Last year we shared here on the blog the news of the start of the development of what will be the new version of the desktop environment XFCE 4.16 and now after several months, the second trial version has been released Xfce 4.16 (pre2) user environment.
As such, the development of this new version of XFCE has been quite delayed And it is not because it is a whim of the developers, but rather that what has been happening during the course of this year must be taken into account.
About the second trial version of Xfce 4.16
This second trial version of the new branch of XFCE 4.16 stands out for the translation of the interface to the GtkHeaderBar widget and the client-side decoration (CSD) application, which allowed the placement of menus, buttons, and other interface elements in the window title.
Besides that in XFCE 4.16 also discontinued support for GTK2 and introduced symbolic versions of icons, unified interface elements based on GtkTreeViews.
As well It is mentioned that this new version expanded the capabilities of the Thunar file manager, expanded the capabilities of the configurator and proposed a new combo plugin for the systray and notification area panel.
We are happy to announce the second, and possibly last, preview version
prior to Xfce 4.16.Please note this is a platform version - for a detailed list of the
changes, see the release notes for the individual components.
In the next
days a blog post will be published with an overview of the highlights
Added many new app icons, designed according to the freedesktop.org naming scheme.
UPower is disabled by default in the configurator and the dialog interface has been improved (for example, tooltips have been added). Added "Open with ..." button to define default applications.
They also highlight the work carried out in Libxfce4ui in which the "About" tab has been redesigned and the interface improved to configure hotkeys. Added API to start background processes.
The panel has improved the rendering of the icons and has modernized their appearance.
In Power Manager, the accuracy of status display has been increased (Instead of three levels, the load information is now displayed in 10% increments.)
The dialog with session settings has been improved and the xfsm-lock icon added, while for Thunar's file manager transparency support is provided in GTK skins and a plugin for epub files has been added to Tumbler.
In addition to the following versions of the main components of Xfce:
- exo 4.15.3
- Garcon 0.7.2
- libxfce4ui 4.15.5
- libxfce4util 4.15.4
- thunar 4.15.3
- thunar-volman 4.15.1
- tumbling 0.3.1
- xfce4-appfinder 4.15.2
- xfce4-dev- tools 4.15.1
- xfce4-panel 4.15.5
- xfce4-power-manager 1.7.1
- xfce4-session 4.15.1
- xfce4-settings 4.15.3
- xfconf 4.15.1
- xfdesktop 4.15.1
- xfwm4 4.15.3 Tarballs
Finally yes are interested in knowing more about it About the announcement and upcoming announcements about this desktop environment, you can check the details In the following link.
And for those who are interested in being able to try this second version of tests of XFCE 4.16 or want to support with the detection of errors, source code provided so they can compile and install on their systems.
It has not yet been announced if there will be a last and third version of tests before the release of the stable version or directly they will jump to it from this second version.
4.16pre3 (final freeze) This is an optional version (the versions team decides if we need it or omit it in favor of the final version)
As this new version of the environment was planned to be released in the middle of the year, but given the circumstances, development was delayed and now everything is on track and according to the published calendar the environment developers are expected to launch in December or January after the formation of another trial version.