After nine months of development, Geary 44.0, a postal client focused on use within the Gnome environment, has been released. Initially founded by the Yorba Foundation, the organization behind the popular Shotwell photo manager, the development of Geary later passed into the hands of the Gnome community. The code is written in Vala and is distributed under the LGPL license. Ready-made assemblies can be obtained as self-sufficient packages via flatpak here.
The objective of the project is to create a feature-rich product that is also extremely user-friendly and resource-efficient. Geary can be used both as a standalone mail client and in conjunction with web-based email services such as Gmail and Yahoo! Mail. The interface is implemented using the GTK3+ library, while the SQLite database is used for message storage. A full-text index is created to facilitate message searching. Geary utilizes an asynchronous mode library based on Gobject for IMAP operations, ensuring that downloading operations do not block the interface.
Key innovations in Geary 44.0 include:
- The list of messages in the interface has been revamped for enhanced usability. The new implementation replaces the previously used Treeview with a more efficient linebox structure. Multiple item selection in the list has been properly implemented, and navigation is now more user-friendly for touchscreens. The message composition area has been relocated within the application window to maximize screen space. [Read more]
- The upper toolbar has been redesigned. Tool icons and their placement in the panel have been updated, and a new refresh button has been added to the left of the search button. [Read more]
- Handling of signals from the Logind service for transitioning in and out of sleep mode. Connections to IMAP are properly closed before system sleep.
- Resolved issues with network connection detection.
- Minor optimizations and user interface improvements.
- Updated translation files.