3.2 release notes items

Major changes in GNOME 3.2, to be mentioned in the release notes. Please make a list here when we reach feature freeze.

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. In fact, if it's too pretty, people will link to it and complain that it's not perfect.

See also the advice about the schedule and translation.

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.

What's new for users

GNOME 3.2

• Dark theme: media applications can now opt to use a dark theme variant. This is used by totem and eog.
• Clean UI: focus rectangles will only be shown when the user is using the keyboard to interact with an app
• Invisible borders: Drag to resize a window can now be triggered in a larger area around the visible border
• Rounded corners: Rounded window corners are smoothly antialiased
• A redesigned font chooser dialog
• Redesigned user interaction in the file chooser dialog (see federicos posts for details)
• New login screen in GNOME 3 optics

GNOME Applications

Brasero

• Switched to Mallard help

Cheese

• Switched to Mallard help

gnome-contacts

• new contact management app
• shows contacts from various sources, including eds and accounts set up with gnome-online-accounts

• see Design/Apps/Contacts

gnome-documents

• new document management app
• gives you an overview of your documents, including google docs accounts set up with gnome-online-accounts

• see Design/Apps/Documents

epiphany

• web applications: http://blogs.gnome.org/xan/2011/08/31/web-application-mode-in-gnome-3-2/

gnome-control-center

• New online accounts panel
• New color management panel
• Ability to set regional settings in Region panel
• New panel for configuring Wacom graphics tablets

Vinagre

• Switched to Mallard help

gedit

• Snippets:
  • Updated mallard snippets
  • New markdown snippets
• New look for quickopen dialog
• The search popup is using now css and a more gnome 3 style.

Evolution

• Switched to Mallard help

• 'Save Image' Option In Evolution On Inline Email Images

• 'Copy Image' Option In Evolution On Inline Email Images

• Separate entry combo for non-standard server port

Empathy

• New log viewer, see [[http://blog.desmottes.be/post/2011/08/26/Shiny-new-UI-in-Empathy-3.2|this blog post]

• SIP accounts can now be marked as being able to make PSTN calls. Such accounts can be used to call landline and mobile phones of contacts.
• Empathy's preference dialog displays a preview of themes and allow to choose a specifc variant for Adium themes. We can also mark unread messages and color nicks in such themes.

What's new for administrators

What's new for developers

GLib

• GApplication can now be used for non-unique apps
• GLib now installs a separate header for Unix-specific APIs: glib-unix.h. Among other things, it provides a mainloop source for Unix signals
• GDBus supports the 'object manager' pattern with a number of new interfaces
• GDBus has a code generator now: gdbus-codegen
• Atomic operations have been rewritten to use gcc builtins; calls with explicit casts may be problematic
• Atomic operations on pointers have been added, including bit-locks on pointer-size locations
• The units policy has been changed to prefer SI units, g_format_size_for_display() has been deprecated in favor of g_format_size()
• Support for HMAC digests has been added: GHmac
• An interface for certificate and key lookup has been added: GTlsDatabase. An implementation is provided by glib-networking

GTK+

• Entries can contain 'hints' now, see gtk_entry_set_placeholder_text()
• Many more widgets support height-for-width geometry management, it is important to set reasonable sizes on labels and check window sizes
• new widgets

  • GtkLockButton, for privileged operations (as seen in some control-center panels)

  • GtkOverlay, for 'floating' controls over a content area (as seen in web browsers)

  • GtkFontChooserDialog, a new font selection dialog

• Much improved CSS theming support, including style classes for primary and inline toolbars

gtksourceview

• New languages:
  • Markdown
  • Standard ML

Clutter

• new actions

  • ClutterGestureAction, for writing gesture recognizers

  • ClutterSwipeAction, for detecting "swipe" gestures

  • ClutterDropAction, for making actors drop targets when using ClutterDragAction

  • add long-press support to ClutterClickAction

• Allow binding ClutterState transitions to object signals when creating a scene in ClutterScript cookbook recipe

• Improved Cairo drawing integration, with the same signal-based approach used by GTK+ ClutterCairoTexture:draw

• Expose Cogl, the GPU programming API used by Clutter, as a separate library

What's new for accessibility users

• Performance improvements and other stuff (We've got a draft to include in the release notes, pending of approval by a11y coordinator)

Regressions

Plans for the next release