What's New for Users
The GNOME Project's focus on users and usability continues in GNOME 2.30 with its hundreds of bug fixes and user-requested improvements. The sheer number of enhancements makes it impossible to list every change and improvement made, but these notes aim to highlight some of the more exciting, user-oriented features in this release.
- 3.1. View More Files
- 3.2. Empathy Instant Messenger
- 3.3. Easy Syncing
- 3.4. Manage Your Users Safely
- 3.5. Know What You're Doing
- 3.6. Manage your PDFs
- 3.7. Browse the Web
- 3.8. Connect Remotely
- 3.9. But Wait, There's More…
3.1. View More Files
GNOME 2.30 includes updates to Nautilus, the GNOME File Manager. Nautilus features a number of user interface changes including a new split view mode and is now set to browser mode by default, replacing spatial mode.
3.2. Empathy Instant Messenger
GNOME's instant messaging and communication application, Empathy, built on the Telepathy communications framework, has gained a number of new and important features to help users communicate.
Empathy will now display an information bar in the contact list when an account fails to connect, featuring a button that makes it easy to try and connect again or edit the account settings.
You can now send files by dragging and dropping a file in the contact list or in the chat window when talking to a friend.
Empathy's IRC functionality has been updated to include support for common IRC commands such as /join or /nick, and you can now join password protected rooms.
Other updates include support for easily adding and configuring Facebook chat and chat windows now display a search window to help easily find text when chatting with friends.
3.3. Easy Syncing
Tomboy Notes features a number of updates and now can automatically synchronise your notes in the background instead of requiring you to manually sync. You can also set how often Tomboy should sync automatically from within Tomboy's preferences.
Tomboy's startup time has been dramatically improved and now starts almost instantly.
Copying and pasting has been improved and you can now copy and paste rich HTML from notes into other applications such as OpenOffice.org, Evolution or other applications. The formatting of your notes is preserved, assuming the application you are pasting information into understands HTML.
Other improvements in Tomboy include Microsoft Windows 7® jump list support with Tomboy being present in the Taskbar and Windows Start Menu. Renaming notes in Tomboy has been improved to offer safer renaming of notes and give you more control when renaming a note so you don't accidentally rename links in other Tomboy notes.
3.4. Manage Your Users Safely
GNOME System Tools has a number of new improvements making it easier and safer to manage users on your computer. GNOME System Tools now works with PolicyKit for authentication, removing the button for managing users and services.
The dialogue to create a user has been improved and only requires you to provide the new user's name and will include user name suggestions. Upon account creation everything will "just work"! This also includes adding support for encrypted home directories for new users.
You can no longer lose your own administrative rights accidentally. You will now be prompted for your current password before changing your password so your keyrings and encrypted home directories will not break. When removing user accounts, the ability to delete that user's home directory is now an option.
When managing existing users you can choose from specific account types rather than having to choose specific cryptic privileges making it easier to add and remove abilities for other users.
3.5. Know What You're Doing
The Time Tracker applet, which helps you track your time and tasks, includes a number of new improvements.
An all new standalone mode has been created in addition to the panel applet. Depending on your distribution, Time Tracker is available in your GNOME Menu under .
Viewing and creating reports based on your activities has been improved as you can now create tags in your activities and the overview can also be filtered by all aspects of your activities.
3.6. Manage your PDFs
The Evince document viewer has improved printing support. Page setup settings are now embedded in the print dialogue and a new tab has been added to support various scaling options.
Evince on Microsoft Windows® now includes support for printing, PostScript and comics.
Other updates to Evince include adding an inverted colours mode; updates to presentation mode; the ability for annotation in PDF file attachments and support for remote files in the thumbnailer.
3.7. Browse the Web
The Epiphany web browser has seen numerous bugs and regressions fixed in addition to new features.
Epiphany can now remember passwords using gnome-keyring.
Epiphany has a new configuration option to enable or disable all plugins, such as Flash or Java. Epiphany will also now warn you when viewing a website with a broken SSL certificate.
Features that have returned to Epiphany include:
- Print preview is again available.
- You can now right-click in a web page to download and save an object, such as an image.
- Favicon support has been restored.
- The up navigation arrow has returned.
- When you middle-click with your mouse, your clipboard contents will be pasted.
- Epiphany's context menus have returned and are compatible with custom page menus, such as those used by Google Docs.
Epiphany also has added advanced options available as settings in GConf. You can enable support for User Agents and change your default search engine directly within GConf.
Epiphany-extensions has new additions including html5tube which replaces YouTube Flash with HTML5 and does not require you to have Flash installed. The tab-key-tab-navigate plugin allows you to use Ctrl+Tab to change tabs. The sidebar extension has been removed.
3.8. Connect Remotely
Vinagre, a remote desktop client for the GNOME Desktop, has added support for SSH tunnelling allowing you to access a remote machine more securely through an SSH tunnel. You will need an SSH account on the remote client and then you can type in passwords and other information knowing you are connected securely.
Connecting to clients using a low bandwidth connection has been made easier by allowing you to choose a lower depth of colour to save bandwidth and by enabling JPEG compression. These options are available in the connection dialogue in Vinagre.
A new listener mode has been added allowing the remote desktop you are going to view and control to connect to you. This is helpful when the remote connection is behind a firewall or router and is unreachable through the normal connection process. By enabling listener mode in Vinagre and giving your IP address to the user you are trying to connect to, the remote client can connect to you.
3.9. But Wait, There's More…
As well as big changes, there are also various small additions and tweaks that happen in every GNOME release.
- New fonts can be installed by double-clicking the font in Nautilus.
- Gedit has improved integration in the Mac OS® X port and Python plugins are now working in the Windows version. Gedit's Snippets plugin has been ported to the new completion framework. The spell check plugin now has the ability to check comments and strings in programming languages.
- When you choose multiple keyboard layouts the status icon automatically appears in the notification area.
- File Roller will install the necessary packages using PackageKit if an archive you are trying to open does not have the correct archive support installed.
- Brasero will now more accurately copy audio CDs using the cdda2wav plugin. Brasero is now integrated with PackageKit and has support for searches using Tracker.
- GNOME Terminal now has support for unlimited scrollback, scrollback saving and bold colours.
- iPod® and iPod Touch® devices are now partially supported by gvfs thanks to the libimobiledevice library. Music synchronisation, data access and downloading photos should be fully supported. For a full list of feature support, libmobiledevice homepage.
- gcalctool features a new, simpler user interface. Functions are now typed, such as s_i_n for sine instead of k.
- In addition to a number of bug fixes, GNOME Panel has fixed a long outstanding bug in that when you change your screen resolution, applets will no longer randomly change position.
- The GNOME Keyboard Indicator has been removed from GNOME Applets. If you use more than one keyboard layout, the GNOME Keyboard Indicator will now automatically appear in your tray via gnome-system-daemon.
- GNOME Keyboard Preferences in the GNOME Control Centre has an updated graphical user interface.
- GNOME Games have renamed Gnometris to Quadrassel and Same GNOME is now known as Swell Foop. Swell Foop and Gnibbles both have a new 3D accelerated engine based on Clutter.