The Unity development team at Canonical has published a development build aimed at testers of version 5.0 of its custom desktop interface for the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Users running the current Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" alpha can install the preview release by manually adding the Unity PPA, which is hosted on the Unity Team's Launchpad.net page.

One of the most notable changes is in the global menu in the bar at the top of the screen. Before, the menu for the current active application would only appear when a user moved the mouse over the bar, which was said to have been confusing for inexperienced users. In the new version of the user interface, the application menu is displayed when a program is launched and then disappears after a certain amount of time, which users can individually adjust.

Other new features include the ability to change the Dash's background colour and the option of adding a "show desktop" icon to the launcher. Unity 2D has also been updated, with the developers having added "maximise" and "close" buttons to the dash.

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(crve)