One of the features I’ve always liked in the Mac is that it hides the mouse pointer when you use the keyboard. That makes it possible to type or read without having the mouse pointer in the way. So I went looking for a solution for Ubuntu. After some googling I found “unclutter”.
Unclutter hides the mouse pointer when you haven’t used the mouse for 5 seconds. Although this is different from the Mac approach, it actually works fine for me. When the pointer is hidden you can type and read and when you move you mouse then the pointer is shown again.
According to the man pages it should be possible to let unclutter hide the pointer when you press (or release) a key, but I couldn’t get that to work.
Installation is easy, it’s in the Ubuntu repos:
sudo apt-get install unclutter
And start it:
unclutter & disown
If you want to start unclutter when you login you can add it to your session:
Open Sessions, click “Add”, type some name (”Unclutter”), command (”unclutter”) and comment (”Hide mouse pointer”) and that’s it.
GUI, Ubuntu
mousecursor, unclutter
I’ve installed GnoMenu 1.6. It is a Vista style menu for the Gnome desktop. You can just download the deb files (gnomenu_1.6-2_all.deb) and install it. After installing I had to run:
/usr/lib/gnomenu/DesktopIntegration.py
To get it to show up in the Gnome panel “Add to Panel…” dialog.
I must say that from reading about the GnoMenu, and seeing the themes on Gnome-Look, I was quite looking forward to the little panel applet. But after installing it I was disappointed.
First of all the GnoMenu catches your Windows key to open up. I always hated that feature in Windows and I don’t want it in my Ubuntu. Especially since I’m using the Windows key as my main shortcut key: Windows 1-4 are my desktops, Windows-T is a terminal, Windows-E is Nautilus (yes, that’s a Windows shortcut).
Second, the thing just feel clunky. It’s kind of hard to explain, but it doesn’t feel smooth or elegant. I want my main menu to give me the feeling that I will find the application I’m looking for. GnoMenu gave me the feeling that it might take a while. Not only from the feel, but also because it’s just slow. When you start typing in the search field it takes ages before it shows you the application that you’re looking for.
I must admit that’s where I stopped testing. The GnoMenu is just not ready yet. It’s a nice idea, and the Gnome main menu is ready for an update for sure, but this is not the one.
I’ll just stick to Gnome-Do.
GUI, Linux, Ubuntu
Gnome, GnoMenu, Ubuntu
Will Williams made a mock-up for Ubuntu Intrepid a long time ago and people generally agreed that this was one of the best out there. Apparently Mr. Williams has found himself some friends (I saw some comments from the Elementary guys) to make the theme for real.
I have the theme installed now and I must say I’m impressed. It’s not a 100% perfect, but it comes really close. Especially the background and the menus are brilliant. After some time working with the controls I switched those over to the Dark Room set, which suites the brown better then the gray that Will used.
GUI, Ubuntu
theme, Ubuntu
There is a new code release of Google Gadgets. I’ve been looking for a .deb file all over, but apparently the interest is gone since the first release. So the only thing left to do is: compile it myself. Luckily Google has already posted most of the dependencies on their how-to-build page, that saves a lot of make time. I’ve described the build for Gnome GTK here:
Download the Google Gadgets source
wget http://google-gadgets-for-linux.googlecode.com/files/google-gadgets-for-linux-0.10.3.tar.bz2
Install the dependencies
sudo apt-get install libdbus-1-dev libmozjs-dev libxml2-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libltdl3-dev libxt-dev libxul-dev libgtk2.0-dev librsvg2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev
I’ve added the “libxt-dev” which was missed in the Google instructions.
Configure the build
./configure --prefix=/usr
Google advises to add the prefix to avoid library linking problems.
Make the application
make
Install the application
sudo make install
And start it
ggl-gtk
I haven’t seen any major updates to the last release yet. All I can say is that it feels a bit faster.
GUI, Linux, Ubuntu
build, Google Gadgets, intrepid ibex
Since I own a Sony TZ laptop, and it has a wide screen monitor, I’m worried about vertical screen space. I’ve been blogging about that before. Now I found a hack that might help a bit. There is a thing called Global Menu for Gnome.
