Gnome: T.U.X. (The User's eXperience) - Gnome Tips 'n tricks, news and a lot more ...

Playing DVD iso's

2007-03-14T19:08:00.000+01:00

Hi,

I found a nice Media Player (Gnome's media player is called "Totem") feature this week. I had a DVD with a recording of me on national television this week. I copied it to an .iso image file as I have to return the DVD and I don't have any more blank DVD's. Well, it seem like Gnome's media player can play DVD .iso-files as if they were real DVD's. You can open these files with Totem in 2 ways; after opening Totem:

Open the "Movie" menu and choose "Open". Now select the .iso-file.
Drag the .iso-file on the Totem media player

In fact there's a third way, which is a bit more technical. You could "mount" the .iso-file on your filesystem as if it where a real DVD-device and then acces this from Gnome as you would acces a real DVD. Though, to do this you still need to do some dark magic. I filed a bug in Gnome once to make it easy to do this but there's noone working on this as far as I know.

By the way: Gnome 2.18 is born! Happy Gnome'ing!

I like those tiny things

2007-01-29T14:58:00.000+01:00

Hey there,

with only one exam to go I thought I'd quickly write up another post here, as I won't have time after my exams because of my snowboarding trip to Austria, and I had something to share.
I have a 17 inch flatscreen monitor attached to my computer with a resulotion of 1280 by 1024 pixels. When I bought this piece I found it very big, as before I used 2 15 inch CRT screens to have some screen real estate which used all my precious space on my desk.
Well, after being used to this screen, I still don't find it big enough. So, I thought I'd try to make it look bigger by making everything that's displayed smaller :). Here's what I did and how to do it yourself, making your screen look bigger by making Gnome's widgets smaller:

Making Gnome-panels smaller:

Right-click on the panel and choose Properties, there you can set the size parameter.

Making the folders on my desktop and in directories smaller:

Open some folder and open the Edit menu and choose Preferences. On the first tab you can change the standard zoomfactors for iconview and listview. I used 75% for some time but now while writing this I changed it to 50% for both and it seems still very usable for me. Adjust this to your likes.

Making the Gnome menu's smaller in size:

This one's trickier and involves editing a configuration file. Open the .gtkrc-2.0 file (starting with a dot, it's a hidden file) with the text editor (for example, by pressing Alt-F2, entering "gedit ~/.gtkrc-2.0" in the inputfield and choosing Run) and add a new line like this:
gtk-icon-sizes="panel-menu=16,16:gtk-menu=16,16:gtk-button=16,16:gtk-small-toolbar=16,16:gtk-large-toolbar=24,24:gtk-dialog=32,32:gtk-dnd=32,32"
These are the values I use for different widgets, adjust 'm to your likes. You'll have to re-login for all the changes to be done. (PS: I found about this tip on this website)

Making Gnome's fonts smaller

Open System > Preferences > Fonts. The applicationss-fonts you can set there will be used on your gnome panels, in all your gnome application's menu's and buttons etc. The desktop-font is the one that is used for the names of files and folders on your desktop and in all directories. making those smaller results in smaller windows and panels. I set mine now to 6;7;6;7;7, which can sound rather small but it's well doable. See what's best for you!

I might have done more tweaks to make my screen look bigger, but I can't think of any now. I'll add 'm when I remember 'm!

See you!

Even more middle mouse button action

2007-01-15T07:39:00.000+01:00

In my previous post, I told you about how to open bookmarks and history items etc in a new tab by simply clicking on 'm with the middle mouse button. Well, I thought this was so fantastic but I didn't even try it out in other places in Epiphany.
Well, now it seems like it can be used for some other buttons on the toolbar:

Open your homepage on a new tab by middle clicking the Home button
Open the previous page on a new tab by middle clicking the Back button
Open the next page on a new tab by middle clicking the Forward button

I also set up an "Up" button on my toolbar, to go up in the directory hierarchy of a website. This trick works for this button too.
To (re)arrange your toolbar, add new items or delete items, rightclick it and choose "Customize toolbars...". You'll get a Toolbar Editor window which contains all possible items. Now you can just drag items on the toolbar with your mouse. If you want to remove items, drag 'm off the toolbar to the Toolbar Editor window. Have fun tuning your Gnome Webbrowser!

