Compiz Reaches 0.8.0

The developers behind the famous Compiz project announced on the 20th of February the release of Compiz 0.8.0, after approximately five months of hard work. All Compiz fans will love to hear that this new version brings highly improved support for the GNOME 2.24 and KDE 4.2 desktop environments.

Along many fixes and translation updates, there are also some new plugins included in the new 0.8.0 version.

Highlights of Compiz 0.8.0:

· The new "gnomecompact" plugin handles bindings used only in the GNOME desktop environment and removes the corresponding bindings from the core, fixing the main menu and run bindings in KDE; GNOME desktop environment users are advised to enable this plugin;
· Support for _NET_WM_FULLSCREEN_MONITORS EWMH hint;
· Support for reading icon hints from WM_HINTS when the _NET_WM_ICON is not available;
· The GNOME support has been updated to GNOME 2.24;
· The scale plugin now has a new option allowing a "toggle type" behavior for key/button bindings;
· The GTK-window-decorator has been adjusted for newer versions of libmetacity-private;
· The GTK-window-decorator display has been fixed for RTL languages;
· The KDE4-window-decorator has been adjusted for the K Desktop Environment 4.2 API;
· Many minor bugfixes, mainly regarding resize handling and stacking code;
· The utility, menu and toolbar windows are now treated as group transients;
· Active fullscreen windows will always be kept on top;
· The switcher is now using the foreground color;
· Many memory leak fixes.

This new version of Compiz will be featured in the upcoming releases of major distributions including Ubuntu 9.04 and Fedora 11. The roadmap for Compiz shows another two releases before merging Nomad and dropping Compiz Fusion.

About Compiz:

Compiz is a 3D-graphics, OpenGL accelerated compositing WM (window manager), providing various graphical effects and features on any desktop environment, including GNOME and KDE.

Download Compiz 0.8.0 right now from Softpedia.