3.6 release notes items
Major changes in GNOME 3.6, to be potentially mentioned in the release notes.
Please note that this does not need to be pretty. It's just a list that will be used to make the actual release notes.
See also the advice about the schedule and translation.
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Attention: Press/reviewers: This is a work in progress. Items aren't checked for correctness. Statements may be completely wrong. Very large changes could be forgotten. Please wait until the final release notes are done. This page will not contain everything that will be in the final release notes. Contents
How-to
Major changes are those that:
- Affect lots of people (users, administrators, or developers.)
- Are something people have been hoping for or discussing widely.
- Feature, usability, performance, internationalization or accessibility improvements.
Provide this information:
- What the module (application) is.
- What the change is.
- Why it is important.
- How it can be accessed.
Be as descriptive as you like. Better too long than too short. Links and screenshots are very welcome!
GNOME 3.6
What's new for users
(Please add your app if it is not listed here!)
Boxes
- Search: Both inside Boxes and in the overview mode of GNOME Shell
Much improved look&feel and animations
- Create VM based on host capabilities and architecture. This means:
- we now allow creation of VMs even when KVM is not available
- VMs use best possible CPU features available on each boot
- Allow renaming of boxes
- Indicate installations in progress
- Allow favoriting boxes
Clocks
Is this part of 3.6?
http://blogs.gnome.org/pbor/2012/09/01/summer/
Contacts
Documents
Empathy
New buddy list - http://blog.desmottes.be/post/2012/06/15/New-Empathy-contact-list
- App menu replaces menu bar in the buddy list window
Evolution
Web (Epiphany)
Files (Nautilus)
http://blogs.gnome.org/mccann/2012/08/01/cross-cut/
Highlights:
- Functional search
- New recent items location
- Better looking - standard browser back and forward buttons, symbolic icons in the sidebar
- "New Folder with Selection"
- "Copy To..." and "Move To..." for a simplified copy and move workflow
- Lots of cleanup - removed redundant options, created a much more coherent application
Simplified date & time formats
- Menubar replaced with app and gear menus
- Titlebar is hidden when maximized
Eye of GNOME
Baobab
- rewritten from scratch
- new UI
- faster
Gedit
GTK+
- The Print Dialog has been updated, so that when printing to a file (such as PDF) it is now easier to select the folder and filename from a file chooser dialog.
Passwords and Keys (Seahorse)
System Settings
- Updated UI for the main settings screen
- Looks much better, works better on small screens
- Redesigned Mouse and Touchpad panel
- Much cleaner and easier to understand
- Includes the introduction of natural scrolling for touchpads
- Redesigned Background panel
- Bigger thumbnail images
- Improved colors, with nice textures
- Could mention the new backgrounds set here
- Simpler workflow
- Redesigned Universal Access panel
- Introduction of color and contrast options
- Better handling of Wi-Fi networks and mobile broadband in the Network panel
- Easier to see the list of available wi-fi networks
- Easier to access the details of networks that aren't connected
- Support for Input Methods through IBus integrated with Keyboard layout selection
- Simplified hardware handling in the Sound panel
- Kerberos/Active Directory remote login integration
- Offer more printing options
GNOME Shell
Updated Message Tray design. Highlights:
- Easier to select messages
- We received feedback that the hot corner was causing people to accidentally open the tray - this has been replaced (you now open the tray by holding the pointer against the bottom screen edge)
- No missed notifications - if you are not interacting with the machine, notifications will wait to make sure that you don't miss them
- Close buttons on notification bubbles
- Chat notifications now include icons for the contacts availability
- Lock screen. Displayed when the computer is locked; provides useful functionality:
- See the time and date at a glance
- Pause/skip media and change volume without having to log in
- See notifications as they come in, and get a summary of notifications since the machine was locked
- It's also pretty!
- Activities Overview improvements - "Windows" and "Applications" tabs replaced with an applications button in the dash; this allowed other improvements to the layout of the overview, such as placing the search box in the center
- New style for modal dialogs - look better, better integrated with the new style applications
- It would be nice to have an extensive list of smaller changes that we can pull from:
- Improved layout of the calendar drop down - making it easier to read
- Network menu - shortlist of wi-fi networks now sorted by signal strength
- Improved highlight of the active workspace
Backgrounds
- Pretty new colors
- Updated set of backgrounds
- Updated default "stripes" background
Software
- Name changed from "Add/Remove Software"
- Gained an app menu
- Lost a menu bar
- Loses its titlebar when maximised
- Software Settings and Check for Updates have been integrated - they don't have separate launchers any more
- Improved layout - reworked toolbar, gained a new package information pane
Offline Updates
AllanDay: I presume we have support for this now...
Input Sources
- Input sources have been fully integrated
- Support for setting up CJK input sources from system settings
- Input sources can be switched from the menu in the top bar
- Integrated candidate chooser popups
- Lots more work to come in the future; a platform for future development
AllanDay: we need to add some notices for existing users here (check the details of this with Rui Matos):
- Changing the shortcut for changing the input source can be done from the keyboard shortcuts section of System Settings. The same goes for configuring the Compose Key.
- Keyboard layout customisation has been moved to the Tweak Tool.
What's new for administrators
Almost complete xdg dirs support: GnomeGoals/XDGConfigFolders
What's new for developers
GLib
- GApplication now has hooks to register D-Bus objects before the bus name is taken
- GApplication supports non-unique use cases
- GRegex: Update included PCRE to 8.31 and expose new functionality in 8.x versions of PCRE
Gtk+
GtkStrengthBar: A new widget for displaying the strength or level or some quantity
GtkSearchEntry: A new subclass of GtkEntry that is set up to be used as a search entry
GtkMenuButton: A button that pops up a menu. The menu can be generated from a GMenu or provided manually
GtkIconView: size allocation has been rewritten to support height-for-width and work better.
GtkEntry: Can set Pango attributes for the text now (e.g. make it big or bold)
GtkSpinButton: Can be vertical (with the +/- buttons above/below the entry)
- The theming code now supports multiple backgrounds and transitions
Clutter
Added ClutterScrollActor, an actor that allows displaying large children, and scrolling the viewport to specific points (with or without implicit animation);
added new multi-touch gesture actions, like ClutterZoomAction, ClutterPanActon, and ClutterRotateAction, as well as many fixes for multi-touch support on X11;
provide more implicitly animatable properties, as well as ClutterTransitionGroup (to group explicit transitions together) and ClutterKeyframeTransition (to describe a transition using key frames);
added ClutterGridLayout, a layout manager that provides the same layout policy of GtkGrid;
layout managers now respect the easing state of the actors, so it's possible to easily animate layout transitions without requiring specific code inside ClutterLayoutManager implementations;
added new easing modes defined by the CSS3 Transitions specification: steps, cubic-bezier, step-start, step-end, ease, ease-in, ease-out, ease-in-out.
API deprecations: ClutterMedia (the API is provided by Clutter-GStreamer); ClutterTexture (replaced by ClutterImage); ClutterCairoTexture (replaced by ClutterCanvas); ClutterAnimation, ClutterAnimator, ClutterState (replaced by implicit and explicit animations).
Documentation
Improved Developer Documentation: The GNOME platform overview in the GNOME Developer Center has been reorganized to make it easier to start GNOME development in one of the featured languages C, C++, Python, JavaScript or Vala.
- Also, platform-demos (in gnome-devel-docs) now holds many examples in various languages. (vala, c, js, py)
dconf
Anjuta
Nemiver
What's new in accessibility
What's new in i18n/l10n