andrew@thisblog

Indicator Color

Andrew — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 14:14:37 +0000

An indicator that allows you to select a color anywhere on the screen and quickly and easily use it in applications

Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook works great with Ubuntu

Andrew — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:58:46 +0000

…that is all…

Andrew — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 19:25:39 +0000

So..yeah…not many people like the look of the new Ubuntu One interface, however I didn’t think it needed to be scrapped, just a little refining (still following the Ubuntu Brand Guidelines) and it can look great (or at least I think so!)

(Here is the current interface http://cdn.omgubuntu.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/screen-shot-2012-03-08-at-11.27.40.jpg)

HowTo: Pack Gtk CellRenderers vertically in a Gtk TreeView

Andrew — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:54:59 +0000

[...]
var treeview = Gtk.TreeView();
var column = new Gtk.TreeViewColumn();

var cellrenderer_1 = Gtk.CellRendererPixbuf();
var cellrenderer_2 = Gtk.CellRendererText();

column.add_attribute(cellrenderer_1, "pixbuf", 0);
column.add_attribute(cellrenderer_2, "markup", 1);

(column.get_area() as Gtk.Orientable).set_orientation(Gtk.Orientation.VERTICAL);

column.pack_start(cellrenderer_1, false);
column.pack_start(cellrenderer_2, false);

treeview.append_column(column);
[...]

Cairo Context/Surface to Gdk Pixbuf

Andrew — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:14:05 +0000

Cairo Surface to Gdk Pixbuf

Gdk.pixbuf_get_from_surface(surface, 0, 0, surface.get_width(), surface.get_height());

Cairo Context to Gdk Pixbuf

Gdk.pixbuf_get_from_surface(context.get_target(), 0, 0, context.get_target().get_width(), context.get_target().get_height());

That is all…

Ubuntu 11.10 – Windows lose titlebar

Andrew — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:35:31 +0000

Just a quick fix, if you find that all of your windows in Ubuntu lose their titlebar’s when maximised and want the previous behaviour back, just modify the gconf key that lives under:

/apps/metacity/general/show_maximized_titlebars

That is all

SlickPanel 0.02 Released!

Andrew — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:34:01 +0000

Hi! After a long wait, SlickPanel 0.02 has been released.

The changes in this release include lots of bug fixes, but most of all the ability to configure your panel. While not all of this is completely finished (some things like changing the background of the panel and its orientation and not fully complete yet), the majority is.

To configure SlickPanel, all you have to do is run:

slickpanel-settings

And you will open the SlickPanel Settings application:

Remember that this is still early days and so SlickPanel is not what I would call stable yet However if you do want to try it out, check out the installation instructions here.

Development of SlickPanel : Configuration

Andrew — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:58:54 +0000

I thought since it has been a while since I posted anything on SlickPanel, I would update you on what I am currently doing on it. At the moment I am both creating a configuration backend for SlickPanel and a program to configure it. To do this I am parsing an XML file (with libxml2) which looks something like this:

All of this code, which is both common to the actual panel, and the settings program is compiled into a static library so that I can call it from both applications.

The settings program itself will look something like this:

Of course all is coded in Vala and GTK3

LetMeRead : Google Reader

Andrew — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 17:45:55 +0000

While I think the new Google Reader changes are miles better than the old Google Reader, like others, I think the chrome takes up too much space, and not enough room is allocated to the actual RSS items you are reading.

So I fired up Greasemonkey and created a userscript called LetMeRead that does two things:

Reduces padding on the top bars of Google Reader and adds a border to the right of the sidebar
Adds a Show/Hide button to toggle the visibility of the secondary bar (contains the subscribe button etc.)

Google Reader with LetMeRead installed and the toolbar hidden

Google Reader with LetMeRead installed and the toolbar showing

Google Reader without LetMeRead installed

It has been designed to integrate flawlessly into Google Reader itself and be as unobtrusive as possible. You can install it from its page on userscripts.org

Presenting SlickPanel

Andrew — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 17:47:38 +0000

When I switched to Oneiric, I tried Unity and GNOME Shell however I found I preferred my classic setup of GNOME Panel and used a external application launcher.

However, I was surprised to find that GNOME Panel had not very well maintained in Oneiric. In fact it is buggy and I had to go through some effort to get Indicators working on it.

After looking at GNOME Panel and other options (such as wingpanel) I realised there was not a quick, stable, extensible (and pretty!) desktop panel for GTK.

So I made one

SlickPanel is a modern panel that provides common tools such as a list of open windows and an indicator bar.

Its goals are:

Provide a robust, and quick desktop panel
Make it easy to customise and extend, rather than hide options
Use modern technologies rather than be backwards-compatible
Make it easy to hack on!

Current Status

SlickPanel is not ready for production use, this is an alpha release. Currently it will provide a panel at the top of the screen, containing a list of open windows (which can be minimized, maximized etc.) and the list of indicators.

In the next release I will try to focus on customisability (is that a word?) – making it easy to configure SlickPanel exactly the way you want it (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/slickpanel/+spec/configuration).

How to Install

Add the SlickPanel Daily PPA to your Software Sources and the install the package slickpanel. Then run it using the command slickpanel

More Info

All other information can be found on Launchpad (launchpad.net/slickpanel) and if anyone wants to get involved with developing etc. please get in touch (launchpad.net/~and471)