Gregory's ServerAnother big win for making sure you're fully in control of your computer: we've now implemented the Background Portal in Pantheon and our default apps make use of it. So by default our office apps will only run in the background if you use them and with your permission
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 I think all of the relevant branches were merged so if you’re in Early Access you should be able to run/test a Wayland session by just selecting it from the gear menu on the login screen :) I was playing with this levelbar for sound input and trying to make its feedback more useful. I’m not sure about this interaction, but I have a branch drafted here to kind of emphasize peaks. Would love some feedback https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-sound/pull/246 This branch will complete our project to make settings that were previously hidden in a separate #a11y section more broadly available. Some of the explanation text was previously not great so hopefully this is much clearer! https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-keyboard/pull/446 I want to also re-evaluate how complicated some of the old behavior settings are. Like does anybody seriously change the curser blink speed or duration? Here’s a fun Saturday morning idea: https://github.com/elementary/onboarding/pull/212 This month’s updates are going out starting today! Color assistance filters, background/autostart portal, and application settings all queued. More to come soon :) Today we have updated Display settings (with filters and redesigned nightlight settings), Bluetooth indicator (with Bluetooth file sharing), AppCenter (with sandbox warnings), and nightlight indicator (just minor icon updates). And I think we’re gonna have even more this week! Indicators didn’t go out yesterday because we found a last minute issue with icon resources—shoutouts to @bobby285271 downstream in NixOS. But they’re going out today! Also Files with Bulk Rename and a new Online Accounts with better special folder detection for IMAP Literally no one: Designers: MESH GRADIENTS BOOYEEEE COMING STRAIGHT AT YOU LETS GOOOO Switched gears today because it’s Friday and worked on some Files Gtk4 porting stuff. Gonna be a lot of work but this is our oldest code base so it’s going to really benefit from all the cleanup. For example: https://github.com/elementary/files/pull/2231 It’s #DisabilityPrideMonth and through sheer coincidence we’re releasing some cool new #a11y features this month and have more currently in preview for next month. Special shoutouts to @lenemter here for working on color assistance filters, fixing the screen reader shortcut on the greeter, and more. Can’t wait to write up everything we’ve been doing to make @elementary OS more inclusive and accessible! You won't be able to tell from this screenshot, but I'm working on using Hdy.TabBar in Files in preparation for the Gtk4 port (which will use Adw.TabBar). Also, I just installed the latest daily build on my laptop and screen reader shortcuts are working in the Installer yay. Also some design cleanups for the new Mail message move menu. This next release of Mail is really big. So many features and goodies https://github.com/elementary/mail/pull/921 Got this Hdy.TabBar branch for Files all ready for review woo https://github.com/elementary/files/pull/2256 Just merged dark style wallpaper support into Gala (shutouts @lenemter). Just gotta figure out the UI now 😅 Hdy.TabBar landed in Files 🎉 so our Gtk 4 branch is that much closer to being usable woo Gonna kick out a couple releases today to make sure we can release lots of stuff next week. The big one is Settings Daemon which is about to support a bunch of new goodies in the Greeter as well as housekeeping for screenshots. Very excited about this round of feature updates I’m so happy to have finally merged this little feature. After a 10 second timeout, the installer will read out the keyboard shortcut for turning on the screen reader. This should make it much easier for folks with vision disabilities to be able to install and set up their own operating system https://github.com/elementary/installer/pull/711 Release week is upon us! New Tasks and Calendar with background/autostart portal support should go out today. I think a few settings are just waiting on new screenshots. Lots of goodies coming. I’m also aiming for OS 7.1 release next month so putting a bow on a number of projects here. Wanna make a big splash for summer before we shift development focus to OS 8 this fall/winter So Leonhard started working on bringing back a local library in Music using Tracker and the performance is freaking awesome which is a huge problem we had with the old Music. Lots of UX stuff to hash out, but feeling really hopeful about this! https://github.com/elementary/music/pull/756 As if 7.1 wasn't already shaping up to be a killer release, we might get to sneak in another feature here ;) This month’s blog post is bigger than I thought it was going to be. Some really good releases we got out. Getting very excited to write up the 7.1 post, that’s gonna be a really big one! Got a little distracted today trying to make the panel less invasive when used with busy wallpapers. I really hate how it looks to have a big bar across my whole display https://github.com/elementary/wingpanel/pull/492 So I was poking today at this idea of like what if the workspace switcher from the multitasking view was combined with the Dock so it was just one UI where you're kind of always multitasking. I don't really have a clear idea of how to handle pinned apps, but I like the idea of always showing this part of the multitasking UI I’m going a bit the opposite direction here of what my idea of the dock was: a dumb quick launcher. The results of our survey were that folks