Gregory's ServerThis month’s updates looking good for new designs and new features. On top of all the recent work in Onboarding, several branches landed in Desktop Settings including new hot corner actions and a setting to dim the wallpaper in dark mode. Lots of improvements for Code. The team is still really hammering away on Gala. Plus Web 44 landed, and there’s been a number of fixes and improvements to Mail. Really impressed with the momentum going on right now
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 Some of my granite styles stuff got merged 🎉 I also spent some time reviving my little weather app and submitted it to AppCenter. Worked on some location portal related things, but hit a snag. Updates are coming down the pipe! Mail with some good fixes and new keyboard shortcuts. Onboarding looking fresh with improved explanation of sideloading and now handling the guest account. Desktop settings with new hotcorner actions and an option to dim wallpapers in dark mode. Gala with a ton more bug fixes and improved keyboard shortcuts. Gonna be a good month! Proposed some tweaks to AppInfo pages to tighten up some of this padding and get things lined up a bit nicer https://github.com/elementary/appcenter/pull/2024 Okay, I think this is neat. Handling conversations with changing subjects etc: https://github.com/elementary/mail/pull/893 😫🫸 Pixel perfect mockups https://github.com/elementary/mail/issues/616#issuecomment-1557577602 Expanding sandbox hole warnings here. Want to get to a place where these are comprehensive enough that the “uncurated” warning is redundant and unnecessary https://github.com/elementary/appcenter/pull/2040 https://github.com/elementary/appcenter/pull/2039 I think I might also do something with the Kudos tag maybe. Wanna make AppCenter the best store for informed consent More sandbox hole warnings! Shame for everyone! Dishonor on your cow! Went through all the Flatpak manifests of all the apps in AppCenter and compiled a list of dubious sandbox holes: https://github.com/elementary/appcenter/discussions/2045 Led to me opening a few specific issue reports so far and I have another branch here for warning about dconf access Putting together releases for this month and there’s a lot of like little maintenance releases, and I haven’t quite gotten through everything but I think some more of the big platform/feature releases are probably gonna be next month. Like AppCenter Flatpak warning stuff not sure if it’s worth releasing this month half finished or waiting until next month. Location and background portal I think can go out this month, but apps won’t use it until probably next month. Might be a short blog I dunno Proposed the UI for colorblindness correction filters! https://github.com/elementary/switchboard-plug-display/pull/350 Would really appreciate any feedback from folks with color sensitivity issues, especially regarding terminology and if there's anything that can be done to make things more accessible for you! One thing I’d really like feedback on is if the way colors are represented here is useful. My intention was to put colors that are the most effected next to the filter that would help most with them. I originally just had a single strip of swatches off to the side, but I’m hoping this better contextualizes the options Haha, I just realized that the filters aren’t reflected in screenshots so this is four screenshots of the same image lmao. Removing the redundant screenshots now 😅 Also, is “Color blindness correction” the best label here? I’ve heard that the word “blind” throws off some people. Would “Color sensitivity” be better? I’ve also seen “Color deficiency” used. Also how to we feel about the word “correction”? Would something like “assistance” be better? I’d really like to get the language right I took some photos of my screen to see if maybe I can show a bit how things are affected 😅 Sorry it’s probably not great quality and maybe not very useful Another 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 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 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 |
Getting excited for this next Mail release. Landed a branch to bring back lots of keyboard shortcuts in the composer. Leonhard is working on better offline support. Making lots of progress towards Gtk 4 porting. Lots of good stuff happening!