Easily Distracted

Lots of people customize their desktops. Many don’t, but I do.. a little. Here’s mine:

I actually had to remove the Time Tracker (Hamster) applet to scale my 1280×1024 desktop down to 1024, but I think that was all. And I only just decided to try moving the Tomboy and Deskbar applets over to the top-left corner… looks a little odd, but it’s much more accessible. It’s good to try out new things, right? (When the keyboard will do, Alt+F12 and Alt+F3 for Tomboy and Deskbar, and Super(windows-key)+Space for Gnome-Do are good shortcuts to keep in mind.)

How about you? (If you run Ubuntu, read this – which is why I tried scaling my 1280 desktop to a 1024, in the first place).

This is kind of a proof of concept I’ve been playing with. The idea is that finding a file within a folder is often easier by type, and you are often only interested in the most recently modified file. The problem with a file manager is that although you can easily sort by either type or modification time, you cannot filter your view of all the other files you’re not interested in. I previously wanted to address this issue within Nautilus, (and I still believe this functionality would be wonderful in Nautilus), but I ended up doing this much less ambitious applet as a proof of concept.

This applet will let you add any number of folders to it, and will try to categorize the files automatically and intelligently. Currently, it’s more automatic than intelligent as it just looks at the mime-type. Even so, I’ve found it especially useful for keeping track of all my downloads:

Steven is catching up on the latest on planet.gnome.org and has downloaded a couple screencasts demoing the latest and greatest. These files are typically 2-10 megabytes, so they didn’t download instantly. Steven continues reading and forgot about the screencasts until a couple hours later. At that time, he can simply click on the File List Applet, select Downloads, select Video, and look at the top of the list for the newest files. Steven is happy. When finished, he can follow the same process to delete them – without once opening his file manager and being assaulted with ALL the files in his Downloads folder.

Ultimately, I would like to extend the idea to provide the same type/subtype menu system for all files under all folders – a type of summary – but I have not implemented that yet. There are other features in the cooking pot, as well, but I have to get started on some “RL” tasks… like my resume.

Screencast

I had a problem recording audio, so I ended up typing as narration. Unfortunately, this makes the YouTube one pretty unwatchable, but you can give the “HQ” version a try.

• FileListAppletDemo.ogv (Original Quality, 1280×1024, 53MB)
• YouTube “HQ” vid

Download

No tarball yet as it’s still extremely rough.
Browse the source here.
Branch the source: bzr branch http://stevenbrown.ca/src/FileListApplet

Install

Update 2009/04/05: Updated install instructions here. (Some people don’t look at the comments….)

Installing will require some manual modifications.

1. First, make sure you have the following packages (Ubuntu): python-xdg, python-gnome2-desktop, python-gtk2, python-pyinotify
2. Then branch the source.
3. Adjust the FileListApplet.server file’s location to wherever you keep it.
4. Then copy FileListApplet.server to /usr/lib/bonobo/servers/.
5. Restart the bonobo-activation-server. killall bonobo-activation-server
6. Add it to the panel like other applets.

Update 2008/12/05: Added a couple screenshots.

This plugin will display the View : Jump to Playing Song link as a button in the toolbar and/or as link in the Browser’s context menu. Other Rhythmbox plugins can be found here.

Screenshots

Using a future version of Rhythmbox – patch here – the menu item will appear in a plugin placeholder, above Properties. Otherwise, it will appear at the bottom, like previous versions.

From version 0.3, the Open Folder plugin will also be placed in the plugin placeholder.

Changes Since 0.2

Just a couple small changes since 0.2.

• Selecting the context menu option in the preferences will now display the link in PodcastView and PlaylistView popups, as well as BrowserView and QueuePlaylistView.
• Assuming the patch on bug 557152 is applied, this will place the context menu items in a plugin placeholder and allow the Preferences to remain the last menu item.
• Update (Nov 10 2008): Modified version of patch has been applied to RB development trunk, so the next version of Rhythmbox will have this update. Yay! Version 0.3.1 of jump-to-playing is to account for the modifications. Please use it.

Download

jump-to-playing-0.3.tar.gz jump-to-playing-0.3.1.tar.gz
Browse the Source: Here
Grab the Source: bzr branch "http://stevenbrown.ca/src/jump-to-playing/"

Installation

1. Extract the jump-to-playing folder into your ~/.gnome2/rhythmbox/plugins/ directory. Completely replace any previous versions.
2. (Re)Start Rhythmbox and enable the plugin in Edit : Plugins.

Todo

From my previous post.

• the gconf keys in gconf-editor say they have no schema. The main plugins’ keys have a schema and don’t give a warning. Definitely not serious, though.
• it currently adds/removes the ui string when the options are toggled in the configure dialog. I have a feeling it might be better to only add/remove them in the activation/deactivation, and just hide/show here. Maybe faster?
• it currently hides the browser button in small display mode. That has nothing to do with the jump-to-playing button. That should be in core, if it was decided that was the desired behaviour.
• to hide the buttons in the small display, it checks the value at activation, and it connects to the View menu’s toggleButton’s “toggled” signal. So whenever it’s toggled, the gconf value for the small display mode is checked, but I think there’s a delay sometimes. Pushing Ctrl D quickly a few times may result in incorrect UI presented. I remember deciding that this is due to a delay set on the gconf callback to overcome some other bug….

All patches are welcome!

Update 2008/10/26: Added screenshot, descriptions to screenshots, and link to main plugin page.

Update 2008/11/10: Added link to version 0.3.1 and added description.

This is based off of a Summer of Code application I made in 2007, titled “Intelligent Desktop.” Recent discussions have reminded me to at least blog about it. And given my current employment status, I have the time.

Note: You may also be interested in File List Applet .

Messy Desk

The desktop – this gigantic area of screen real-estate – is a mess. Some people use their desktop to dump random files that they’re working on, or have recently downloaded. Others work tirelessly to keep the pretty background picture visible with minimal icon clutter. Still others find the Desktop useless because it fills up with icons too easily. In the Nautilus Desktop (GNOME’s default), icons can get placed on top of one another either by a bug in placement or simply because there is no space left, which really deters from the usability. Personally, I clump different themed files/folders into the corners of my desktop. When a file is added to the desktop procedurally, there is no obvious place to put it and thus no obvious place to look for it. This is compounded if there is a “hole” in one of my “icon clumps,” in which case the hole may be filled with the new icon making it extremely difficult to locate by both file name and screen location. I recently gave up on having mounted drives displayed on the desktop. Anything dynamic fails miserably as their location changes each time, and sometimes they even end up overlapping other icons. In any case, it seems the desktop requires maintenance to work, when it really shouldn’t.

An Intelligent Desktop would overcome icon clutter automatically and intelligently. It would also be a starting point to looking at potential benefits of a more dynamic desktop view. I’ll explain what I mean by this in a second. This is NOT that silly little notification that your desktop has old/unused icons on it.

Automatically Sorted, Categorized, Updated and Easily Searched

The desktop is a useful place to dump files, but retrieving them is a pain. In fact, browsing the desktop for that particular file (or folder) is a pain without a lot of maintenance. My idea requires an always-visible, on-the-desktop set of UI elements that I will call the Desktop Action Window (DAW). The easiest way to think of the DAW is as a sidebar for the desktop. (Don’t stand up quite yet, sidebar haters.) But rather than the DAW being a collection of meta-information or unrelated widgets, think of it as a controller to the desktop view (formerly just a desktop). Performing actions on the desktop via the DAW simply creates a new view of the desktop. The original/default view that is customized by the user will always be available. If you think in terms of Model-View-Controller, the current desktop is essentially everything. With the DAW, the DAW becomes the controller, the desktop viewing area becomes the view, and the model is partially hidden. The DAW should allow easy management of multiple views of the desktop, some automatic (Images, Movies, Recently Modified), some static (Default, Custom).

And you shouldn’t be concerned about a sizable widget infringing on your carefully chosen background, there are ways around that: the DAW could be hidden when no mouse movement on the desktop occurs (like the controls of a photo slide show), it could be semi transparent until the mouse is over it, it’s location could be customized, etc.

Some quick ideas for different actions in the DAW include:

• An automatically generated list of types of files on the Desktop. Selecting one of them displays all icons of that type.
• A text entry for string pattern matching.
• Ability to easily hide all icons, except ‘always visible icons.’
• Ability to have custom views displaying only icons that user specifies.
• Ability to easily open file manager and display all files
• Some form of icon pager or scrollable desktop view to allow for arbitrary numbers of icons to be displayed per view.
• Ability to view and manipulate an arbitrary folder, such as Home, in the same way.

Mockups

This is where I stop the prose and leave you with a couple mockups. The “Overflow” view could probably be replaced with “New” or “Recent” for recently modified files. Anytime new files/folders/launchers have been added, the button could be flashing to grab the user’s attention. Better not to alter the default view at all, I think.

Update 2008/12/04: I’ve started implementing what I was thinking about with the automatic view filter as a GNOME panel applet. Check out File List Applet.

Had this post sitting around. Seems finished. May be helpful to someone. /me waves Wand of Publish +1

I was confused when I was playing around with this basic concept: adding a toggle widget to the treeview in pygtk. The reason for this is an inconsistency in the api model – or at least how I perceived it. With a regular toggle button, you create the widget and can manipulate it once it is drawn. The checkmark is toggled and the “toggled” signal is emitted. I only connect a signal handler to the toggled signal after. However, following this same logic, I created a list with a column of toggle widgets and tried clicking them… but nothing happened. The problem here was the toggled value was linked to the list’s data, and the data wasn’t actually changing. Even though the toggle signal was being emitted, the checkmark wasn’t being toggled because the data wasn’t changing, so I thought there was a problem with my code and the signal wasn’t being emitted. But actually, it would make more sense if it was a “clicked” signal that was being emitted, not the “toggled” signal.

Example source code:

#!/usr/bin/env python
 
# example basictreeviewtoggle.py
 
import pygtk
pygtk.require('2.0')
import gtk
import gobject
 
class BasicTreeViewToggleExample:
 
    # close the window and quit
    def delete_event(self, widget, event, data=None):
        gtk.main_quit()
        return False
 
    def column_toggled(self, cell, path, model):
        # get toggled iter, and value at column 0
        iter = model.get_iter((int(path),))
        val = model.get_value(iter, 0)
 
        # toggle the value
        val = not val
 
        # set new value
        model.set(iter, 0, val)
 
 
    def __init__(self):
        # create a new window
        self.window = gtk.Window(gtk.WINDOW_TOPLEVEL)
        self.window.set_title("Basic TreeView Toggle Example")
        self.window.set_size_request(200, 200)
        self.window.connect("delete_event", self.delete_event)
 
        # create a ListStore with two columns to use as the model
        self.model = gtk.ListStore(gobject.TYPE_BOOLEAN, str)
 
        # create some list items
        for item in range(5):
            self.model.append([False, 'item %i' % item])
 
        # create the TreeView using the model
        self.view = gtk.TreeView(self.model)
 
        # create a CellRendererText to render the data
        self.cellrenderer_text = gtk.CellRendererText()
        self.cellrenderer_toggle = gtk.CellRendererToggle()
        self.cellrenderer_toggle.connect('toggled', self.column_toggled, self.model)
 
        # create the TreeViewColumns to display the data
        self.tvcolumntext = gtk.TreeViewColumn('TreeViewColumn 1')
        self.tvcolumntoggle = gtk.TreeViewColumn('tog', self.cellrenderer_toggle, active=0)
 
        # add the TreeViewColumns to the TreeView
        self.view.append_column(self.tvcolumntoggle)
        self.view.append_column(self.tvcolumntext)
 
 
 
 
        # add the cell to the tvcolumn and allow it to expand
        self.tvcolumntoggle.pack_start(self.cellrenderer_toggle, False)
        self.tvcolumntext.pack_start(self.cellrenderer_text, True)
 
 
        # set the cell "text" attribute to column 0 - retrieve text
        # from that column in treestore
        self.tvcolumntext.add_attribute(self.cellrenderer_text, 'text', 1)
 
 
 
        # make it searchable
        self.view.set_search_column(1)
 
        # Allow sorting on the column
        self.tvcolumntext.set_sort_column_id(1)
 
        # Allow drag and drop reordering of rows
        self.view.set_reorderable(True)
 
        self.sw = gtk.ScrolledWindow()
        self.sw.add(self.view)
        self.window.add(self.sw)
 
        self.window.show_all()
 
def main():
    gtk.main()
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    tvexample = BasicTreeViewToggleExample()
    main()

• WordPress 2.5 is out! This one makes me overly excited because it comes with a built-in gallery!!! FINALLY! And with multi-file upload!! I was just playing with it and It looks like it will suit my purposes just fine. I guess I will continue avoiding the Flickrs and other such community-based photo sites, for now. I’ll probably have to update my theme a little, however… and see if there’s a way to set a maximum photo size.
• OpenOffice.org 2.4 is out and comes with quite a lot of improvements, including OpenGL transitions (perdy) and performance gains. OpenOffice.org 3.0 looks like it will be quite a massive release, aiming to sing and dance. Also see here (Thanks, Andrew).
• Ubuntu 8.04, Hardy Heron, is nearly out. Less than a month away! It comes with the recently released GNOME 2.22, Firefox 3.0b4, PulseAudio, and a bunch of other goodies, like using the excellent Transmission as the default Bitorrent client. I’m also really looking forward to the World Clock Applet – then I won’t have to think about Japan’s and Brazil’s timezones ever again. Beta’s available now.

Stuff that looks good, but I have no experience with…

• Pencil – Open source, cross-platform 2D drawing/animation application.
• Hotwire – Smart shell.
• GNOME Do – Like quicksilver from OSX.
• ReInteract – Super python console.
• Faces Project Management – PM is something that’s lacking on Linux.
• Tracks GTD – If you’re willing to install it on a RoR supported server to help get things done.

Finally

I’ve been meaning to mention this incredibly well designed (because it’s simple) program to edit subtitles (for those totally legal foreign videos you’re downloading/transcribing): gaupol. Very slick.