Wednesday, September 07, 2005

GNOME 2.12 will be released to the world on September 7th, 2005, culminating 6 months of very exciting work by members of the project. A number of exciting technologies come together in GNOME 2.12 that will set the standard for free software desktops to come. Here is a sample (by no means an exhaustive list) of some of the outstanding work that has gone into GNOME thanks to its many contributors.

New Default Theme. GNOME 2.12 is going to be clearer and better looking then ever before. Clearlooks, the new theme engine that has proven incredibly popular with users, developers and distributors, is going to become the default theme for GNOME 2.12.

Nautilus. Nautilus is GNOME's file manager and wasn't neglected when the features and polish were added to GNOME 2.12. Along with over 200 bugs fixed, Nautilus now sports a spatial tree file view, popularised in the original Apple Macintosh operating systems.

The browser mode in Nautilus has also gotten some attention, and now has a side bar that shows your bookmarks, identically to in a file chooser or the Places menu on the panel.

There is also an exciting list of new functionality extensions ready for use in Nautilus. Including a new "Send to..." feature for transferring documents, photos, music, etc. via Email, Instant Messaging or Bluetooth.

These extensions are not officially part of the GNOME Desktop, but some of them may end up as default functionality in the future.