GNOME 3.0 Art / User-Interface Roadmap

With GNOME 2.24 having been released this week, attention will soon turn to developing the 2.26 series followed by GNOME 2.28. Following that, at some point in early 2010 we should see the release of GNOME 3.0 (what otherwise would have been known as GNOME 2.30). While information surrounding GNOME 3.0 is very much tentative and there are two intermediate releases to work on beforehand, the first artwork / user-interface road-map has been published.

This first GNOME 3.0 artwork road-map has been published here. Among the UI action items for this major GNOME milestone are providing a smooth visual transition between the GDM log-in screen and the desktop, eliminating the GNOME splash screen entirely, a "dock mode" with larger icons (think Mac OS X), possible use of Mango (the next-generation version of Tango) for program icons, and subtle smooth animation effects.

As this is just the first draft, expect quite a bit to change before GNOME 3.0 arrives in 2010. Additional feedback on this draft can already be read here.