2.16, Mona

I guess everybody already know about it but if you were alone without internet connection for the past weeks, you must know it is there :



GNOME 2.16 is out. And guess what : it is available in Mandriva cooker.
Another good news :

Mandriva Linux 2007.0 Release Candidate 1 (codename Mona) is also available. It already contains GNOME 2.16.0 and a lot of improvements, such as parallel initscripts (allowing even faster booting than before), our new Ia Ora theme (I already talked about it before, and I want to thank everybody who gave us their input, it helped us a lot) and for people want want 3D effects on their desktop (I'm not a fan of this, but whatever ;), it is shipping with both Xgl and AIGLX with automatic configuration, based on your graphic cards.

Help us by testing the release and reporting bugs. And guess what : it is available as a GNOME installable live-CD (as well as a KDE one ).

Now, I just need to fix as many bug already reported to me as possible before final version is frozen :D

Update on Ia Ora

So, last thursday, I spend a lot of time with Helene, our graphist, reviewing various comments we got on initial version of Ia Ora (including those on my previous post, thanks to everybody who contributed) and checking all the small glitches we found ourselves. After more coding and a little fighting with gtkrc matching, I did version 1.0.6 on Friday on cooker, which will be available in Mandriva Linux 2007.0 RC, scheduled for next week.

A little summary of the comments we got and changes we did for 1.0.6 (compared to 1.0.3, last version I blog about) :

• we replaced cross with a check for checkbutton, since they are more common. But if you prefer cross, you can still get it, by setting use_cross=TRUE as parameter of ia_ora gtk2 engine


• I renamed Ia Ora Yellow to Ia Ora Orange. It was supposed to be called Ia Ora Orange but I forgot about it, remembering our earlier internal discussions, when I did the initial commit.


• metacity window border has been increased from 1 to 3 pixels : it is much easier to grab, without changing too much initial design. Border is now using two colors, giving slight blurry sense, which is, IMHO, nice (even if it wasn't part of the original design). Changing border size also fixed metacity issue when using Alt-Tab


• also on metacity part, we changed text color for unfocused windows (more gray) and text shadow for focused window (better readability)


• I workarounded GTK bug 346751 (which can only be seen on some locales) in Ia Ora, allowing correct colors in treeview


• sliders have been improved a lot : we didn't increase their size (it would clutter the design) BUT we improved mouseover/prelight (which was way too subtle, probably causing people to complain about bad usability about sliders)


• progressbar design has been improved too : trough background is now the same as widget background (I used the wrong color) and full part of progress bar is now longer using white scaling mark but colored one, fixing readibility for text displayed in progressbar


• for free, orange and gray themes, check and radiobuttons are now longer drawn in colors but in gray, for better readibility. Old behaviour is still here, using black_check=FALSE as a ia_ora engine parameter. Feel free to comment about this change, if you feel they are readable enough or not.


• spinbutton size has been reduced to use an even size (needed for correct arrow position) and arrow positions have been fixed


• colors used for points in handler are now correct (I used the wrong one)


• I workaround color usage for Evolution, since bg[ACTIVE] and base[ACTIVE] are used, which is causing odd rendering with default values


• text highlight has been fixed for Combobox for blue theme


• selected text color for the various themes has been changed for better readability


• radio and check button position has been fixed compared to text position

So, results are visible here (old version is visible here). Now, we are waiting for your comments !

Edit: after popular demands,here are some thumbnails of latest version of Ia Ora, click on them for full version :