GNOME Shell 3.7.1 Brings New Features

The GNOME Project announced yesterday, October 23, the immediate availability for download and testing of GNOME Shell 3.7.1.

GNOME Shell 3.7.1 is the first development release towards GNOME Shell 3.8, which is part of the GNOME 3.8 desktop environment, due for release on March 27, 2013.

GNOME Shell 3.7.1 includes lots of new additions and enhancements, as well as code cleanup and bug fixes (see below for details).

The next development release of GNOME Shell will be version 3.7.2, which will be available next month around November 21, followed by GNOME Shell 3.7.3 on December 19, 2012.

Highlights of GNOME Shell 3.7.1:

• Added a shortcut to directly open application view;
• The Super + F10 key combination is now highlighted in System Settings;
• The timestamp format of chat notifications has been cleaned;
• Added disable-restart-buttons support to Login Screen;
• The textures are now updated automatically when files are changed;
• Implemented org.gnome.ScreenSaver.GetActiveTime;
• GSetting schema’s missing translations have been added;
• The workspace switcher can now be completely hidden when not necessary;
• GNOME Screensaver can be loaded explicitly when GDM is not running;
• GnomeIdleMonitor port;
• Empathy was set as preferred handler when channels are delegated;
• GDM’s login dialog can now be tested from the session;
• All available space is now used for windows in window picker;
• logind can now be used for suspend, if available;
• Various other bugs have been fixed, including #677426, #686233, #680426, #686241, #686240, #686318, #686484, #684650, #686002, #686487;
• Code cleanup.


Other than the above, some translations have been updated, including Spanish, Slovak, Japanese, Belgian, and others.

Download GNOME Shell 3.7.1 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development release and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended to be used for testing purposes only.