ANNOUNCE: Xfce 4.10pre2 released

[Harald Judt]

Hi,

Am 14.04.2012 10:41, schrieb Nick Schermer:
> Xfce 4.10pre2 is now available for download.
>
> It includes the following releases of Xfce core components:
>
>    exo 0.7.3
>    garcon 0.1.12
>    gtk-xfce-engine 2.99.3
>    libxfce4ui 4.9.2
>    libxfce4util 4.9.1
>    thunar 1.3.2
>    thunar-volman 0.7.1
>    tumbler 0.1.24
>    xfce4-appfinder 4.9.5
>    xfce4-dev-tools 4.9.2
>    xfce4-panel 4.9.2
>    xfce4-power-manager 1.1.0
>    xfce4-session 4.9.1
>    xfce4-settings 4.9.5
>    xfconf 4.9.1
>    xfdesktop 4.9.3
>    xfwm4 4.9.1

[snip]

> We hope you will enjoy this release. Please give us feedback by sharing
> your thoughts, blogging, tweeting or by filing bug reports! With your
> help, 4.10 will be the best release ever (at least until 4.12)!
>
> Kind regards and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this
> release,
>
> The Xfce development team

Gratulations for a pretty stable and feature-complete release. I don't 
have much time to spare for in-depth tests, so here are some minor bugs 
I encountered when updating from 4.8.x packages on gentoo (reproduced on 
two machines with quite similar xfce config):

xfce4-panel plugins:
  * For some reason, the tasklist does not expand anymore, so I had to 
add an expanding separator. Really not a big issue, but an unexpected 
one. Since one can use the separator, I don't see why a change would be 
needed here.
  * Action button plugin: Actually a nice improvement, especially the 
now working darkening of the background when the session menu is 
displayed and the good german translation (that's true for all the other 
xfce apps too). Except of the following annoyances:
   - The button was not visible/accessible in the panel, the one and 
only solution was to remove it and add it again via the panel properties.
   - When "session menu" is selected in the options, the user name is 
printed. First, I don't like that and rather had it show an icon instead 
(namely that of the shutdown button), as it wastes space, and second, 
the username is printed in dark grey on the dark panel background, so 
it's hard to impossible to read. The first one is clearly a matter of 
taste, but the second one should really be dealt with, as it probably 
will affect all users using a dark theme.

thunar:
  * thunar is still horrible to use for accessing samba workstations 
(password dialogs everywhere) and suffers from other gvfs etc lib 
integration deficiencies. Other parts of it have improved a bit though. 
It would be really great to see it becoming more user-friendly and 
polished in the next xfce release, even if you try to keep it simple.

For me, this update is really a lot better than the experience that the 
4.6->4.8 transition had been. All panel plugins work fine and do not 
crash. Most apps (appfinder, panel,...) look very polished and have 
improved much feature-wise. Thanks for the good work!

Harald

-- 
`Experience is the best teacher.'