We’ve released Geary 0.8 and Shotwell 0.20 today and I’m pretty excited about getting these out the door to our users.  Both releases include important fixes and some great new features.

Geary 0.8

While Geary 0.8 has a slew of new features and improvements, I would say the most visible for our users (compared to 0.6) are the following:

• Robert Schroll’s redesign of the mail composer.  Not only does it look a lot sharper and more modern than before, it also operates inline in the main window—that is, you type your reply right below the email you’re responding to.  This means replying to a conversation is a more natural operation than opening a separate window or switching to a new view.  You can still pop the composer out into a separate window, just press the Detach button and you’re on your way.
• Gustavo Rubio’s hard work to get signature support into Geary.  Now Geary will automatically insert a signature of your design into an email, whether new or replying to another.  This is one of the most-requested features for Geary, so it’s good to get this in.
• I’ve put in some hard work on improving database speed and IMAP connection stability.  There’s still a couple of kinks here and there, but I feel like 0.8 is a big step forward in making Geary the kind of application you can leave on for days at a time without worrying about it slowing down, crashing, or losing its connection to the server.

In other words, if you’re a Geary user, you really should upgrade.

That said, here’s a more formal list of improvements:

• Major redesign of email composer, now presented inline in main window
• Composer will automatically add signature to emails
• Saving drafts to server can be disabled
• Improved interface, now using GtkHeaderBar and modern widgets
• Database speed optimizations to reduce lags and improve read times
• Improved connection handling and reestablishment
• Show attachments lacking a Content-Disposition
• Important bug fixes
• Updated translations

The tarball for Geary 0.8 is available here.  Visit the Geary home page for more information.

Shotwell 0.20

Shotwell 0.20 has a more modest set of improvements, but it’s still growing and developing.  In particular, new photo sharing plugins were added and stability fixes have been included:

• Support for Rajce.net and Gallery 3 photo services
• Set background image for lock screen
• Better detection of corrupt images during import
• Important stability bug fixes
• Updated translations

The tarball for Shotwell 0.20 is available here.  Visit the Shotwell home page for more information.