New Release: Major Speed Improvements



Nov 17, 2020 Following version 86's release on Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux, the next release of Google's browser is rolling out. Chrome 87 rolling out with significant speed improvements, more battery. It’s hard to say precisely what sorts of improvements you’ll see, but anecdotally, it used to take anywhere between 20 seconds to a minute before TypeScript would become fully responsive on the Visual Studio Code codebase. In contrast, our new partial semantic mode seems to bring that delay down to just a few seconds. As an example, in the.

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  2. Every major release of Windows included an updated version of Edge and its render engine. On April 8, 2019, Microsoft announced the introduction of four preview channels: Canary, Dev, Beta, and Stable and launched the Canary and Dev channel that same day with the first preview builds off the new Edge.
  3. Feb 24, 2020 There have been several improvements in GEGL since the release that accompanied GIMP 2.10.14: Fixed potential data-corruption/crash in the tile-swap back-end on Windows (the fix has already been made available in an updated installer for 2.10.14), and improved tile-queuing speed.

We skipped announcing 2.10.16 due to a critical bug. Together, the two updates deliver several major usability improvements, a new tool for transformations in 3D space, new release checker, and the usual amount of bug fixes.

Here are release highlights:

  • Tools are now grouped in the toolbox by default
  • Sliders now use a compact style with improved user interaction
  • Vastly improved user experience for the transformation preview
  • Dockable areas now highlighted when a dockable dialog is being dragged
  • New 3D Transform tool to rotate and pan items
  • Much smoother brush outline preview motion on the canvas
  • Symmetry painting enhancements
  • Faster loading of ABR brushes
  • PSD support improvements
  • Consolidated user interface for merging down and anchoring layers
  • Update check to notify users of new releases available
  • 28 bug fixes, 15 translation updates

Tools can now be grouped in the toolbox, and this option is enabledby default.

You can customize groups by creating new ones and dragging tools betweenthem. The changes will take effect immediately. Or you can disablethe grouping entirely. You’ll find configuration options on theInterface/Toolbox page of the Preferences dialog.

Please note that the default order of tools in the toolbox is now different.You can customize it as well.

Sliders typically used in GEGL-based filters and tools’ options now havea compact style by default: they take a lot less space vertically and havea vastly improved interaction model.

You can use multiple modifiers with either left-click or mouse wheel scrolling:

New Release: Major Speed Improvements
  • Left-click + drag changes a value with a default increment
  • Shift + left-click + drag (or right-click + drag) changes a valuewith a smaller step
  • Ctrl + left-click + drag change a value with a larger step

Here is the full reference:

The ‘You can drop dockable dialogs here’ message is now gone from thetoolbox, and other empty dockable areas. This used to annoy quite a few userswho used a single/double-column layout for the left panel.

But since we still need to hint where you can dock dialogs, whenever you draga dialog, all dockable areas will be highlighted.

Since releasing 2.10 in 2018, we received a lot of feedback that the symbolicicon theme used by default doesn’t have enough contrast. We recently dida quick poll on Twitter showing people a variation of the theme with moreforeground/background color contrast, and that certainly clicked with users.

Some of the feedback suggested, however, that a part of the demographic likesthe current contrast. So instead of pushing changes for everyone, weintroduced a new high-contrast symbolic theme. You can choose it in thePreferences dialog, just like any other icon theme.

The contrast is a compile-time variable that you can change prior to buildingGIMP from source code. We see this as more of a dirty temporary solution.

With GTK3, it’s going to be a lot easier to make things configurable. Inparticular, upcoming Inkscape 1.0 is featuring a new icon theme called‘multicolor’ that makes a great use of CSS in GTK3 and, while staying symbolic,uses some color where it matters. We will be definitely looking closer at that approach.

To complement the new high-contrast variation of the symbolic theme, GIMP nowalso draws a double black/white border around FG/BG indicator in the toolboxto make that border more legible, especially in dark themes.

A new option called Composited Preview is now available for mosttransformation tools. It enables the rendering of the transform previewwith the right position of the modified layer in the layers stack, as wellas with the correct blending mode.