Unity 6.6.0 Released, Gets New Animations And 2 New Lenses

Unity 6.6.0 has just been uploaded to the Ubuntu 12.10 Quantal Quetzal proposed repositories, bringing some polish for various aspects like the Dash Previews, animations, 2 new default lenses and more.

Unity 6.6.0 introduces a new animation for Dash previews as well as a new minimize animation. You can see them both in action in the video below:

(direct video link)
The minimize animation is supposed to help new users by being very slow at first, but it gets faster as the user minimizes more windows.

Other changes in Unity 6.6.0:

• various gradient tweaks
• the panel shadow has been restored
• new ordering of categories for home lens
• the workspace switcher and removable devices icons can now be moved on the launcher
• "unity --reset" has been removed
• new artwork for missing album covers in the Music Lens
• show the alt-tab on the monitor with the mouse
• coverflow is no longer used for the music available for purchase in the Music Lens
• the bug that didn't allow changing the window titlebar theme using GNOME Tweak Tool and other such apps has been fixed
• many other minor tweaks and fixes

"Social" (Gwibber) lens

Another change is that the Gwibber lens ("social" lens) is now installed by default. With this change, there's also a new feature for the Gwibber lens: "Social previews":

Home lens with shopping suggestions

The Unity 6.6.0 also comes with a new "shopping" lens which is supposed to deliver commercial content into the Dash and is only visible when "the user performs a global search from the Dash home screen and there are matching suggestions to show" (screenshot above). The shopping suggestions differentiate from the rest of the items by using a badge which displays the price. The lens is a "recommended" package and not a direct dependency, meaning it's an optional feature and it can be removed.

And finally, the changelog mentions that Amazon and Ubuntu One Music Store webapp items are now added by default on the Unity launcher, however, they didn't show up on my computer after upgrading to the latest Unity 6.6.0, even after running "unity --reset-icons" so it seems there's a bug here. They probably need the Unity WebApps feature to be fully integrated with Ubuntu 12.10 to work and WebApps support hasn't landed yet. With these and the shopping lens, Ubuntu tries to get more revenue but it also makes it easy for its users to easily remove them.

The complete Unity 6.6.0 changelog can be found HERE.

The proposed repository is not enabled by default - it can be enabled via Software Sources. Unity 6.6.0 should be promoted from the proposed to the main repository soon.