GtkInfoBar
A new widget to show a transient ‘message area’ inside a content pane. The API is similar to GtkDialog and supports theming for different message types (warnings, errors, etc)

GtkBuilder

• Scale marks can be specified in builder markup
• GtkAssistant action widgets can be added in builder markup

GtkLabel
GtkLabel can show embedded URLs, much like SexyUrlLabe

GtkEntry
GtkEntry has been refactored to follow the model-view pattern, with GtkEntryBuffer as model. One intended use case for this is to support ’secure memory’ for password entries

File chooser

• Backup files are hidden by default
• GTK+ remembers the sorting state of the file list
• File sizes are shown by default
• The ‘Create Folder’ button can be disabled with the the ::create-folders property

Printing support

• GTK+ supports authentication against CUPS servers
• A backend for the PAPI printing system has been added
• The file and lpr backends can print multiple pages per sheet
• The file backend can produce svg files
• GTK+ supports printing an application-defined ’selection’ in addition to the usual page ranges
• The print dialog can optinally include the page setup controls, avoiding the need for a separate page setup dialog in many situations

Theming support

• The bullet character used in invisible entries can be set by themes with the ::invisible-char style property
• The file chooser can show different icons for xdg user dirs. The icon names are folder-documents, folder-download, folder-music, folder-pictures, folder-publicshare, folder-templates and folder-video
• The GtkInfoBar uses symbolic colors for theming its background color depending on the message type. The color names are info_fg_color, info_bg_color, warning_fg_color”, warning_bg_color, etc.

GDK changes
GDK has been rewritten to use ‘client-side windows’. This means that GDK maintains its own window hierarchy and only uses X windows where it is necessary or explicitly requested. Some of the benefits of this change are

• Reduced flicker
• The ability to do transformed and animated rendering of widgets
• Easier embedding of GTK+ widgets, e.g. into Clutter scene graphs

See gdk-demo for some simple examples of client-side windows in action. See the documentation for information about possible problems when moving to client-side windows.

For more details and lists of fixed bugs, see the
announcements for the 2.17.x development releases: 2.17.0, 2.17.1, 2.17.2, 2.17.3, 2.17.4, 2.17.5, 2.17.6, 2.17.8, 2.17.9, 2.17.10, 2.17.11

Major new features include:

• GArray, GPtrArray, GByteArray, GTree and GMappedFile can be reference counted.
• GLib can be forced to reload the XDG user directory mapping.
• The GLib mainloop supports per-thread default contexts.
• GIO now provides types and methods for IP addresses and UNIX domain socket addresses.
• GResolver provides asynchronous and cancellable APIs for resolving hostnames, reverse lookup of IP addresses and resolving SRV records.
• Support for network IO has been added to GIO, including low-level socket API and high-level API for network connections and services.
• GIOStream and its subclasses have gained support for read-write access.
• GIO supports starting and stopping of drives, which can be used in connection with external hard disk enclosures, disk arrays, iSCSI devices, etc.
• GIO supports user interaction during unmount and eject operations.
• GIO can store and retrieve per-file metadata.

For more details and lists of fixed bugs, see the announcements of the 2.21.x development releases: 2.21.0, 2.21.1, 2.21.2, 2.21.3, 2.21.4, 2.21.5 and 2.21.6

Overview of Changes from GTK+ 2.16.4

• Fix a side-effect introduced by the fix for bug 586330 that caused all stock buttons to loose their mnemonics.

4 bugs fixed in this release!

See the original announcement for more info and downloads.

16 bugs fixed in this release!

See the original announcement for more info and downloads.

5 bugs fixed in this release!

See the original announcement for more info and downloads.

2 bugs fixed in this release!

See the original announcement for more info and downloads.

Noteworthy new APIs

• GtkOrientable is a new interface implemented by all widgets that have horizontal and vertical variants
• GtkActivatable is a new interface that must be implemented by widgets that are used as action proxies

Changes in GtkEntry

• GtkEntry can show icons at either side of the entry, which can be made clickable, drag sources, etc.
• GtkEntry can show progress information behind the text.
• GTK+ picks the best available placeholder character for password entries unless one is explicitly set.
• GTK+ displays a Caps Lock warning in password entries.
• Input methods can now be selected per-widget with the “im-module” property.

Changes in GtkScale

• GtkScale can now display annotated marks for certain values.

Changes in GtkStatusIcon

• GTK+ uses an extension of the tray icon specification to negotiate RGBA support. This is also supported by the GNOME panel.
• GtkStatusIcon now supports scroll events, middle clicks and rich tooltips if the platform allows it.

Changes in file chooser

• The file chooser can optionally show file sizes.
• Volumes are mounted when necessary.
• GTK+ remembers the file chooser’s window size across invocations.
• Non-local uris can be entered in the location entry.

Changes in printing support

• Page rendering can be deferred to a thread.

Internationalization support

• Keyboard shortcut handling has been changed, to help with a longstanding complaint about the way in which GTK+ handles multiple keyboard layouts. GTK+ now only uses keys from groups other than the current group if they are not present in the current group.

GDK changes

• GdkKeymap emits a state-changed signal when the Caps Lock state changes.
• There is a predefined type for blank cursors, GDK_BLANK_CURSOR.

For more details and lists of fixed bugs, see the
announcements for the 2.15.x development releases:

• 2.15.0
• 2.15.1
• 2.15.2
• 2.15.3
• 2.15.4

See the original announcement for more info and downloads.

Major new features include:

• Optimizations of GHashTable and GMarkup
• Support for in-place decoding of base64 strings
• When launching applications, always pass fuse file:// uris whe possible, and let gio convert such uris back to gio uris. This can be turned off using the X-GIO-NoFuse desktop file key.
• GIO has a concept of ’shadowed’ mounts

For more details and lists of fixed bugs, see the announcements of the 2.19.x development releases:

• 2.19.0
• 2.19.1
• 2.19.2
• 2.19.4
• 2.19.5
• 2.19.6
• 2.19.7
• 2.19.8
• 2.19.10

See the original announcement for more info and downloads.