See you.

Middle mousebutton & Gnome's webbrowser

2007-01-11T10:44:00.000+01:00

Some time ago, I blogged about how to enable middle mousebutton clicks on links to open 'm in a new tab in Gnome's webbrowser (Epiphany). Well, I found out that's not the only place in this browser where this middle mouse button comes out handy. In fact, the usage is very consistent. Left mousebutton clicks open items in the current tab, middle mousebutton clicks open them in a new tab.

Examples:

Links on a webpage
A bookmark on your toolbar (btw: to add one, just drag a link to the toolbar)
A bookmark in the bookmarks menu
A bookmark in the bookmarks editor
Any entry in the "dropdown menu" you get when you type something in the adressbar:

A history item
A search command from a smart bookmark
A bookmark

I guess there are even more examples like this. I'm once again proud to be an Gnome user.

See you !

Edit: corrected some spelling mistakes

Reset applications menu

2007-01-05T12:04:00.000+01:00

Hey,

I was playing a bit with the Alacarte menu-editor that is by default installed on my Ubuntu system after some items were added to my menu by wine but I didn't like that submenu wine created. I'm not a big fan of Alacarte as it seemed to have some problems for me, but I guess these will be resolved in the next Ubuntu release. After all, I'm using a "technology preview", 6.10, that is.
To make a long story short, I wanted to revert my menu to the default, the menu a new user would get. After some searching, I found a quick solution; here it is:

You have to remove the file ~/.config/menus/applications.menu which you can do in a lot of different ways (choose one):

Open the "Run" dialog with Alt-F2 and type in (or copy from here): rm ~/.config/menus/applications.menu and choose Run
Open a terminal and enter the same command and press Enter
Open the directory by pressing Ctrl-L after clicking on a filemanager window or your desktop and enter ~/.config/menus/ and choose Open, then delete the applications.menu file

After this, open your Applications menu, and you'll see it was reverted to the default!

See you !

Hide Templates

2007-01-04T11:24:00.000+01:00

Hey,

I found out someone stumbled upon this blog by searching google for hide templates in gnome. I'm not quite sure what this person wanted as I see 2 possibilities:

I want to remove the "Create document >" submenu of Nautilus (the filemanager) in the menu when I rightclick on the desktop or in a window of a folder:

You can do this by removing all templates in the "Templates" folder of your home-directory or by removing this folder.

I don't want to see the "Templates" folder in my home-directory but I want the "Create document >" submenu of Nautilus (the filemanager) in the menu when I rightclick on the desktop or in a window of a folder:

You can do this by hiding this folder. To hide a file or folder, enter it's name on a new line in a file called .hidden (mind the dot) in the directory of the folder; if the file .hidden doesn't exist yet, create it. A file wich name starts with a dot is also a hidden file
If you're new to this, just open the text-editor, type Templates in the document, save it as .hidden in your personal folder (home-directory), and you're done.

Bottomline: there are 2 kinds of hidden files in Gnome, those whose names start with a dot and those whose names are in a .hidden file.

Ciao!

Quickly Create New Launchers

2006-12-31T17:23:00.000+01:00

I found out a quick way to create a new launcher for a program, be it on the desktop or on a panel. If you have a launcher already in a menu, you know you can just drag it to the desktop or on a panel. But, if you don't have such a menu entry yet, this is a quick way:

Press Alt-F2 so you get the "Run..." dialog.
Now, type in the name of your application (I mean the command to run it, not the name as it appears in menu's etc), which will autocomplete?
Then drag the icon on the left of it - which changes in the app's icon if it's known - on your desktop or panel.

You just created a new launcher for that specific application! If you want to you can change it's settings (like the icon to be shown) by right-clicking it and choosing "Properties".

Happy New Year and much fun with Gnome in 2007 !

