Updated READMEs &c for 2.9.4 release.

[wxWidgets.git] / docs / publicity / announce.txt

July 9, 2012 -- The wxWidgets team is pleased to announce the
latest 2.9.4 release of wxWidgets library.

wxWidgets 2.9.4 is available at

        https://sourceforge.net/downloads/wxwindows/2.9.4/

and soon will also appear at our FTP mirror at

        ftp://ftp.wxwidgets.org/pub/2.9.4/

Please choose the archive format suitable for your platform, i.e. 7z
or ZIP for Windows platforms and tar.bz2 for the Unix systems
including OS X (all archives contain sources for all wxWidgets ports
but they use different line endings) and follow the instructions in
readme.txt file for installing it. Notice that if you decide to use
the Windows installer (.exe file) you still need to build wxWidgets
as only sources, not binaries, are installed.

However, for the first time ever, we also experimentally provide the
pre-built versions of wxMSW libraries built with several version of
Microsoft Visual C++ compiler. You can download them from

        https://sourceforge.net/downloads/wxwindows/2.9.4/binaries/

Please see the README file there for the descriptions of the
individual files.


This release mostly focuses on bug fixes in preparation for 3.0
release, in particular there are a lot of improvements in wxOSX/Cocoa
port. The most important new feature in this release is experimental
support for building wxGTK with GTK+ 3 version of the toolkit. Other
noteworthy additions are:

- Transparent background is now support for wxGTK windows.
- New style directory selection dialog is now used in wxMSW.
- Native wxDatePickerCtrl and wxTimePickerCtrl for wxOSX.
- wxFSInputStream stream class for reading data from wxFileSystem.
- wxGrid::Render() method allows to print or save wxGrid contents.
- Strike-through fonts are now supported.
- Horizontal mouse wheel events are now generated.


The list of of changes since the 2.8 series is much too long to be
listed here but the most important ones are:

- Completely overhauled Unicode support which is much easier to use.
- New Cocoa-based wxOSX port for Mac OS X for both 32 and 64 bits.
- New property grid and ribbon libraries are now included in wxWidgets.
- Better interoperability with standard library classes.
- Totally revised and more readable manual.
- Improved debugging support.

Please see the changes.txt file in the "docs" subdirectory of
wxWidgets distribution or also available online at
https://sourceforge.net/projects/wxwindows/files/2.9.4/changes.txt/docs/changes.txt
for more details and http://docs.wxwidgets.org/2.9.4/overview_changes_since28.html
if you are upgrading from wxWidgets 2.8.


Note about naming: while 2.9.4 is called a "development" release,
this only means that API is not guaranteed to remain unchanged in
the subsequent 2.9.x releases (although it is very unlikely to change
in incompatible ways at this stage), unlike in the stable 2.8.x branch
where source and binary compatibility is always preserved between the
different micro releases. We believe the current version is stable and
suitable for use in production environment and recommend using it for
any new projects using wxWidgets.

We are especially looking forward to your feedback about the changes
in this release compared to 2.8 version if you're upgrading. Please
let us know about any regressions (http://trac.wxwidgets.org/newticket)
so that we could fix them in the upcoming 3.0. Thanks in advance!

 Enjoy!

Vadim Zeitlin, on behalf of wxWidgets development team.