14 DAY TRIAL // In preparation for the GNOME 3.18 Beta 1 desktop environment, the GNOME developers have released the first Beta build of the powerful, next-generation GNOME Shell user interface used by default since the release of GNOME 3.
According to the internal changelog, which we've attached at the end of the article for reference, GNOME Shell 3.18 Beta 1 (technical version number is 3.17.90) refines the message list style, fixes a type-ahead behavior of the compose and backspace keys, and refines the system status menu.
Additionally, the changes of the caret and focus viewports are now automatically avoided during pointer movement, and the system modal dialogs have been updated to match the modal dialogs of the GTK+ toolkit. The code has been cleaned up, and various other small bugs were fixed.
Last but not least, the Czech, Norwegian Bokmal, Catalan, and Brazilian Portuguese language translations have been updated. Those of you who want to test the first Beta build of GNOME Shell 3.18 will have to either download the source code from Softpedia or install the GNOME 3.18 Beta 1 desktop environment.
Either way, please try to keep in mind that this is pre-release software, it contains unknown or known issues that have not yet been fixed. This is not a final product and it is not recommended for installation on production environments where stability is very important.