Pre-hackfest feature list for 3.8

[Michael Hill <mdhillca gmail com>]

Brief summary by aday posted to the marketing list today. Allan says
he might be at DevConf, so we can pick his brain in person again.

Mike


There is already a long list of new features for the next release.
Going through them all, I think we can be confident that it will be
fairly strong. Looking at the list of improvements, there are a few
themes that stand out to me:

 * Settings - there will be at least three new settings panels
(search, notifications, privacy) as well as reworked panels for power,
network and color. There has been a huge amount of work invested.
 * There's a new story for search, with a new interface in the shell
and the new settings panel. This is a new and highly visible
integration point for applications.
 * Applications - Web, Documents, Contacts and Clocks are all getting
a decent amount of work this cycle.
 * Polish - Every Detail Matters has been extremely successful this
cycle. We also have Owen Taylor's graphics performance work and a new
kind of pressure sensitivity for actions like the hot corner and
triggering the Message Tray. There's also been a lot of work to refine
and consolidate the big new features we had in 3.6, such as input
methods integration and the lock screen. Oh, and the window selection
part of the Activities Overview has been massively improved.