It kills the menu in the window and puts in it an applet in a Gnome panel. The idea is stolen from Apple, but it’s a good idea I think. It removes the completely useless line in each window. Now all that has to be removed ins the titlebar, then I’ll be even more happy with the interface.
Now the weak thing: I haven’t tried the global menu yet. I don’t want to kill my Ubuntu immediately after installing Intrepid. I want to create a VM with Intrepid and try it out there. It will take some time, but I’ll post the result here.
GUI, Ubuntu
Gnome global menu, GUI, Ubuntu
I’m rather surprised that a lot of desktop solutions still use a huge amount of vertical space on the screen. Especially since most monitors are more wide then high. Why isn’t it possible to put a lot of toolbars and related stuff (menus, status bars) on the side of windows?
There is a nice little Firefox plugin that helps a bit: TinyMenu. It’s pretty good, it decreases the Firefox menu to a single entry so that you can combine it with other entries on a toolbar. It saves my 1 toolbar vertical screen real estate.
GUI, Ubuntu
GUI, rant, Ubuntu
Do you write a text or do you want to share some information? Do you create a drawing or do you want to explain some idea?
I think the current desktop is either application- (Windows, Gnome) or document- (Mac OS X) oriented. But why? I don’t use my computer to open applications or create documents, I like to get a task done. I’d like an interface that is task oriented!
Task oriented design is a well known approach for interaction designers but somehow this never entered the desktop metaphor. The desktop is still mostly aimed at starting applications and handling files. Which is nice and important, but very inefficient. I think the desktop should be able to do those tasks for me. Gnome DO is quite good at finding the application I want to open, and Nautilus is quite good at organising files.
An idea would be to give the user the possibility to create tasks for itself. For example: I want to create a project plan, instead of: open OO Writer, select the project plan template and start writing. I hear you say: “You can use the templates for that!”. Indeed, I could, but then the flow would be: go to a folder where I want to create the plan, right click, find the template I want, create the file, name it, open it. Not efficient.
I’ve written a doc a while ago about a webbased task oriented desktop. Maybe I should expand that into something that fits on the desktop. Next holiday I’m going to work on that…
[Update]
GUI, Opinion, Personal
document oriented, task oriented
I’ve blogged about this before, but I really like the Elementary Desktop Project. Since they have a real site now. I thought I spend a little attention to them again. It made me change desktop wallpaper.
GUI, Linux, Personal
elementary deskop project
I’ve been searching for a new approach to filemanagement for a while now. In my search I ran into Nemo. That’s a pretty interesting idea. It organizes your files grouped by date. I don’t know if that works, you loose the possibility to make your own structure. I like to keep a project oriented structure in my files, I’m not sure the date thing would work.
But at least somebody is thinking of other solutions then the directory thing which sucks for years already. My project directory contains about 8500 files, and that’s the from the last two years only. How am I going to find anything in that? The Google approach is the best so far: just search. Sadly there are very little desktop client that really enable this. Google Desktop is too clumsy and takes too much CPU. Deskbar is rubbish, at least I can never find what I’m looking for. Tracker… Nice try.
Are there any alternatives? Tagging sounds promising. If I can tag my documents, preferably in a visual way (drag some existing tags to it, or something). Then some tag cloud to browse… Maybe it would work.
Then I was playing with Cairo Dock. It took me hours to get it to do what I want. The good thing is: it can do what I want, the bad thing is: it takes a lot of time. The config gui is absolute crap. Anyway, it does work, that’s cool!
GUI, Linux
Cairo Dock, Nemo
The new Elementary theme is pretty good. I don’t like the GDM theme and the scroll bars have reversed light and dark, but the overall look is quite good.
Apparently it’s really complicated to create a dark theme that still works. There are a lot of themes available but they all have a weak spot. This one is working so far…
I’m using AWN right now, but I’m switching to Cairo Dock. Man, what a huge amount of configs!
GUI, Linux
Elementary, theme
