Gregory's ServerIt’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!
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 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! Love a branch that removes a ton of code: https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-sharing/pull/66 Landed the previously linked sharing branch and submitted another branch to migrate away from Gtk.FileChooserButton. After that Sharing is basically ported. And finished and proposed a branch for Sound settings! Sharing settings now ported to GTK 4 and building in daily! CapNet is ready for review 🚀 Migrated a bunch of repos over to the new Gettext action that @tintou wrote! Very cool. Always good to not be dependent on distro packages and hopefully this is useful to a lot of other folks maintaining Flatpak apps. Getting into some settings ports that are less straightforward. Some depend on newer libraries, some have custom widgets that need a big rewrite. Gonna keep trying to plow through any low hanging fruit to get as much done as possible before surgery next month and then holidays etc Did just a bunch of different branches all over the place for misc gtk4 porting prep. Printer settings is actually pretty close since someone started in on it previously but it’s one massive, kinda hard to review branch. So I started breaking it up into reviewable chunks and then fixing things in those little chunks. I think as long as those get reviewed I could have that ported this week. Been working through keyboard settings and did a bunch of branches there. Started in on desktop settings a bit. Still mostly focusing on trying to finish the settings gtk4 port currently All my keyboard branches were merged and so I have a much clearer picture of what’s needed to finish the port here. I have a draft branch but it doesn’t build yet. I might need to do a couple smaller branches still. It might have to wait for next week because I just got back from electro and I’m gonna ice my face and probably play Genshin 😬😅 Printers is almost ported. I have one branch separate from the main port branch. I started in on user accounts. Got a branch merged into Granite to fix some screen reader stuff with header labels. I’m considering taking the rest of the day off. I have GitHub activity for the last 16 days and I’m feeling fatigued. I have branches waiting for review, so I’m not technically blocked but maybe blocked enough to be tired? lol This definitely won't build yet because recipes still need to be updated, but LET'S FUCKING GO 🚀 Lots of things are in motion for building OS 8 images based on Ubuntu Noble. Filling out the daily repo etc. Metapackages. Not sure how long it’ll take to get installable builds but it’s in progress. Reviewed a number of branches for Gala, I think we’ll get a bug fix release for OS 7 there soon. More settings branches merged and kept going on user settings. While here also working on improving how the screen reader sees things, using latest design patterns, fixing anything obviously weird, etc Shoutouts to @davidmhewitt for really thoroughly documenting here btw: https://github.com/elementary/os/wiki/Preparing-a-new-release-based-on-a-new-Ubuntu-codename |
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.