Sunday 7 October 2007

0.1 + 0.1 = ?


Well there you have it, Awn 0.2 has been released!

With over six months since the last release, you'd think we were working on something as complicated as Gnome, but I think there are enough new features to show where the time has gone ;-).

I'd like to highlight a few of the main features that have landed into trunk over the recent weeks, and others that I maybe haven't mentioned before.

Icon Effects

You can have user-selectable colours and a 3d-look bar, but the ability to choose whether your icons bounce like cartoon characters, spin like a coin, or have a spotlight cast on them has to be the best blingy feature :-D!


(you may need to click the blog title to see the video)

Awn Manager

After having to endure my simple preferences dialog (and my lack of updating it to reflect new features), a few brave souls from the forums decided to create a proper configuration dialog for Awn:



Together with wrapping all the gconf options, the ability to load/save and share your Awn theme was also included, which is a very cool feature. Themes have already started popping up in gnome-look.org!

Applets

I've been over applets before, but we've been working very hard to make sure there is a continuous look and feel across applets and the main launcher/task bar. As of now, 99% of the applets behave the same on the bar (including animations & reflections).


I'll be making a stable release of applets in the next few days, but you can get to them via launchpad if you can't wait!

Stability

In addition to new features, Awn has grown more and more stable. Many 'hacks' that were put in place in January have either been swapped for newly available APIs, or have been replaced with standard Gtk widgets (although you can't tell ;-).

Future

From now on, I hope to make more regular releases of Awn, especially as there are many more people involved now, and a lot of code is being written. Also, I may take some time off from writing code for Awn myself, as I'd really like to spend some time on Affinity and Arena, plus help out on some other projects.

Thanks

I'd just like to say a huge thanks to everyone who has been on the forums, wiki and launchpad trawling through questions/bugs etc, and all the tranlsators (43 languauges!). I'd also like to say special thanks to Jeff Fortin, Mike Jones, haytjes, Miika-Petteri Matikainen, Anthony Arobone, Ryan Rushton, Michal Hruby, Julien Lavergne, who have all picked up the slack when I couldn't work on Awn as much as I wanted to.

28 comments:

Étienne Bersac said...

Hi,

Congratulations for AWN. It's amazing !

I'm wondering wether it's possible to merge launcher, taskbar and notification area without change the existing API for applications.

Kind regards

Anonymous said...

Nooo, still no Ubuntu packages in the Gutsy repositories. Usually they add new software pretty fast, but for Awn we wait in vain. I would love to try this out.

reacocard said...

Anonymous said...

Nooo, still no Ubuntu packages in the Gutsy repositories. Usually they add new software pretty fast, but for Awn we wait in vain. I would love to try this out.


wait no longer! I've updated the repo to bzr129, which is the same rev as 0.2, and also fixed python applets so they actually work now! I'll get a true stable package out in a week or two, but for now, enjoy!

Anonymous said...

"I've updated the repo to bzr129, which is the same rev as 0.2"

Which repo? The official Ubuntu repositories (including Universe) still have no Awn available.

Anonymous said...

Will Awn-curves be included in this release?

Anonymous said...

awn will not be in the gutsy respitories. maybe it could make the relase in april.

to add it you can add a respitory that contains packages with awn. dont have a adress though, sorry.

Anonymous said...

and i think i read somewhere that curves is not really stable enough yet to be added. a pity but oh so nice with more versions coming up.


and do we love AWN - yes we do! :)

Anonymous said...

Really nice work. The icons in the preferences dialog are just random though: I suggest you to use naming specs preferences-desktop-theme for "themes", applications-accessories for "applets" and ship the launcher icon [shipped by the panel as well] for launchers.

Anonymous said...

looks good. any chance of working with the kiba-dock guys (which also looks very good around about now) to come up with plugins that work for both? or sharing some code?
both docks have pretty much the same features, can we stop the double effort?

Anonymous said...

Thanks! This is by far the most stable, useful and good-looking dock available right now; I'm really amazed by how nicely it works.

Keep up the brilliant work and definitely keep us updated. Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

Nice, copying OS X. Can't you think of anything original?

Anonymous said...

Hey Anonymous why don;t you marry OS X if you like it so much. I appreciate this man's work, and it's free. How's about you put something out that's original instead of masturbating on your mac all day.

Anonymous said...

"Nice, copying OS X. Can't you think of anything original?"
Nice, being a douchebag. Can't you think of being more original on the internet?

Anonymous said...

on configure, getting the error message "could not find python headers."

Any thoughts?

Unknown said...

To bad that OSX-style kicker doesn't work with Compiz-Fusion without problems yet (KDE 3.5.7). As soon as that gets fixed, I'll use AWN to have a more consistent desktop look between my laptop (Mac) and my desktop (Kubuntu).

Hadrien said...

what would be extremely nice is that AWN gently degrade when running without any composite window manager.

Anonymous said...

To a computer that's about version 0.1 + 0.1 = 0.20000000000000001.

Lousy computers.

Anonymous said...

Would it be possible to merge AWN and Gimmie (http://www.beatniksoftware.com/gimmie/Main_Page)?
With eye candy of AWN and Gimmie's functionality, this would be something that neither Apple, nor Microsoft and KDE have.

If this 2 projects join forces, this would be the greatest thing on the desktop!

White Hamster said...

Thats very very sexy i honestly can't wait to try it out.

Massimo said...

As usual, there's no words to tell about you, only watching your work develop day by day can explain people how great this is!
Neil, you're THE MAN!!!
I have to tell you, my girl hates you, I'm like 24/7 about the things you do :D
I want to ask you a little finesse:
The lable of the tasks in AWN appears to be a "Normal" type in the CompizConfig Setting Manager, so when I set up the Animations plug-in in Compiz, they are drawn in the same way as the normal windows, wich is not completely right...I mean, it's not correct, but it works, but I would like to avoid them to have a particular effect (since it's not well drawn and sometimes they leave pieces and lines here and there...Compiz is still "Beta"), why should I renounce Normal windows to have this effect?
You got me? ;)
I don't know how to put this in code, but Iknow you can do this, you're great!
Another thing: the new applets in this release have the usual problem (usual for me, when I see a new applet): When I add one of them I can see only a white vertical line an nothing else. No right-click to configure, since it's too thin, no gconf-options. Could you just tell me what's wrong? thanks
I'm talking about these applets:
Weather, Media Icons, Battery, Quit-Logoff, BlingSwitcher and another pair...
As always thanks for the great work dude! bye

Leif said...

Although i'm not a big "dock" fan, awn is a very neat looking app for the desktop. I'd love to see icon animations like this available for the whole desktop (nautilus) not just the awn dock. Cheers.

Anonymous said...

WOW! This is the most bon-diggity release ever Neil! I am blown away by the sheer number of new features! Love it all, keep up the good work!

Tom said...

From what I've seen from the vids and pics, AWN looks really great. I can't wait to install the new Gutsy release and try it out.

More bling for Linux! More!

Unknown said...

This is a very minor detail, but I'm just wondering - is it yet possible for AWN to show a reflection of open windows, like in the new Leopard release of OS X?

Peppie said...

Great application and its running fine on my system, however I can not get the applets to be compiled on openSUSE10.3, has anyone had some luck with that?

Anonymous said...

Hi nj, great works! I only would like to say to you and to someone interested that I've translated some code from affinity main window (cairo transparency) in python. You can find an article here

Peppie said...

Finally I've got the applets working on openSUSE, it turned out that I was missing the header files.

cHopan said...

just one question.. i wanna know how to install the pidgin plugin, is in the applet section?