Add to Totem's playlist

2006-10-14T12:26:00.000+02:00

Heya,

Like a year ago, I used to use Totem as a music playback application in the first place. I dropped some directories with mp3's on it, put on my wireless headphones and went outside. But, since I became a fulltime Banshee user, things changed. For instance, I don't have Totem's playlist pane open anymore by default. Now, sometimes I find an mp3 on my harddrive I didn't know I still had with some obscure name and the Nautilus preview sounds good. Then, I just click it to open it in Totem. Well, If I find more of those at once, I feel the need to queue some songs again I don't want to add to my Banshee library (yet). Plus, I don't want to have the playlist opened, as it uses too much screen real-estate for these 10 minutes. Now I found a great solution. You don't have to drop songs on the playlist field to queue 'm up. You can just drop 'm on the "Show playlist" button too! Thanks alot, Totem dev's !

Ciao!

Gnome 2.14 and beyond - Deskbar trick

2006-07-31T12:14:00.000+02:00

Guess who's back ... back again ? As I stopped contributing to the aMSN project (creating a multi-platform MSN Messenger client with loads of features), I might find some time to blog again over here. The last time I was here I was talking about goodness we could expect for the Gnome 2.12 release; well, now most of us are already using 2.14 and the 2.16 release is coming close. In other words: I've been off for some time but I'm back in business, willing to serve you some news, insights and tips 'n tricks about gnome from a user's point of view.

For those who are not yet using 2.14, or just those who want to know what's new and hot in 2.14, you can check Davyd Madeley's list of new features, or visit the official Gnome 2.14 homepage. As I'm a Ubuntu 'edgy' (developement releases) user, I'm already using a Gnome 2.15 release (the developement version that will become 2.16 once stable); and I must say there's already some great 2.16 stuff on my desktop.

One of the greatest new things in Gnome 2.14 is the Deskbar applet. With the beagle backend enabled, this swiss-army-knife applet can be seen as a mix between apple's Spotlight, an application starter like Quicksilver, Google Desktop Search etc. When you place it on your panel you can choose to have it shown as an input-field or a button, which when pressed, shows the input field. Once you start typing something, all kinds of actions and search results will be thrown at you.

Now, here's a nice trick you can do with one of the latest the Deskbar-versions; In the preferences screen, check the option to have Deskbar search for your current selection when you press the chosen hotkey (the default is Alt-F3). Now, imaging you have to e-mail someone and you just found her or his e-mail address online. Just select the address, press the hotkey and choose the "Send Email to name@domain.com" and the Evolution "New mail" window will be opened for you with the address already filled in. Have fun !

Quick theme changing

2005-07-31T10:30:00.000+02:00

Marek Jurman told me about this quick way to change themes; In a nautilus location bar (press Ctrl-L to get one), type in "themes:///" (without the quote-signs off course) and press enter. A nautilus window will open (like a folder) with icons (thumbnails) for every theme on your system. Just click one to quickly apply a theme.
When you want to tweak the theme further, you have to open the theme dialog (where you can also change themes) by System > Preferences > Theme. In this window you can change window borders, window element styles and icons separately.

Have fun!

"A Prerelease Tour of GNOME 2.12"

2005-07-31T10:22:00.000+02:00

As Ed Crypt already noted in a comment on an earlier post about Gnome 2.12 features, Davyd Madeley did it again. Davyd Created a nice page with a list of most of the new Gnome 2.12 features (you can see in the UI). As he states in his blog post, it's even not done yet, so we can expect even more from the new Gnome.
There are a lot of new, exciting and enhanced things in the upcoming Gnome and I can't wait to have my hands on it. I think I'm gonna try out Ubuntu Breezy.

Ciao.

No icons on desktop

2005-07-07T14:41:00.000+02:00

Hey,

I found out someone came on my blog by searching google for "hide gnome 2.10 desktop icons". Well, in fact this is really easy to disable;
Open Gnome's Configuration Editor (gconf-editor; Applications > System Tools > Configuration Editor), browse through the tree to /apps/nautilus/preferences and uncheck the 'show_desktop' option. Now you're in there you can tweak a lot more, but be carefull ;)!

Cheers!

Gnome 2.12 Sneak Peek

2005-07-07T14:19:00.000+02:00

Hey,

I stumbled upon this page on the gnome-wiki which seems to be a draft for the Gnome 2.12 release notes. Check it out to see some great new things and enhancements we'll see in 2.12!

Ciao.

