GNOME Flashback 3.16 available in archive, needs your help

by Dmitry Shachnev
in Planet

tagged Debian, GNOME

Some time ago GNOME Flashback 3.16/3.17 packages landed in Debian testing and Ubuntu wily.

GNOME Flashback is the project which continues the development of components of classic GNOME session, including the GNOME Panel, the Metacity window manager, and so on.

Screenshot

The full changelog can be found in official announcement mail by Alberts and in changelog.gz files in each package, but I want to list the most imporant improvements in this release (compared to 3.14):

  • GNOME Panel and GNOME Applets (uploaded version 3.16.1):

    • The ability to use transparent panels has been restored.

    • The netspeed applet has been ported to the new API and integrated into gnome-applets source tree.

    • Many deprecation warnings have been fixed, and the code has been modernized.

    • This required a transition and a port of many third-party applets. Currently in Debian these third-party applets are compatible with gnome-panel 3.16: command-runner-applet, gnubiff, sensors-applet, uim, workrave.

  • GNOME Flashback helper application (uploaded version 3.17.2):

    • Added support for the on-screen display (OSD) when switching brightness, volume, etc.

    • Applications using GNOME AppMenu are now shown correctly.

  • Metacity window manager (uploaded version 3.17.2):

    • Metacity can now draw the window decorations based on the Gtk+ theme (without need to add Metacity-specific theme). This follows Mutter behavior, but (unlike Mutter) ability to use Metacity themes has been preserved.

    • Adwaita and HighContrast themes for Metacity have been removed from gnome-themes-standard, so they are now shipped as part of Metacity (in metacity-common package).

    • Metacity now supports invisible window borders (the default setting is 10px extra space for resize cursor area).

Sounds interesting? Contribute!

If you are interested in helping us, please write to our mailing list: gnome-flashback-list@gnome.org.

The current TODO list is:

  1. Notification Daemon needs GTK notification support.
  2. GNOME Flashback needs screenshot, screencast, keyboard layout switching and bluetooth status icon.
  3. Fix/replace deprecated function usage in all modules.
  4. libstatus-notifier — get it in usable state, create a new applet for gnome-panel.