GNOME Shell gets a beautiful and attractive visual refresh

Feb 24, 2015 08:10 GMT  ·  By

For the past couple of weeks, we’ve written all sorts of articles related to the development progress of the forthcoming GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, due for release next month, on March 25, 2015. None other than the great and wonderful Matthias Clasen wrote the other day a really nice article where he showcases the latest GNOME 3.16 Beta release.

We have to admit that we really like what we see, so you better check the image gallery first, before continue reading. As you can see, the GNOME Shell interface will use a gorgeous, darkish flat theme with blue elements. Both the Adwaita GTK+ theme and GNOME Shell theme have been rewritten, and the result is quite pleasing to the eye, making us switch back to GNOME from Cinnamon.

The notifications have also been redesigned and will now appear from the top of the screen. Above that, they have been integrated into the calendar applet, which sits in the middle of the GNOME Panel. Users need to know that the old message tray has been removed from GNOME 3.16.

Eye of GNOME and Evince received revamped UIs

Lots of GNOME applications and components have received improvements or UI redesigns. For example, the Eye of GNOME image viewer app got a revamped, simpler user interface, privacy controls have been added to the GNOME Initial Setup tool, allowing the user to enable location services and automatic problem reporting from the get-go, and the Nautilus (Files) file manager got some attention, such as an improved list appearance, undo of deleted files, as well as a popover instead of the old gear menu.

In addition, there are also a few new applications that will be distributed as part of the upcoming GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, such as the GNOME Taquin 15-puzzle game, and GNOME Calendar, for which we have reviews on Softpedia. We’ve kept the bad news at the end of the article, as support for Facebook Chat has been removed from GNOME 3.16, which can be tested today on the daily builds of the Fedora 22 Linux operating system.

Photo Gallery (9 Images)

Beautiful, flat GNOME Shell theme
Notification are integrated in the calendar appletNew notifications from the top
+6more