Unity Changes - Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail

As you probably know, there will be no alpha milestones for Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail and Unity has got some minor, but interesting changes since the Raring development has begun, so I though I'd make a video showing some of these features so you can see what's new.

For instance, in an update last night, the BFB (the Ubuntu logo button used to open Dash) got the new asset (icon) we wrote about a while back. The same update has brought refreshed Launcher tile assets and the removal of the 32px minimum Launcher icon size limit.

Also, a few days ago, some new options were added in System Settings > Appearance > Behaviour tab: "Show desktop icon to the launcher" and "Enable workspaces".

And some older changes include:

• Bigger, chameleonic overlay shortcuts (the shortcut hints displayed on the Unity launcher icons which show up when holding the Super key);
• Spread improvements such as a selected window outline, better window titlebar and also, the Spread now works properly with all window themes;
• Improved Dash Previews design (and the previews are a lot faster now by the way);
• The workspace switcher has a new icon which is dynamic, meaning that the current active desktop is represented by the workspace switcher icon;
• New lens icons;
• Overlay scrollbars for Dash.

You can watch the Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail (with Unity 6.12.0daily13.01.18) video below:

(direct video link)

Unity has also received many bug fixes and under-the-hood changes and of course, more improvements are expected until the final release.

In other non-Unity Ubuntu 13.04 news:

• Intel SNA (a 2D acceleration architecture for the open source Intel Linux graphics driver that provides improved X.Org driver performance) may be turned on by default soon;
• The Intel HDA audio drivers will be unified, which will make it easier to support new drivers;
• Gvfs has been updated in Raring bringing a new MTP backend which allows users to access Android 4.0 devices which do not support the USB Mass Storage.

Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail will only have one beta milestone, expected on March 28th, while the final release should be available for download on April 25th.