BTW: I went to Strasbourg to protest against software-patents and the Law was rejected! Thanks to all the people protesting at several occasions, contacting their MEP's etc.

Epiphany problem: right / middle click

2005-07-02T13:36:00.000+02:00

Heya,

I reïnstalled my desktop-box again :). But, I was so stupid to use the first Ubuntu CD I could find laying around on my desk, which happened to be a warty one. And as I was to lazy to reinstall it again ("I was too busy" would have been a lie ;)) I thought I'd just upgrade the packages I really use to hoary for now and do this till breezy comes out within some months. (Maybe I won't be able to wait and reinstall it with the right CD if I run into troubles with it.)
Anyway; I got the following problem: Clicking the right or middle mousebutton on links in Epiphany just didn't do anything. I visited the #epiphany IRC-channel (on irc.gnome.org), and asked if this was a known problem (hereby I'd like to apoligize for being to lazy to first check the FAQ :|).
So the problem was I upgraded epiphany but I didn't upgrade my firefox-package (epiphany depends on the firefox package for the gecko html renderer). After upgrading it the problem was gone!

See you!

Special K

2005-06-24T18:33:00.000+02:00

Hi,

I never intended to write this as it involves some politiks and prakmatism, but yeah, this is a small post about KDE :). At first I'd like to say I don't like the black-white Kold-war-like thinking of "I like this thus I hate the others". So, I don't hate KDE at all, I just use Knome as it feels better for me.
Anyway, what I wanted to say is I just stumbled upon this page. It's some kind of sneak-peek website for KDE-stuff, to show off what's already in the kode for the neKst release. So, what do we learn ? KDE is 'kopying' (not in some bad sence of the word) some knome features. I'll link some skreenshots so I don't have to eksplain a lot:

The 'minipager' (desktop switcher):

Adding applets to Kicker (we call it a 'panel'):

Konqueror (web browser) is able to load google maps:

The future is bright for KDE too. Kongratulations ;) !

Tab manipulation

2005-06-24T11:03:00.000+02:00

Hey,

In a lot of basic gnome applications, tabs are used to reduce screenclutter. You can have tabbed chatwindows in gaim, tabbed browsing in epiphany, tabbed text editing in gedit ... What is so cool about this in gnome is that you can manipulate them easily with your mouse. Click a tab to activate, click it's close-button to ... close, scroll your mousewheel hovering the tabs to scroll though the tabs, drag the tabs to any place on the tabbar you want ...
What is even cooler is that you can drag tabs out of the window to create a new window with it's content. Also you can drag tabs from an application-window to other windows of that application ... you love it or you love it, right ?

Marek Jurman kindly asked me to blog about this. Thanks for the inspiration!

Another backgrounds tip

2005-06-20T09:24:00.000+02:00

I already blogged about how to do cool things with desktop background not to long ago. I told you that you can easily set backgrounds by dragging 'm to the backgrounds-properties window. Well, you even don't have to do that most of the time. If you just want the default options, drag an image on the desktop with your middle mouse-button down. When you release the button, you'll get a menu where you can choose "set as background". Note: you can also do this to set backgrounds for folder-windows in Nautilus.
You can also set background-colors or -patterns by just dragging 'm to the desktop or any folder-window, gnome-terminal-window, panel ...
Another background-tip: in Epiphany, you can right-click images and set 'm as background from the context-menu, which will open the background-properties window so you can set it up easily.

Command line applet

2005-06-19T11:18:00.000+02:00

Hey,

This is one for those who are used to the commandline but want to forget about it, for example, to get rid of the geekish linux user stigma ;). Especially if you only use the terminal to run programs/scripts you have no starter for on your desktop/panel or in your menus. To add this applet to your panel, like for all panel applets, right-click a panel and choose "Add to panel...":

(click to get the full size image)

Then you get this well-known "Add to panel" window:

(click to get the full size image)

Search through list till you find the "Command line" (or whatever it is in your language ;)) applet. To quickly find it, you can just click some entry and begin typing the name of it. Btw: you can do this in most 'lists' in gnome! When you found the applet you need (the command line one for this example ;)) you can double click it to add it on the place where you right-clicked, or just drag it to any place on the panel where you like it :). This is how it looks:

