ANNOUNCE: Xfce 4.8pre3 released

[Jannis Pohlmann]

Xfce 4.8pre3 is now available for download.

It includes the following releases of Xfce core components:

  exo 0.5.6
  gtk-xfce-engine 2.7.0
  libxfce4ui 4.7.6
  libxfce4util 4.7.5
  libxfcegui4 4.7.0
  thunar 1.1.6
  thunar-vfs 1.1.1
  xfce-utils 4.7.4
  xfce4-appfinder 4.7.2
  xfce4-dev-tools 4.7.4
  xfce4-panel 4.7.7
  xfce4-session 4.7.3
  xfce4-settings 4.7.7
  xfconf 4.7.5
  xfdesktop 4.7.5
  xfwm4 4.7.4

Release tarballs can be retrieved from the following mirrors (please
note that it may take a few hours for the mirrors to catch up):

  http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre3/src
  http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre3/src
  http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre3/src
  http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre3/src

A tarball including all individual releases can be downloaded here:

  http://archive.xfce.org/xfce/4.8pre3/fat_tarballs
  http://www.tx-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre3/fat_tarballs
  http://www.p0llux.be/xfce/xfce/4.8pre3/fat_tarballs
  http://www.ca-us.xfce.org/archive/xfce/4.8pre3/fat_tarballs


Release notes for 4.8pre3
=========================

Today we are pleased to announce the third and hopefully final preview
release of Xfce 4.8 which is set to be pushed out to the public on
January 16th, 2011. Compared to Xfce 4.8pre2 this release mostly
features translation updates and bug fixes. 

With christmas and new year's eve between 4.8pre2 and 4.8pre3 it comes
as no surprise that for most components only a few issues were tackled.


Among other things we updated the default keyboard shortcuts to include
monitor keys. The status icon of the file manager's progress dialog is
now properly hidden when the dialog is destroyed. It's wallpaper plugin
is now capable of handling filenames with spaces. The environment
variables of commands launched from the Xfce run dialog were not set
properly, so we fixed that so that commands launched from the dialog
always inherit the environment of the Xfce session. 

We also made the --reboot and --halt parameters of xfce4-session-logout
work again which previously simply logged out the active user. In order
to avoid a race condition at session startup and in order to speed
things up a little more we no longer use xrdb to update xft and cursor
settings and instead, update the related XSETTINGS properties ourselves.


In the window manager xfwm4, we aligned the time period required for a
double click with that of normal applications. Via the hidden option
"/general/mousewheel_rollup" one can now disable windows being rolled up
via the mouse wheel. The window manager now also properly handles
resolution changes in fullscreen windows like those appearing in games.
Xfwm4's application switcher now only appears once in cloned mode. 

This may sound like a few useful fixes but it's nothing compared to the
amount of work that went into the new Xfce panel once again. Around 20+
known bugs and regressions were fixed. Here is a short excerpt of the
complete changelog: Translation domains were fixed for external plugins,
plugins can be reordered with DND again, double-clicking items in the
item editor shows their preferences, dragging items to the item editor
dialog removes them from the panel again, tasklist windows can now be
filtered by monitor. Another issue that appeared recently and has now
been fixed is the icon sizing in the notification area, also known as
the systray.

Xfce 4.8pre3 also features a lot of translation updates, as can be seen
in the complete changelog on

  http://xfce.org/documentation/changelogs/4.8pre3">the complete
changelog

Since we're following the Xfce release model for 4.8, we'd normally
announce code freeze and the creation of early lifecycle support
branches today. We decided against this because there are not enough
people active to take care of all this at the moment. So we will
continue fixing bugs in master branches as we did between 4.8pre2 and
4.8pre3. 

We're hoping that you will enjoy today's release. Thanks a lot to
everyone contributing this time around! We're pretty sure 4.8 is gonna
rock. 

Kind regards,
The Xfce development team

P.S.: Happy new year everyone!