Time has passed and we finally made it: GNOME 3.20 just got released. I’m writing this post in a full GNOME 3.20 + Wayland session (thanks Arch folks, [gnome-unstable] is amazing).

I’d like to take some time to reflect about this release, what happened and what didn’t happen.

Calendar

While this certainly wasn’t the biggest feature release of GNOME Calendar, I’m very satisfied with it. Not only it went through a major rework that will make future development much easier, but also 4 new contributors had their patches in. 4 new contributors.

This is truly beautiful.

They polished lots of rough edges. Thanks to these contributions, past event are now less proeminent, year view is much more visually appealing and respects GNOME Shell’s setting to show week dates.

Captura de tela de 2016-03-23 00-47-05
Year view improvements and faded past events.

Not only that, but Month view also received subtle improvements. The rendering code now ensures a pixel-perfect selection, more proeminent background for selected days and navigating to beyond the last days switch the month.

Captura de tela de 2016-03-23 00-51-58
Month view improvements.

Good news? I didn’t do any of these features! They were all contributions from independent, warmhearted people spread all around the world.

To Do

This release made GNOME To Do shine. I spent most of my time working on the new plugin support, and learned a lot to make it work correctly. Thanks to Garret Gregier, Patrick Griffis, Christian Hergert and many other supportive and warm people, the engine works good and soon I’ll write a small series to demonstrate plugin development.

Captura de tela de 2016-01-31 18-59-50
Plugin support for GNOME To Do.

Let’s see what will be created from now on 🙂

Nautilus

Oh, dear Nautilus. I’ve worked on you as a Summer of Code project, then as a free-time project, now it’s a paid-time project. I love you, but I disdain you. Your old codebase with loads of obsolete code makes my spine chill, and yet I can’t leave you crying in the rain.

This cycle, I worked on the new Search feature. Then Carlos finished what I’ve started, so he deserves all the credits. Check his post about it.

What’s coming next?

Captura de tela de 2016-03-22 14-16-51
This is coming next: action bars.

Maybe that’s not the only big thing that will come. Who knows 😉

News

Poor GNOME News, almost dying. I managed to push some changes on it, but it’s far from perfect. Maybe I’ll manage to sneak more improvements during 3.21 cycle?

Captura de tela de 2016-03-07 17-55-36
GNOME News.

Conclusion

This was a good cycle. I’m very proud of how much better GNOME got during the last releases. It’s definitely getting to a stability and usability points that we saught since the first 3.0 release. The apps are slowly (no so slowly anymore) getting mature and useful.


15 responses to “The GNOME 3.20 release”

  1. Lester Nygaard Avatar
    Lester Nygaard

    Thanks for your hard work. Hopefully some old bugs like #684943, #750848 get adressed this new cycle. Gnome gets better and better thanks to you (et al)!

    1. Thank you for your supportive words! This kind of feedback boosts the devs’ will to continue improving GNOME 😀

  2. Sean White Avatar
    Sean White

    Out of curiosity, what advantages would an action bar have over the current context menu or a right click generated popover in Nautilus? It just seems to me that it would increase the travel time of the mouse compared to menu/popover, have less visual connection between the item/s that have been selected and their associated actions, and not be as extensible as the context menu.

    1. I think it is usefull for tablet / touchscreen usage.

      1. Sean White Avatar
        Sean White

        With Gnome share on tablets being non-existent (and probably going to remain so), touch monitors being an expensive item most don’t have, and Touch screens on laptops still being new enough a thing that most gnome users wouldn’t have them is it really enough of a demand to change to a interaction method that seems inferior?

    2. emmanuel Avatar

      this approach is also keeping in with the current double-click interaction default. seems like the single-click nautilus plans have been scraped or delayed 🙁

  3. how did you get gnome 3.20 ?
    Did you use

    [gnome-unstable]
    Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

    when i do pacman -Syyu it says everything is up to date. so i cant go from 3.18 to 3.20

    1. Make sure you added these 2 lines before [testing]. Also, I had to install cogl-git from AUR to be able to use it.

      1. cool thanks i was able to install 3.20 but I can no longer choose the wayland session in the login menu.

  4. Eduardo Silva Avatar
    Eduardo Silva

    Congratulations on the new release, and thank you to all the developers involved!
    Looking forward to try it on f24 alpha.

    Looking forward to the new Gnome News as well, and hoping that Gnome Books gets picked up again: a app like this has such potential.

    1. Thanks, dude! Glad to know you’re enjoying GNOME 🙂

  5. Thanks for giving a overview of the important improvements, it really helps me know what to look out for on Arch

  6. Garibaldo Avatar
    Garibaldo

    I am/was thinking about develop another news or a pocket client for Linux (designed with GTK3 in mind), then remembered to see how is going the development of Gnome News.
    Good to know is in your hands (loved the development related to Nautilus, Tasks and To Do) liked what you did until now, but what is in your mind to improve the News for next update?

    About ideas and suggestions (not sure if any of this don’t follow the expected path for the software.. how can i look that?):
    – Show, somewhere, where the link is pointing me to.
    – Settings for font size, night mode (dark background, white font), dir (
    – Open the webpages in “article mode” within the Gnome News (just like in pocket clients) if clicked in “view post”, instead of opening in a web browser (or set this as an option).
    – Plugins (for further pocket, feedly and other readers support).

    For now is just that, rooting for the development and many thanks for it. 🙂

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