Ubuntu has published a retrospective and roadmap of its UI Toolkit (UITK), detailing its various releases and plans going forward. Summaries of the 14.04-15.04 releases can be found in the retrospective.
The roadmap for upcoming Ubuntu UITK releases is as follows:
15.10-1.3 release: The upcoming cycle the focus is on convergence, with an emphasis on touch environments and device capabilities. The UITL 1.3 release will adopt to the host environment according to its capabilities. Upcoming features include
- Resolution independence
- Improve visual rendering (pixel perfectness at any device ratio)
- Improve performance (CPU and GPU wise)
- Convergence
- Tooltips
- Key navigation – Tab/Shift+Tab
- Date and Time Pickers
- Menus
- Application and
- context menus
- Support Sub-theming
- Support of ListItem expansion
- Text input magnification on selection
- Simplified Popovers
- Text input context menu
- Deprecate Dialer (Ubuntu.Components.Pickers)
- Deprecate PopupBase (Ubuntu.Components.Popups)
- Focused component highlight
- Support for OSK to keep the focus component above the key rectangle
- Integrate scope toolkit from Unity with the UI Toolkit
The 1.3 version of the UITK will be the first with the promise that application developers can create both fully functional desktop and phone applications. In practice it means that the runtime UITK will be the same as in the build environment.
16.04 – 2.0 release: Aimed to polish together all the features and tune the UI Toolkit for the next major release. This edition of the toolkit will be the “mission completed” version. Feature plans include:
- Clean up deprecated components
- Rename ThemeSettings to Theme
- Toolbars for convergence
- Modal Dialogs
- Device mode (aka capability) detection
- Complete scopes support
- Backend for Alarm services
- Separate service components from UI components