(click to get the full size image)

When you type and just hit return, the command gets run as it were run on a terminal. If you click the dot, you can choose a file on your filesystem to execute, the down-arrow shows you a history of your last-used commands.
But, we're not done yet! This applet is a lot more powerfull then just to execute some commands. Let's open the preferences dialog (by right-clicking the applet and choosing "preferences - obvious, right ? ;)):

(click to get the full size image)

As you see, you can enable history-based auto-completition, which is very cool as it makes you not have to retype the whole thing you run ... this seems stupid for commands you run regulary as it would be a lot easier to just provide a starter for them, but ...
On the second tab of the preferences-screen you can set "macros". I cannot explain this very well in English, but it just means you can do a lot more then just running normal commands with this nifty applet. There where some macros set by default, for example, one that opens your browser with a google search if you type "google: ". Another cool one just makes your browser open a url you type (paste ;)) in the applet. It's easy to add new macros. For example, to search in the archives of this blog, add a macro with the pattern "^gt: *(.*)$" and command "gnome-open http://www.google.com/custom?domains=&q=\1&domains=gnometux.blogspot.com
&sitesearch=gnometux.blogspot.com&client=pub-4058752637362479&forid=1
&ie=ISO-8859-1&oe=ISO-8859-1&cof=GALT%3A%235588AA%3BGL%3A1%3BDIV
%3A%23EEEEEE%3BVLC%3A996699%3BAH%3Acenter%3BBGC%3AFFFFFF%3BL
BGC%3AFFFFFF%3BALC%3ACC6600%3BLC%3ACC6600%3BT%3A333333%3BGF
NT%3A5588AA%3BGIMP%3A5588AA%3BLH%3A100%3BLW%3A800%3BL%3Ahttp
%3A%2F%2Fstudent.vub.ac.be%2F%257Ekmdemeye%2Fblog%2Flogo.jpg%3BS%3
Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fgnometux.blogspot.com%3BFORID%3A1%3B&hl=en" (all this on one line and both without the quote-marks). Then, you can just type "gt: gnome" to search for the word 'gnome' in my archives :).

Cyah !

Quick screenshotting

2005-06-15T17:45:00.000+02:00

Time for a new trick ! I'm gonna tell a bit about making screenshots in Gnome. For those who don't know what a 'screenshot' is, it's a kind of 'photograph' you make of your screen. In fact, it's just saving what's currently on your screen in an image.
So, how to make those screenshots within Gnome ? Well, there are several ways to do this. You can use some 3th party program that creates screenshots (for example in The Gimp with File > Import > Screenshot) or a commandline-program ... but that's not what were gonna do, as Gnome has a screenshot-utility built-in! To call this program, you can press a shortcut-keycombination or open the System-menu and click the "Take Screenshot" entry. Both will bring up this dialog:

You can choose a filename and folder where it should be saved. Well, the cool thing is you don't have to really save this screenshot if you just want to send it to somebody. Which is cool as mostly when you want to show something to somebody you remove the saved screenshot afterwards. So, how to do it? Right, just drag the thing. You can drag the screenshot out of the dialog, to a gaim-conversation or on a gaim-contact to send it to him/her, on gaim to set your own buddy-image (aka 'avatar'), to the evolution "new mail" attachement zone, on your panel to use it as background (not that I guess you want that, but it's possible ;)) ... or just to any directory in nautilus to save it over there!
To create screenshots with key-shortcuts, you have 2 combinations to set. One to create a screenshot of the whole screen and one to only capture the active window. You can set both shortcuts in the "Keyboard shortcuts" preferences window (open it with System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts).

Have fun screenshotting !

Sendto-applet

2005-06-10T20:37:00.000+02:00

Hey!

