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GNOME 2.0 Developer Platform Beta

Posted by michael on from the gnome-mans-land dept.

ambrosius27 writes: "To quote from Jeff Waugh's announcement: "The API frozen Developer Platform Beta, 'Everyone's Excited and Confused', is ready for your porting pleasure!" You can find the full announcement on Gnotices. The GNOME developers have been hard at work. Feel free to download, create/port applications, and, most of all, send in nicely detailed bug reports!"

5 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Confused by PineHall · · Score: 5, Funny
    The API frozen Developer Platform Beta, 'Everyone's Excited and Confused'

    I am now confused. Should I be excited?

  2. Logo Change? by The+Great+Wakka · · Score: 5, Funny

    Perhaps for GNOME 2, they should change it to a RIGHT foot instead... just a thought.

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    Everything is mainstream now.
  3. screenshots link by Proud+Geek · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, this is a developer link, not for people who don't enjoy building it themselves, but here are some nice screenshots.

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    Even Slashdot wants to hide some things

    1. Re:screenshots link by jdub! · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hi there,

      Not only did Sun provide their usability study to the GNOME community for review and reflection, the GNOME Usability Project has been working very hard on both our Human Interface Guide and some basic changes they feel are essential for the GNOME 2.0 Desktop release. You can find these on the GUP website.

      These have certainly not been ignored, in fact, they have spawned an incredible amount of discussion and development work. The screenshot you see of the new control centre is a port of the 1.5 version that Ximian have been shipping as a preview component of their GNOME 1.4 desktop.

      Many of the superfluous options have been removed from GNOME's user interface, which is a very important step in the right direction for usability. Don't worry, all those crazy options that we geeks love will be still be around, they'll just be harder to get to (so umpteen million options don't crowd our preferences dialogues).

      Indeed, the concept of configuring so many seemingly disparate parts of the desktop, such as GTK+ themes, window manager themes, backgrounds, etc., will be simplified with the new Metatheme system, which integrates all of these into a simple dialogue. You can very easily make your own metathemes too.

      I hope these address your concerns about GNOME developer's desire to improve the usability of our desktop. :)

  4. Re:why gnome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Pointless competition is only holding linux back."

    Funny, because competition between GNOME and KDE is *EXACTLY* what has made both GNOME and KDE mature so much.

    Why don't you send this message to gnome-devel-list or kde-devel-list?
    I'm sure you'll hear a lot of things you don't expect (such as that the GNOME vs KDE war does not exist).