+**New `CHANNEL` appearance features 2020-12-10**
+There are now differing cosmetics for different channels, including application icons, Getdown splashscreen,
+About splashscreen, Installer backgrounds, application name. This is controlled by the files in
+```
+utils/channels
+```
+In `utils/channels` there are different directories for the different channels. Currently there are directories for
+`default`, `develop`, `release`, `test-release`, `jalviewjs` and `jalviewjs-release`. If a specified `CHANNEL` is not one of `DEVELOP`, `RELEASE`, `TEST-RELEASE`, `JALVIEWJS`, `JALVIEWJS-RELEASE`
+then it will use the `default` directory.
+
+Inside the `utils/channels/<channelname>` directory are:
+- a file `channel_gradle.properties`. This will be used by the `build.gradle` script (i.e. any gradle build) to *override* the values found in `gradle.properties`.
+- an `images` directory used to store different images referred to in this channels's `channel_gradle.properties`.
+- a `resources` directory which is merged into the javliew.jar's own resources directory. Importantly it contains a `channel.props` file and another `images` dir which contains properties and images used by the application (in `jalview.util.ChannelProperties`), such as icon files or banner images, and the `app_name` property used as the display name for the application (e.g. "Jalview Develop") inside the application code. Please see the `getProperty` and `getImage` methods in `jalview.bin.ChannelProperties` to access these channel based resources.
+
+