I had this idea last night when I tried to sleep but failed; You know about the Nautilus SendTo-extension, right? No ? You should, I already blogged about it ;).
Anyway, Reinout commented on it saying it's another addition to Nautilus' context-menu. I also thought about this disadvantage and came up with following 'solution';
What about a "Gnome SendTo applet" ? It would be a place on the panel where you can drop files and it opens the SendTo dialog-window and off you go. I also think the Gnome HIG says a user should "perform tasks" (like dragging files to manipulate 'm) instead of using context-menu's/commands (cfr for example: Provide Direct Manipulation). For the appet I had the following in mind: an open box with a stamp on it. For the user it would be like "put some stuff in a box to send it". Maybe it would even be better/cooler to have an opened box where you can drag stuff in and then when you click the box, it closes and shows the SendTo window ? Maybe this could make sending 1 file quickly too complex (2 clicks to show the dialog and then some more for the sending) ? A maybe-somewhat-silly-and-not-very-informational mockup:

Another thing I had in mind is doing somewhat the same with the Contact-Lookup-Applet. Right now when you find a contact and click it you get a dialog with emailadresses and IM-IDs if you have gaim well set up etc. So, what I thought about, was making it possible to drag files on the icon in front of the emailadresses/IM-IDs over there. So now there is for emails just a "email" icon, when you drag a file on it it could have a paperclip on it to make it visible there will be something attached automatically to the mail ...
I'm gonna try to reach some developpers of Gnome to see if they find it a good ID and if someone wants to implement it. I hope I'll be able to blog about it again later on !

Ciao

Epiphany load current selection

2005-06-07T17:06:00.000+02:00

Hi!

When I converted from Debian to Ubuntu, I lost Epiphany's "click middle-mousebutton on window to load the URL or keyword search for what's currently in your clipboard" feature. I searched in the about:config, but couldn't find it. Today I took a quick look in gconf, and there I found it! To have this option (which seems off by default - I guess to not scare users that are not aware of it), click the checkbox of the /apps/epiphany/general/middle_click_open_url key.

Ciao !

Burn baby burn ...

2005-05-04T17:41:00.000+02:00

Heya,

Long time ago, right? I didn't have much time actually. My first year Bachelor in Criminologic Sciences is running at it's end, so we have a lot of work and exams are coming near. But, as anti-stress measure between studying, I'm gonna tell you a bit about Nautilus Burner.
What is Nautilus Burner ? It's a Nautilus (Gnome's filemanager - the program that draws those icons on your desktop and creates the windows with all your files inside) extension that allows you to burn CDs and DVDs very easily. I mean, very easy !

Open the Nautilus Burner 'place' window. You can do this easily by opening a random Nautilus window, clicking on the "Places" menu and choosing "CD/DVD creator":
Drag the files you want to burn to your CD/DVD in this window (they will be 'copied' by default, so there's no need to press CTRL to have 'm copied instead of moved ;)):
When you've dragged all needed files to the window, click on the "File" menu and select "Write to disc":
Then you get this dialog:

First you choose the device you want to write with, you give the CD a name, choose wether or not you want the device to eject the disc after writing and if you want to write another CD with this data and then you click the "Write" button. That's all ! I said it was easy, right ? :)

Nautilus Burner also let you easily burn ISO-files (CD 'images'). Just right-click the file, choose "Write to CD" and the burn-dialog appears, have fun!

Here's a cool trick I found in a gnome-journal article:

To create an autorun script, create a plain text file named “autorun”, something like this:

#!/bin/sh
dir=$(echo $0 |sed 's/autorun//')
cd $dir
fullpath=$(pwd)
exec /usr/bin/nautilus $fullpath

To make it executable, right click on the autorun script and set it to executable.

Drag it into the burn window with the rest of your files. Now, when the CD/DVD is inserted a new nautilus window will open and browse the CD/DVD.

See you !

More about Epiphany

2005-04-23T13:48:00.000+02:00

Hello !

