3.4 release notes items

Major changes in GNOME 3.4, 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. Better too long than too short. Links and screenshots are welcome.

GNOME 3.4

• https://live.gnome.org/ThreePointThree/Features

What's new for users

Updated GNOME 3 Application Designs

Documents

• No sidebar
• New search interface
• Collections
• App menu

Contacts

• New sidebar and contact pane design
• Inline editing
• Inline linking suggestions
• New Link Dialog
• App menu
• Just Type
• New avatar selector (with crop support)

Boxes

• New application
• Simple/easy virtual machine management and remote display management
• Creation with a few clicks
• Option of fully automated installations for Fedora, Windows XP and Windows 7.
• Deletion
• Connect to remote displays using SPICE or VNC.

Epiphany

• New toolbar design
• App menu
• "Super menu"
• History rewrite: faster, infinite history
• WebKitGTK+ 1.8

• Blog posts: 1

Sound Juicer

• Rewritten metadata fetching, which works with multi-disc albums again.

Core Experience

• Document search
  • Provided by the GNOME Documents application
  • Facility to add more application search providers

• Wanda the Fish http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/commit/?id=50aa15dec9c64d6b08fc863bdb909ab07438c110

• http://blogs.gnome.org/fmuellner/2011/11/22/gnome-shell-gsettings-and-keybindings/

• http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell/commit/?id=7fa7d04ed0b184702089f6ff65400a28cb6c3b05

• Nicer screen recorder - https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=669066

• EveryDetailMatters

  • New window labels and captions
  • Many interaction bugs fixed
  • Keyboard navigation
  • Theme refinements - consistent legible text styles
• App menus
• Lots of visual theme updates

System Settings

• Big improvements to Wacom settings post #1 and post #2

• Graphical configuration for the Magnifier
• Better handling of docking stations and plugging of external monitors (for suspend, and turning off monitors working as designed)
• Updated design for Network and Power panels
• Support for Volume keys on USB speakers and headsets
• Renamed panels: 'System Info' is now 'Details' and 'Screen' is now 'Brightness and Lock'

GTK+

• Vastly improved treeview accessibility
• New spin button design
• New color chooser
• Initial touch support: kinetic scrolling in scrolled windows
• Smooth scrolling

Other GNOME Applications

Empathy

• Windows Live chat in Online Accounts http://blogs.gnome.org/xclaesse/2011/12/19/updates-on-xmpp-support-in-msn/

• Brand new audio/Videoo call UI
• Accounts dialog partially re-designed: the tech details of the account are not hidden in their own dialog
• Empathy now relies on gnome-contact to display contacts' details and link contacts together (which is great because gnome-contacts now suggest you contacts to link)

Evolution

• http://live.gnome.org/Evolution/Planning34

• Make the order of the mail accounts configurable

Eye of GNOME

• Return of the image metadata view in the sidebar. The old one was dropped back in 2.20 because it was way to cluttered and quite hard to read quickly. This new one uses a different layout and only shows the likely most common/interesting data values in an attempt to improve readability.

Gedit

• https://live.gnome.org/Gedit/RoadMap

Passwords and Keys (Seahorse)

Updated design

What's new for administrators

What's new for developers

GLib

• Roadmap

• Rewritten threading support, g_thread_init() no longer needed
• Native OS X support for GSettings

• Support for embedding resources in binaries: GResource

• Support for Unicode 6.1

• Better GSettings support for plugins/extensions/etc: GSettingsSchemaSource

• Network monitoring: GNetworkMonitor

• Versioned deprecations http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2012/02/27/advances-in-deprecation-technology/

Gtk+

• Roadmap

• More complete CSS support in theming
• Better transparency support in theming and backgrounds
• Improved cross-platform keyboard shortcut handling (using 'Primary' instead of 'Control')

• Menu and Window support in GtkApplication, including OS X support

• Basic touch support:

  • Widgets can get touch events by connecting to the GtkWidget::touch-event signal

  • GTK+ uses touch events to implement kinetic scrolling in GtkScrolledWindow and touch-compatible menu behavior

• Smooth scrolling:

  • New scroll direction, GTK_SCROLL_SMOOTH

  • New event mask GDK_SMOOTH_SCROLL_MASK

  • Use gdk_event_get_scroll_deltas() to get deltas

• Versioned deprecations http://blogs.gnome.org/mclasen/2012/02/27/advances-in-deprecation-technology/

Clutter

• Multiple backend support: Clutter can be compiled with support for different platforms, and the backend can be selected at run time.
• GDK backend: Clutter can use GDK, the windowing system library also used by GTK+.
• Support for the password hint in text entries: when the password hint is enabled, the last character inserted into a text entry will be shown for a brief amount of time, as a way to safely enter passwords and other hidden content on platforms with imprecise text input (e.g. touchscreen keyboards).
• Follow the same deprecation and versioned definitions also used by GLib and GTK+ (see above).
• Better support on OSX and Wayland.

• New scene graph API: ClutterActor is now the only class dealing with the definition of a scene inside a Clutter application; this deprecated most of the ClutterContainer interface; ClutterGroup; ClutterRectangle; ClutterBox. http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/2012/03/17/had-a-dream/

• New implicit animation API for ClutterActor. http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/2012/03/18/and-i-believe-california-succumbed-to-the-fault-line/

• New ClutterContent interface, with two implementations: Canvas, for Cairo drawing; and Image, for displaying image data; the Content interface supports the new render objects API for painting the actor's content. http://blogs.gnome.org/ebassi/2012/03/18/you-and-me-and-the-war-at-the-end-times/

• Support localizable strings and GResource in ClutterScript UI definitions.

• Added repeat count and progress mode to the Timeline class.
• Performance improvements on the GLSL-based effects shipped by Clutter.
• New brightness-contrast effect.

dconf

• dconf now supports reading from multiple user configuration databases. The dconf profile format now explicitly identifies user and system dconf databases, rather than assuming that only the first line specifies a user database. Users interested in sharing part of their dconf profile between multiple systems, such as via a version-controlled home directory, can use this support to read from a shared dconf database in addition to the live writable dconf database.

• dconf now supports dconf profiles specified by an absolute path in $DCONF_PROFILE, rather than just a path relative to /etc/dconf/profiles/ . This allows users to specify a profile in their own home directory, such as to specify multiple user databases.

Anjuta

• Anjuta got a new and improved "Find in files" dialog that allows you to search the project files, filtering on directories and/or specific file types. The search supports regular expressions and you can also replace in all or only a subset of the found files.

Plans for GNOME 3.6