overwhelming thought the dock is where they would see running apps and switch between them. So leaning into that really hard and thinking about what a dock built as the primary multitasking interface would look like Working a bit more on Files Gtk4 porting today. This time in the sidebar. This is a kind of complicated area but I think I’m starting to understand it better. Files is a really complicated app! There’s so many parts to it. Excited to learn more and modernize it though. This is shaping up to be a really good port https://github.com/elementary/files/pull/2287 Videos Gtk4 port landed in main thanks to @leolost! Excited to continue to modernize this app So far we’ve ported: And we have drafts of ports for several other apps and components. Lots of progress made here Having a little fun :) https://github.com/elementary/videos/pull/362 Alright so my plan was to get an RC for OS 7.1 out this past Friday, but we found a few little issues in daily. So we’re working through those. Also, sounds like there’s an iPhone event so wanna avoid sending out a press release when people are focused on that. I think we’re still on track for September release, but might be more like mid September instead of like first week of the month. Haha okay so while a couple of folks are troubleshooting Nvidia issues, we landed a couple big new features to the Notification Center: Working through this release blog post and trying to put together a more cohesive narrative here, and I realized I had a little bit of a gap. So here’s a branch to warn about apps that aren’t using the autostart portal: https://github.com/elementary/appcenter/pull/2081 There’s so much here it’s hard to figure out how to organize it to best tell the story, but some of the themes I’m looking at for the 7.1 blog post are: * Settings & Personalization And then there’s just like a shitload of other features and misc improvements. Also over 200 bug fixes. Building release candidates. If you’re not in early access, this is a good time to consider it! https://builds.elementary.io Installed the first RC and everything looks right and it’s fast and feels good. I forget how much jank I end up with on my dev machine from having all these experimental branches installed and how the stable install just fucking works Blog post is basically done. Just needs review. It’s a 5 minute longer read than the 7.0 post :) gonna put together the press kit and it looks like we probably need to spin another RC. I think I’m on track to send out press releases Monday. So if you’re not on my press release list and want to be: https://elementary.io/press Please don’t sign up there if you are not press or a content creator of some kind. I will just have to remove you and that’s just work for me and it sucks Blog post is done. Press kit is updated. Building a new RC right now. My plan was to send a press release today but I can’t log in to MailChimp. Something with their 2 factor. Otherwise, things are happening I tell you hwat, I am ready to take like a week off after this release and get a clean mind before starting up the OS 8 machine 😅 Found a major files regression so did another release and spinning a new iso with the fix as soon as its published. Mailchimp is back up. Press kit is published. Press email is drafted. Something I do in these emails is summarize the full blog post into something much more bite size with only major highlights. Hard to take a 22 minute read and make it like a 3 minute read but hopefully makes it much easier for folks to share about the release Submitted a few branches today for GTK 4 porting of Initial Setup https://github.com/elementary/initial-setup/pulls Hoping to land this and AppCenter ports soon! Initial setup GTK 4 port has landed! Also made really good progress on CapNet porting, should be ready for review imminently. I switched development focus of System Settings to the Gtk 4 branch and rebased it on the latest commit of the Gtk 3 branch. Basically it’ll be nearly empty in daily for a while but now is the time to break things in obvious ways so we can fix them over the next 6 months! Did some gtk4 prep work on screenshot and the polkit agent. Merged a branch to port the wallpaper slideshow dialog to gtk4. Started in on Terminal but got a headache before I really got anywhere. Might pivot away from that and focus on settings since it’s really big but should be straightforward I should finish this. This is better right? https://github.com/elementary/switchboard/pull/253/files Also, I’ve been thinking about renaming the app from System Settings to just Settings. Like does it need the “System” part? Seems weird. Especially like “Open System Settings → System” feels weird to write. Rename it? Apparently I never posted these prototypes on Mastodon, but here’s where I’d like to go with Settings for OS 8 as far as a design direction Just merged GTK 4 online accounts settings. Did some packaging work. Now I gotta get ready for doctor’s appointment so we’ll see how productive I am in the 2nd half of the day, but things are moving and happening! Okay so GTK 4 ports are in main for the following settings panes: With pull requests near completion for: Several other panes have less complete draft pull requests. So I’m really confident about getting this fully ported soonish Turns out Language & Region and Notifications already had ports as well! So those are set up and building correctly etc. So currently 9/20 panes building in daily! |
Shoutouts to @lenemter we have a working Wayland session! Besides window positioning code being broken basically everywhere, it’s surprisingly usable and normal. It’s so fast and smooth though omg. Should be able to easily test it in Early Access very very soon! Follow along with known issues etc here: https://github.com/orgs/elementary/projects/118/views/1