GNOME 3.4 Release Notes

Our applications have been a major theme for this release cycle. The new applications that were released in 3.2 have all received major updates that make them better looking and more pleasurable to use. Several existing applications have also received an overhaul so that they are more consistent and integrated with GNOME 3.

Figure 2 Documents

Documents, the new application that allows you to easily browse, search and organise documents, has received a major design refresh. The result is a fresher, cleaner application. The new version comes with a refreshed interface, the ability to create collections of documents and support for printing.

Figure 3 The new look Epiphany, now called Web

Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, has been renamed Web. It has been given a beautiful new interface for 3.4, which includes a redesigned toolbar and 'super menu'. There have also been a number of performance improvements, including faster browsing history.

Figure 4 Contacts

Our new contact application has also received a major update. The main contact list has been improved as has the layout of contact details. Contacts sports a number of other new features, including inline linking suggestions and a new avatar selector.

Disks is the new name for GNOME Disk Utility, and it has had a major overhaul. The tool, which allows you to manage the disks on your computer, has a refreshed interface, integrates better with GNOME and also received several new features.

Another tool we have updated is Passwords and Keys. It has also been given a much more refined and elegant user interface.

Figure 5 Search for Documents from the Activities Overview

Searching from the Activities Overview already gives you a quick way to access applications, contacts and system settings. A big new feature for this release is the addition of documents to these search results. It means that document search is always at hand.

The new document search facility is provided directly by the Documents application. As a result, you can search the documents you have on your computer as well as those stored in your online accounts.

This ability for Activities Overview search to provide a window into your applications will be extended in future releases to include other types of content, such as Music and Videos.

Figure 6 Application Menus

Application menus are a new feature that will become an increasingly familiar part of our applications in the future. These menus, which are labelled with the application's name and can be seen in the top bar, provide a new space for options that affect the whole application (as opposed to specific windows), such as application preferences and documentation.

A number of applications, including Documents, Web and Contacts, are already making use of application menus for this release.

A number of our application interface components have been modernised this release. These changes will make applications more elegant and easier to use. They are particularly focused on removing difficult click targets.

Figure 7 Our New Colour Chooser Look

Our colour chooser dialogue has been brought up to date for 3.4. The new design provides easy access to a tasteful palette of colours, as well as a mechanism to create a set of custom colours. It is much more straightforward to use than the previous version.

Scrollbars are another component that have been updated for 3.4. The new version takes up less space and removes the tiny 'stepper' buttons that traditionally feature on scrollbars, and which can be a particularly difficult click target.

We also revised the design of spin buttons for 3.4, which used to be fiddly. The new versions are much easier to use and look great too.

When maximised, certain applications will now hide their title bar. This ensures more space is available for the application.

Incremental improvements and polishing has been a big focus for this release. The result is a large number of smaller improvements which add up to a big increase in quality.

The visual theme is a lot more polished in this release. Many of the changes are subtle, but almost every part of the theme has been improved in some way. The overall effect is much better looking applications.

A new initiative, called Every Detail Matters, has been focusing on improving the quality of the Activities Overview for this release. Thanks to these efforts, lots of small details have been taken care of, including improved application launcher labels, new window labels and captions, better keyboard navigation, more legible text styles and an easier to use dash.

There are many other incremental improvements in GNOME 3.4. As ever, there are too many to list here, but they include:

Scrolling has got smooth in GNOME 3.4. In previous releases scrolling content could be a slightly abrupt affair. Now it is slick and graceful. Scroll operations gradually ease to a halt and have a tactile, physical feel to them. This is a big improvement which will make GNOME applications far more pleasurable and satisfying to use.

Smooth scrolling is the first result of our ongoing touch input work, which is planned to deliver more features in the future.

Figure 8 Morning, Daytime and Night

The default background (or 'wallpaper') has been updated for this release. The new version is a new take on the stripes theme from the previous background. The new background is also dynamic, becoming brighter and more radiant during the day, and dark and shadowy in the evening.

System Settings have received a number of updates for 3.4. These changes include:

Figure 9 Power Settings, Now with Extra Pretty

Several of the smaller improvements that feature in this release address hardware support and integration, making GNOME 3 work with more hardware devices, and providing a more seamless experience.

Traditional user documentation is written like a paper book; a good story, but it is very long and takes time to read through. It's not ideal if you just want to quickly find out how to perform a certain task. To address this, applications are gradually updated to provide topic-orientated documentation. The following applications provide new documentation in GNOME 3.4:

Figure 10 New to Empathy: Video Calling

3.4 includes a number of improvements to the Empathy chat application. Foremost among these is its brand new audio and video calling interface. This provides a really nice way to do video calling, and it is fully integrated into GNOME 3, so you can quickly and easily respond to video calls as they come in.

Another major enhancement to Empathy for this release is the new support for both Windows Live Messaging and Facebook chat, so that chatting with your friends is easier than ever before.

There are several other improvements included in this release of Empathy, including:

There are plenty of other improvements to our applications in this release. As well as the usual bug fixing work, there are visible enhancements and new features. Here are some of them:

GNOME 3 support for screen readers has been improved. This means that users of the Orca screen reader can now use GNOME 3 as their computing environment. This integration will be further developed in future releases, and we encourage Orca users to provide feedback.

Orca's performance has also been greatly improved this release. These improvements mean that the new version is much faster and more responsive.

Figure 11 New High Contrast Icons

The high contrast theme has received several improvements this cycle. GNOME's new and refreshed interface components are now supported by high-contrast mode. The high contrast icons that are used in this mode have also been improved and extended, making high contrast look better and cover more of GNOME.

Figure 12 New Zoom Settings

New settings for configuring the zoom (or magnifier) feature have been added for this release. The new zoom options allow you to change the magnification factor, the mouse tracking, the position of the magnified view on the screen and enable crosshairs to be added to help you find the mouse or touchpad pointer.

GNOME's low-level software utility library GLib has seen various improvements:

GTK+ 3.4 is the latest release of the GTK+ toolkit, which is at the heart of GNOME. GTK+ 3.4 includes new features for developers, as well as extensive bug fixes.

GNOME's graphics library for hardware-accelerated user interfaces Clutter provides the following improvements:

GNOME's default GSettings backend has seen several improvements:

Further progress has been made in the continuous work of replacing outdated technologies with superior facilities.

Other GNOME Platform improvements in GNOME 3.4 include: