14 DAY TRIAL // GNOME 3.14 is out, and all users now want to try it and see what's new. The developers have provided us with a list of changes and improvements that have been implemented in this latest version.
The GNOME development team has been working very hard for the past six months to improve upon the GNOME 3.12 release, which in turn was a great version. It wasn't an easy job to do and now we have the new 3.14 and it's actually much better than the previous release, although there still are a couple of small problems.
GNOME 3.14 actually gathers thousands of changes, and most of them are not even visible to the regular users, but a few of the improvements that have been made can be shown and described.
What the devs are saying about GNOME 3.14
"This is another exciting release for GNOME, and brings many new features and improvements, including multitouch, captive portal support, greatly improved sharing settings. This release also includes improved and redesigned applications for weather, maps, PDF viewing, running VMs, and more."
"This six months' effort wouldn't have been possible without the whole GNOME community, made of contributors and friends from all around the world: developers, designers, documentation writers, usability and accessibility specialists, translators, maintainers, students, system administrators, companies, artists, testers and last, not least, users. GNOME would not exist without all of you," says GNOME developer Matthias Clasen.
A few highlights of GNOME 3.14
The GNOME Weather application has been redesigned and it's now using the new geolocation framework to automatically show the weather for the current location of the user. It's also easier to check the forecast for the weather with the improved design.
The support for Wi-Fi hotspots has been improved, including for something called Captive Portal Handling. Users might have free Wi-Fi in range that's only accessible though a web portal. The Wi-Fi icon will now change accordingly in order to reflect this. GNOME will also automatically show the login page as a part of the connection process.
GNOME Photos has received support for Google and media server support, allowing users to see images from these new sources. The Media server accounts now provide access to home media servers, via DLNA.
The multitouch support has also received some big improvements. Multitouch gestures can now be used on touchscreens for system navigation, as well as in applications, including the Message Tray, for example.
The document viewer, Evince, has been redesigned as well and is now using a header bar to give more space to the user's documents. The application also features high-resolution display support and enhanced accessibility.
The Activities Overview has also received a number of new animations, which are also now available for opening, closing, and minimizing windows.
Small issues still remain
The new features mentioned above are just skimming the surface of the new release. As expected, there still are some problems, but they might be corrected in the new release. For example, the icon theme hasn't changed much and is the same old ugly brown. It's really behind the general design of the desktop. Also, some of the apps, like GNOME Photos, don't follow the same design as the rest and the devs have opted for a dark grey window, which looks strange when it's open alongside some of the regular ones.
You can check our original report on the GNOME 3.14 release for more details about the download locations. You can also enjoy some of the screenshots provided by the GNOME team.
