Compiz 0.9.8 landed in Ubuntu 12.10 with dedicated unminimize animation, new plugins and numerous fixes

At the moment, Quantal Quetzal is going through serious enhancements, refining, improving and strengthening numerous parts of Ubuntu.

A new version of Compiz 0.9.8 has just landed in Ubuntu 12.10, adding a solid amount of fixes and under-the-hood enhancements, as well as new (non-default) plugins, suitable to be used under Quantal's refreshed Compiz.

Minimizing & restoring windows are an important part of maneuvering windows, yet, in the until-now Ubuntu 12.10, the minimizing effect was used for both minimizing and restoring (from a minimized) a window; the new Compiz adds a separate "category" of effects, UnMinimize Animation, that introduces the ability to set a dedicated animation for the unminimized action (after an app is minimized and the user "opens" it by clicking on its's Unity launcher icon, action that restores its "original" focused position).

Consequently, the unminimize animation is used as a different effect from the minimizing animation, useful approach when on-demand differentiating between the mentioned action types.

By default, the UnMinimize Animation is Magic Lamp (at the moment), meaning, clicking on an app's titlebar minimize button, minimizes the app via the Zoom effect, clicking on the minimized app's Launcher icon, restores the app via the Magic Lamp effect.

Workspace Switcher has been 1-click "enabled", summoning the default four desktops is 1-click navigable, thus, clicking (as opposed to double-clicking) on a workspace, brings the clicked worskpace as a desktop.

The new compiz comes with extra plugins, in the sense of allowing the user, when installing the compiz-plugins package, to enjoy interesting plugins, such as:

• Trip is definitely an entertaining effect that summons ripples on the desktop, visually distorting the desktop, action manageable via shortcuts, like Decrease intensity, Take Hit
  
• Stack Window Switcher is an exciting tool that allows the user to switch between applications, folders, etc, via a fancy effect, basically, the plugin arranges the opened windows on top of a repositioned desktop
  

Trip and Stack Window Switcher are not installed by default, nevertheless, they are available via Ubuntu Software Center (as part of compiz-plugins).