updated my box and got gnome 3.8
where should I start?
it looks good and i don't have this weird flickering and graphic artifacts then starting gdm and switching from gdm to the actual gnome session. dats gud
Highlights for GNOME 3.8 include:
A redesigned application launching view, which makes finding applications easier than ever.
in fact - it doesn't. i can see their problems with "categories" - it does get messy if you have A LOT of programs installed - but it's also fact that "groups" aren't working properly right now. in fact the gui-based group-management-tool wasn't finished before release so it was completely left out. WELL DONE! jee, it took me some time to figure out how to actually create groups - alacarte and dconf-editor. and it has some other backslashes, too.
for now you can click&hold an app-icon but you can't do anything with it besides of dragging it to you "dock" (the workspaces pane does not appear either in that mode). you can't sort them, you can't properly group them. maybe it will be possible some day, but it makes the handling in 3.8 just worse than in 3.6. if the intended way of function isn't implemented yet, why merge it to your big release?
btw it's a shameless rip-off of apples "groups" on ios...
why copy all the touch-based interface designs? gnome won't be on touch-devices anytime soon. it's too heavy and gtk3 doesn't get the attention it needs. (if i would develop a cross-platform gui based application i wouldn't use gtk3 for sure)
i don't like ios-groups btw
oh
and i still can't choose whether i want my background centered, zoomed or whatever...
Enhanced search, with an updated search results view and new controls for results.
New privacy settings let you contol who has access to the content on your computer.
both are fine
A new classic mode for those who prefer a more traditional desktop experience.
didn't tried it. and honestly i don't care either, just let it die. xfce is working better as "traditional desktop experience" than this one.
Improved animation rendering, resulting in smooth transitions and window resizing.
didn't really felt this one. same as before for me.
A new Clocks application, which provides world clocks for different time zones as well as alarms, a stopwatch and timer.
+ weather application
and it has to be a joke. both aren't even worth mentioned in a "Big News", as they are both very simple (you can't even switch to celsius instead of fahrenheit).
and i don't want to start a weather application. i liked the "weather"-extension sitting in my upper bar, showing me the actual temperature and one simple nice icon. If i want so see more i click it to see more information. of course the extension isn't working anymore with 3.8. it tooks some month for it to work on 3.6. so every gnome version breaks extensions. gnome isn't firefox there you can put stuff like this - it's much bigger and distributors takes months (~ 4-6) or even years (debian

) to adapt...
the "extensions"-support as it is right now simply sucks
epiphany (aka "web") supports flash now. why? why now? 11.2.x is the latest version linux got. security fixes are released from time to time but that plugin is simply horrible. it's running much much much worse than on windows. it doesn't matter how good your hardware is, it's just *adobe*-bad. just let it die
after all - it's not a bad release. i like gnome 3. i'm fine with it. but it could be sooooo much better already.