Xfce 4.16 roadmap announced the official start of development

Xfce developer  Simon Steinbeiß  recently published blog represents v4.16 has begun to develop and introduce new features in this release will bring.

Xfce is a lightweight desktop environment on UNIX-like operating system, follow the UNIX philosophy of modularity and reusability tradition. It contains a number of components, with a modern desktop environment should have the full functionality.

Simon expressed the will to follow a more strict timetable for development, currently 4.16 roadmap has been disclosed and described in detail the tasks and objectives of each stage, you can see from the road map, Xfce 4.16 will be the next until mid-2020 in time be released pre1, pre2, pre3 with the official version (this time simply is not strictly ah).

Characteristics of the plan are as follows:

Affect the characteristics of the whole Xfce Core

• General UI

• Migrating from exo-csource to xdt-csource: Use exo-csource projects need to be updated (need to call the new binary file)

Module

These modules are not identified, may not enter the final version 4.16, depending on the time of each developer.

• exo

• libxfce4ui

• libxfce4util

• thunar

• xfce4-Appfinder

• xfce4-panel

• xfce4-session

• xfce4-settings

• xfce-utils

• xfconf

• xfdesktop

• xfwm4

• xfce4-power-manager

• tumbler

• garcon

• thunar-volman

Dependent change

• We will drop support for Gtk2 in Xfce 4.16, the removal of the optional Gtk2 dependence

• Xfce 4.16 will introduce new dependencies on libgtop, to display information about the system (in the "About" dialog, libxfce4ui / xfce4-about in)

Simon describes some of the key characteristics of them in the blog, including dependency changes, user interface and control panel adjustment.

In the 4.16 cycle, Xfce plan to coordinate the appearance of certain elements, these elements either become inconsistent on a different side, either inherently designed to be inconsistent, such as toolbars and embedded toolbar. As well as on the adjustment of the client decorations, such as using HeaderBar designed for XfceTitledDialog all the settings dialog box.

4.16 and will try to keep the experience consistent appearance, which means that the application has gradually shifted decorative clients, through this change, make the application of the "dark mode" for the better.

When it comes to dark mode, a change in the control panel's worth mentioning some of the building blocks of the current panel to be executed already in progress, it can already see the results:

After using the client decoration, "Preferences" dialog window border will remain consistent with the rest of the dialog box, auto-hide mode control panel will be equipped with "slide-out" animation, so you can more intuitively know hidden Places panel.

Launcher plug-in will get garcon function, which displays the desktop operating launcher item in its context menu.

Other control panel core plug (Workspace switcher, task lists) will also be adjusted and improved.

In addition, Simon also introduced the resolution setting and power management features, details see the original blog:

https://simon.shimmerproject.org/2019/10/19/xfce-4-15-development-phase-starting