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Sanity now: Gnome 3.12 looking sensible - at least in beta

Even baring your privates to world+dog isn't compulsory any more

Build your own menus

Perhaps the best part is that it's pretty simple to create these menu items yourself. For example, suppose you want a shortcut to quickly launch a frequently visited URL in Chromium. All you need to do is create a text file with a few key lines (see World of GNOME for some example code) and you'll be able to right click and access the URL from the menu directly.

Other possible uses include opening an app with a blank document ready to go or opening an app with a new document based on a template of your choosing. GNOME is a bit late to the jump list party - Unity, Windows and OS X all offer similar features - but it's no less welcome.

Like Ubuntu's Unity, GNOME 3.12 sees the online world continuing to creep into your desktop apps. There are quite a few new services supported through the various GNOME 3.12 apps, like the aforementioned Pocket integration in the Videos app.

Gnome 3.12 beta wired internet

Return of the wired network indicator for on/off toggling

Pocket, which began life as Read It Later, is still a read-it-later service, but it also supports saving videos. The integration with GNOME Videos means you can see all your saved videos in Pocket right alongside the rest of your media library in Videos. Videos also supports plugins for a few other online services like Guardian Videos and Freebox TV.

The list of new online services in this release is not limited to Videos. GNOME's Photos app has added Facebook support - which is a system level online accounts option. Using it with Photos means you can interact with your Facebook photos directly inside Photos.

Depending on your view of Facebook, the new integration is either amazing or horrifying - there doesn't seem to be a middle ground when it comes it Facebook.

If you fall in the latter category, chances are you'll like the new geolocation privacy controls in GNOME 3.12. You can flat out turn off locations services in this release, but should you choose to leave them on there's a nice new indicator applet that will let you know whenever an application (like Maps, Weather and Photos) is using your location data. In the future the GNOME devs plan to offer more fine-grained location privacy controls, but for now there is at least an off switch.

There's plenty of other new stuff in the GNOME 3.12 beta that makes it well worth a look for GNOME fans, including support for app folders and search results that now include software from repos - that is, software that's not yet installed.

If you'd like to try out GNOME 3.12 I recommend Fedora's Rawhide release, though I suggest, for now, sticking with a virtual machine.

The final stable version of GNOME 3.12 is due early April.

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