Many other improvements are coming to Linux Mint 18.1

Sep 29, 2016 11:00 GMT  ·  By

We already know that work on Linux Mint 18.1, the next major release of the popular Ubuntu-based operating system loved by many users, has already begun, and Clement Lefebvre shares with us today some of the improvements coming to XApps.

One of these exciting new features to be soon implemented in several of Linux Mint's XApps, including the Xplayer media player, Xviewer image viewer, Pix image management application, and Xreader document reader, is the ability to blank other monitors when running certain operations on a multi-monitor configuration. The option to blank a monitor will be available via a new GUI button called "Blank Other Monitors."

"If you have more than one monitor, you can now press the “Blank Other Monitors” button when playing a video in full screen. Your video will continue playing and all your other monitors will turn black," says Clement Lefebvre in the announcement. "This feature should also be added to Pix and Xviewer when showing pictures full-screen or in diaporama mode, and in Xreader when running presentations."

Libxapp, Xed gets Sublime-like search bar

To contribute to the open source community and let other application developers implement the screen blacking functionality in their apps, the Linux Mint leader is also announcing today, September 29, 2016, a new library called libxapp, which you can use in your applications to offer users the ability to blank and unblank monitors. libxapp is available now at https://github.com/linuxmint/xapps.

In related news, Clement Lefebvre reveals the fact that the Xed text editor, which is developed as part of the XApps project for Linux Mint, is getting a new search and replace bar that's similar to the one of the well-known Sublime Text editor. The new search bar will now appear at the bottom of the app, and the search functionality is progressive, meaning you can navigate between results using the Enter key.

Special thanks to one of our readers for informing us about this!

Blanking other monitors in Xplayer
Blanking other monitors in Xplayer

XApps in Linux Mint (2 Images)

Sublime-like search bar in Xed
Blanking other monitors in Xplayer
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