every theme needs a k3b.theme file which allows K3b to properly detect the theme. A k3b.theme file looks as follows:

Author=Everaldo Backgroundcolor=139,153,222 Foregroundcolor=255,255,255 Comment=The cool crystal theme Version=1.0 

Tip: If you want K3b to use the window decoration colors from the current KDE color scheme simply remove the color entries from the theme file. This can be combined with transparent images to create a theme that adjusts to the current KDE color scheme.

All the pixmaps together with the k3b.theme file need to be put in a folder (and then for example be packaged as a tar.bz2 archive). The name of the folder will be used as an internal name for the theme in K3b.

Download

See the Compiling K3b from source step-by-step guide for help with installing K3b.

K3b 1.0.4 (KDE 3.2)

• K3b 1.0.4 sources
• K3b internationalization (i18n) sources for K3b 1.0.4
• K3b Monkey's Audio Encoder and Decoder plugin 3.1 for K3b >= 0.12

K3b 0.11.24 (KDE 3.1)

• K3b 0.11.24 sources
• K3b internationalization (i18n) sources for K3b 0.11.x
• K3b Monkey's Audio Encoder and Decoder plugin

K3b 0.8.1 (KDE 3.0) Please understand that I cannot give support for K3b 0.8 since it's way too old and unmaintained anyway. If possible update your whole KDE. It's worth it anyway ;)

• K3b 0.8.1 tar.gz source
• K3b 0.8 i18n tar.gz source

Screenshots