After two years of development, the release of the Xfce 4.18 desktop environment has been published, aimed at providing a classic desktop that requires minimal system resources to run. Xfce consists of several interrelated components that can be used in other projects if desired. These components include the xfwm4 window manager, application launcher, display manager, user session and power management manager, Thunar file manager, Midori web browser, Parole media player, mousepad text editor, and environment settings system.
Main innovations:
- The libxfce4ui interface element library offers a new XfceFilenameInput widget for entering a file name, which informs about errors in case of using invalid names, for example, containing extra spaces or special characters.
- Added a new widget for customizing keyboard shortcuts, which provides a graphical interface for remapping hotkeys specific to various components of the user environment (only Thunar, Xfce4-terminal and Mousepad are currently supported).
- The performance of the service for creating thumbnails (pixbuf-thumbnailer) has been optimized. Provided the ability to change desktop thumbnail options, such as the ability to use large (x-large) and extra large (xx-large) icons that are useful on high resolution screens. The Tumbler thumbnail engine and the Thunar file manager now have the ability to use shared thumbnail repositories shared by different users (thumbnails can be pre-stored in a subdirectory next to the original images).
- The panel (xfce4-panel) offers a new plug-in for displaying time, which combines the previously separate plug-ins for digital and analog clocks (DateTime and Clock). Additionally, a binary clock mode and a sleep time tracking function have been added to the plugin. To display the time, several clock layouts are offered: analog, binary, digital, text and LCD.
- The desktop manager (xfdesktop) provides the ability to hide the Delete button in the context menu and display a separate confirmation of the rearrangement of icons on the desktop.
- In the configurator (xfce4-settings), the settings search interface has been simplified - the search bar is now always visible and is not hidden behind the slider.
- The screen settings interface provides the ability to define actions to be performed when new screens are connected.
- In the appearance settings, when a new theme is selected, an option has been implemented to automatically set the appropriate theme for the xfwm4 window manager.
- Added support for the 'PrefersNonDefaultGPU' property in the app finder interface (xfce4-appfinder) to use a secondary GPU on hybrid graphics systems. Added a setting to hide window decorations.
- The xfwm4 window manager adds support for adaptive vertical sync (vsync) when using GLX. Virtual desktop settings are aligned with other window managers.
- Improved user interface scaling on high pixel density screens and, among other things, resolved issues with icons blurring when scaling is enabled.
- All window and dialog titles are rendered by default by the window manager, but for some dialogs there is an option to decorate the client side title (CSD) using the GtkHeaderBar widget.
- In the Thunar file manager, the List View mode has been improved - for directories in the size field, the number of files contained in the directory is shown, the ability to display a column with the time the files were created has been added.
An item has been added to the context menu to show a dialog for setting the displayed fields.
A sidebar for previewing images is built-in, which can work in two modes - embedding in the current left panel (does not take up additional space) and displaying in the form of a separate panel, which additionally displays information about the size and file name.
Provided the ability to undo and redo (undo/redo) some file operations, such as moving, renaming, deleting to trash, creating and linking. By default, 10 operations are rolled back, but the size of the undo buffer can be changed in the settings.
Added the ability to highlight selected files with a specific background color. Color binding is carried out in a separate tab added to the section with Thunar settings.
The ability to customize the contents of the file manager toolbar and show instead of the traditional menu bar a hamburger button with a drop-down menu has been provided.
Added Split View mode, which allows you to display two different tabs with files side by side. The size of each panel can be changed by moving the separator. Both vertical and horizontal separation of panels is possible.
'|' character is provided in the status line for a more visual separation of elements. If desired, the separator can be changed in the context menu.
Implemented support for recursive file search directly from Thunar. The search is performed in a separate thread, as soon as it is ready, it is displayed in the panel with the list of files (List View) and is supplied with a label about the file path. Through the context menu, you can quickly go to the directory with the found file using the 'Open Item Location' button. It is possible to limit the search to only local directories.
A separate sidebar with a list of recently used files is proposed, the design of which is similar to the panel with search results. It is possible to sort files by time of use.
Bookmarks for favorite directories and the button for creating a bookmark have been moved to a separate Bookmarks menu.
The recycle bin has an information panel with buttons for emptying the recycle bin and restoring files from the recycle bin. When viewing the contents of the basket, the time of deletion is shown. A 'Restore and Show' button has been added to the context menu to restore a file and open the directory with this file in a separate tab.
The interface for binding applications to MIME types has been improved, in which the default application is explicitly marked and a list of possible associations is provided. Added a button to the context menu to set the default handler application.
The ability to present user-defined actions in the form of a multi-level cascading submenu is provided.
Changed interface with settings. Grouped thumbnail options. Added the ability to limit the file size at which thumbnails are created. Added the ability to use temporary files with *.partial~ extension in file transfer operations. Added an option to check the checksum after the transfer is completed. Added a setting to allow shell scripts to run. Added options to restore tabs on startup and show the full path in the header.
Source: opennet.ru