Canonical is working to improve Unity 8

Aug 14, 2015 09:55 GMT  ·  By

Details about progress made with Unity 8 have been shared by Canonical, and it looks like some pretty interesting new features will land very soon although it's not a big update.

Canonical is still working on Unity 8, both for the desktop and the mobile platform, and developers have revealed details about what they have accomplished in the past couple of weeks. If you're hoping to see some huge changes being made, you're going to be disappointed. Progress at this level is usually made in very small steps, and things get better over long periods of time, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any juicy details.

Unity 8 is still pretty far away from being a usable desktop environment, but it's an established solution for Ubuntu phones. Right now, Unity 8 is being ported for the desktop, and it should land alongside the Unity 7, by default, in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. It's not a done deal, and a lot can happen until April 2016, but that's the goal of the team. In the meantime, we can check on the progress being made by watching what the devs are telling us.

Unity 8 is moving forward with small steps

One of the most interesting changes that are currently being tested in Unity 8 is the ability to use javascript-powered scopes, but it's still being debated. Like any other Java endeavor, it opens up discussions about security and the benefits need to outweigh the risks.

"Javascript scopes proof of concept, using a scopes backend using nodejs, and a basic js scope packaged as a click. We are now exploring the security concerns of packaging nodejs in the click or the use of an alternate js engine," wrote Canonical's Alejandro J. Cura.

According to the changelog, several fixes have been implemented in the thumbnailer to improve speed and reliability, hotspot support has been added to the network indicator, a warning is now shown when using headphones and raising the volume beyond a safe threshold, and pay-service and libpay are still being worked on to provide support for in-app purchases.