GNOME 3.4 Released with Lots of Improvement

The second major update to GNOME 3.0 was released earlier with "a large number of improvements to the user experience, including many bug fixes and small enhancements. The result is a shinier, more polished, more reliable GNOME 3."

The code-base has seen a lot clean-up but more significantly, the interface and application appearance have been revamped for this release. In fact, a special initiative called "Every Detail Matters has helped champions identify, coordinate, and fix a lot of small but annoying little GUI bugs.

Beyond that, some popular applications have been refined for this release and many older applications got a face-lift so they'd blend in better, or as the Release Notes state, "better looking and more pleasurable to use."

For example, Documents, "the new application that allows you to easily browse, search and organize documents, has received a major design refresh. The result is a fresher, cleaner application. The new version comes with a refreshed interface, the ability to create collections of documents and support for printing."

Epiphany is now simply called Web. "It has been given a beautiful new interface for 3.4, which includes a redesigned toolbar and 'super menu'. There have also been a number of performance improvements, including faster browsing history."

"Disks is the new name for GNOME Disk Utility, and it has had a major overhaul. The tool, which allows you to manage the disks on your computer, has a refreshed interface, integrates better with GNOME and also received several new features."

Other areas such as Document Search, Application Menus, Network password dialogs, Built-in screen recorder, and Smooth Scrolling are among the many new goodies that await the GNOME user in 3.4. See the full Release Notes for all the details and screenshots.

Empathy's "brand new audio and video calling interface"