The GNOME developers are working around the clock these days to release the second milestone of the upcoming GNOME 3.20 desktop environment for GNU/Linux operating systems.

Therefore, they are updating several core components and GNOME apps with new features and lots of bugfixes. Among these, we can mention today the GNOME Maps software, a Maps app for the GNOME desktop environment.

GNOME Maps 3.19.2 is the new development version, and it simplifies the keyboard shortcuts used for zooming in and out into the maps, and adds support for 'geo' URI schemes, allowing the use of "geu:" links from in other GNOME apps.

Moreover, there's now a new function called "Open with browser", implemented in the Send-to dialog, which lets users open a certain location on the web-based version of the OpenStreetMap (OSM) free editable map of the entire world.

GNOME Maps 3.19.2 also fixes the GeoJSON filling of polygons in polygons, as well as the width of the Send-to dialog, and remembers the latest visited view when reopening the application.

Last but not least, several language translations have been updated in this second development release of the upcoming GNOME Maps 3.20 software, including Czech, Norwegian Bokmal, Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Finnish, Lithuanian, and Simplified Chinese.

You can download the GNOME Maps 3.19.2 sources right now from Softpedia and start compiling the software by hand, but we don't recommend to do so if you're on a stable environment. This milestone will be distributed as part of the GNOME 3.19.2 desktop environment later this week.