I blogged about the goods of Epiphany before, but there's a lot more to tell about my favorite webbrowser! For example, most people don't know about the power of it's simplistic but "Just Working" popup-blocker. By default all (normal) pop-up windows are blocked. When you surf to a website that opens a pop-up window, epiphany will block it and show an icon in the status-bar to notify you about it. If you want the popups to show up, you just have to open the "View" menu and select the "Pop-up windows" entry. The window(s) will pop up without you having to reload the page, and, it will remember you want to allow popups for this page. So the next time you visit that website, the pop-up windows won't be blocked!
Another thing I just have to mention is the "epiphany extensions" package. When you install this, you have a load of plugins for epiphany you can load/unload with Extra > Extensions. One of my favourites is the mousegestures extension. This kind of functions can also be found in Firefox extensions or the Opera browser. When you load this plugin, you can close tabs/windows easily by drawing an 'L' while the middle mousebutton is pressed, you can switch tabs by dragging the mouse up and then to the left or right with the middle-button down, go to fullscreen-mode by dragging it down and then left, creating a new tab with up-left-down and view a page's source-code with up-right-down. Those are the ones I used, if you know about more gestures, don't hesitate to share 'm with us.
Another great extension, the "search" extension, makes type-ahead searches work the same way as they are in Mozilla Firefox. It adds a bar just above the status-bar where you can easily press 'next'/'previous' to search in the page etc. By default epiphany only searches in links on a webpage when you type-ahead-search. If you want to search in all the text on a page, press '/' before typing your search.
There are a lot more extensions, most are self-explanatory, have fun with 'm !

See you!

Edit: I forgot to tell about these mouse-gestures: hold down your middle-mousebutton and just mouse your mouse up (far enough) and you'll create a new window .. the same you do with moving your mouse down and you'll create a new tab. Enjoy!
Edit2: Thanks reinouts who gave me the idea to blog about the pop-up-blocker

I need you, you, you ...

2005-04-23T01:07:00.000+02:00

Heya,

Party with me, we are now on Planet Gnome-NL! This doesn't mean I'm going to blog in Dutch although it would make life easier for me and this blog gramatically much better ;). I created a 'hakergotchi' for a better presence on the planet-page, but my gimp-skills are even worse then my English ... so, if you are a graphics artist and you have a great idea for a design, you can mail me ;), I'd be very thankfull!
If you checked my last post you could have had some problems with the screenshot, that is because it's hosted on a free hosting service I found as the space I get from my universityis rather limited and thus allways full. Though, this free hosting thing I found does not seem a good solution. If you know any good free hosting service without adds (I am willing to add a link to it in the "Supported links" section of this site), please mail me :).
I didn't have a lot of spare time to blog anyomre and this won't change in the near future, I fear. Therefor, if someone who experiences the same fun with gnome as I do is willing to contribute to this blog, you know my e-mail addres ;).

Ciao!

Desktop Background tips

2005-04-22T14:41:00.000+02:00

Hi,

I changed my desktop background yesterday, and thought you may be interested in this trick I used. See, when you set a background you know you can choose to set a picture (you can have it in the middle of your screen, strecht it to fill your screen, have tiles ...) or set a gradient of 2 colo(u)rs (horizontally or vertically). But, did you know you can use a (semi-)transparant image and have the gradient shine trough it ? Maybe you did, if not, you'll have a lot of fun trying it out ;).

Here's a screenshot of my desktop:

(Click for the full sized-image.)

Now, I'll quickly explain how I set this up;

First, find some cool backgroundpicture. I found this great photo of a beautiful girl on the website of RubenV, someone I know from Gnome-NL. As I only wanted that girl on my desktop, I cut her out of the image using The Gimp as following;
I created a new canvas (File > New) with the dimensions of my desktop (which is the screen resolution) and a transparant background. Then I dragged the image I wanted to use from Nautilus on the canvas, right-clicked it to make the newly created layer as big as the image (Layer > To image-size), selected everything on the layer (Ctrl-A) and dragged it to the bottom right of the canvas as I want the girl over there on my desktop (tip: you can quickly zoom in/out on the canvas with the mousewheel, holding down the 'Shift' button, and scroll it horizontally pressing the 'Ctrl' button).
Then I picked the "free selection" tool (third tool-button). I set it up to use the first mode (create a new selection) and to use "Feather edges" with radius 100 (maximal). To change the settings, double-click the tool-button.
Then I selected the girl leaving enough space around her. Then I inverted the selection with Ctrl-I, removed the selection with Ctrl-X and saved hte result as a PNG-file.
Then I opened the Background-Properties dialog window, and dragged the file into it, set up some colors for the gradient ... and enjoyed the result. This all took me less then 2 minutes, and I'm sure that if I had some skills in Gimp'ing, it even would have been less :).

Ciao.