Заметки к релизу GNOME 3.4

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.

Рисунок 2 Документы

Documents, the new application that allows you to easily browse, search and organize 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.

Рисунок 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.

Рисунок 4 Контакты

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.

Рисунок 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.

Рисунок 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.

К этому релизу было обновлено большое количество элементов интерфейса приложений. Эти изменения сделали приложения более элегантными и более простыми в использовании. Это частично затронуло удаление неудобно расположенных элементов.

Рисунок 7 Новый интерфейс выбора цвета

Обновлён диалог выбора цвета. Новый дизайн позволяет получить доступ к палитре цветов, а также предоставляет средство для создания собственного цветового набора. Работа с диалоговым окном стала более интуитивно понятной.

Также были обновлены полосы прокрутки. В новой версии полоса занимает меньшее пространство, также были убраны традиционные кнопки перемещения вверх/вниз (эти кнопки также являются труднодоступными для нажатия).

Мы также пересмотрели дизайн счётчиков, которыми было неудобно пользоваться. Теперь они стали удобнее, а их внешний вид — более привлекательным.

При раскрытии окна на полный экран приложение будет скрывать панель заголовка. Это позволяет увеличить полезное доступное место.

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:

В GNOME 3.4 прокрутка стала более плавной. В предыдущих релизах прокрутка была немного прерывистой. Действие прокрутки работает более плавно, создаёт ощущение больше тактильности. Это большой шаг вперёд, который позволил сделать приложения GNOME более привлекательными.

Плавная прокрутка — это первый результат работы по приближению к сенсорному интерфейсу, дополнительные возможности запланированы на следующие релизы.

Рисунок 8 Утро, день и ночь

В этом релизе был обновлён фон рабочего стола по умолчанию (обои). Новая версия фона также, как и в предыдущем релизе, использует для оформления полосы. Фоновое изображение динамически изменяется: становится светлее в дневное время суток или темнее в вечернее.

Обновлено приложение для управления системными параметрами. Обновления включают в себя следующее:

Рисунок 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.

Традиционная документация написана, как обычная бумажная книга. Хороший роман, но очень длинный и требует много времени для просмотра. Такая организация документации плохо подходит для тех случаев, когда необходимо быстро получить информацию о выполнении какого-то определённого действия. Поэтому в приложениях классическая документация постепенно заменяется на раздело-ориентированную. В GNOME 3.4 в следующих приложениях была обновлена документация:

Рисунок 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.

Рисунок 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.

Рисунок 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: