No, I don’t have millions of worshippers. Yet.

For some reason, my first.last@myrealbox.com e-mail address went walkabout for the last three-ish days, but I think that it’s back up now. Apologies if you sent me something important.

Superswitcher 0.3 is out. The quickie screencast (220KB animated GIF) below isn’t great, but hopefully you get the idea.

What’s your bug-fixing attitude? asks
Mikkel,
Raphaël,
Davyd,
Behdad,
Dobey and
Callum today.
For me, it’s fix bugs first, fix fingers later.

Ah, I jest. That was an (Australian) football accident from a couple of years ago. My buddy Wes has taken some much nicer pictures: Volumes
1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6 and
7.

Oh, and in other news, Deskbar 2.14.1 was published. I said that I’d manage the maintenance releases, but I was slack and Raphaël ended up shouldering the burden. And hypocritically, I didn’t code any of the patches, so really my attitude should be listed as meh. But I just wanted an excuse to share that photo.

Which reminds me… I’ve been sitting on some superswitcher stuff for quite a while that I should really push out.

Many moons ago, I publicized my first Deskbar screencast. Raphaël got excited, and soon after had contributed many more lines of code than I had ever written. Mikkel had an idea, a mockup and an acronym, and it was good. Users loved us. Bugs were filed, and blown away. And now, we are officially part of GNOME 2.14, due in a couple of days.

Without further ado, introducing the first stable version: the
Deskbar 2.14 screencast (4MB, in Flash). Update: mirrored on Google Pages.

Many thanks to all the contributors. You know who you are.

Update (2006-03-14): In all the excitement, I forgot to show off Beagle Live integration, which totally rocks (Beagle rocks, forgetting does not rock). Thankfully, Bjørn Haagensen made his own screencast (4MB GIF), and Kevin Kubasik mirrored it. You guys rock! I just like to say “rock”.

Update (2006-03-15): I also forgot to mention Epiphany integration, and the Alt-t like shortcuts, but Raf has got things covered. Also check out Ploum’s Epiphany 2.14 cheerleading. Epiphany rocks.

One of the reasons I prefer Epiphany over Firefox is was that different web sites had different icons, which made it easier to pick them out in superswitcher or the window list (aka taskbar). Another reason is that it didn’t stick “- Mozilla Firefox” at the end of everything, which again makes things easier to pick out. Here’s a thousand words:

Unfortunately, this feature was reported as a bug, and “fixed” (and should the opposing bug now be re-opened??) What’s a poor developer to do?

This little issue seems somewhat apropos of the current debate on Planet GNOME, sparked by Davyd, regarding the “dumbing down” of icons. Again, there are valid arguments for both sides, and again, you can’t please everyone.

More interesting (to me) on the planet were some sexy [1] mock-ups and works-in-progress on futuristic desktops. There’s Novell’s “December” GNOME mocks, Jon “desplesda” Manning’s Lazuli mocks (is Lazuli as in Lapis-Lazuli a play on Topaz?) and Symphony OS’s Grey Paper (PDF). I think that I’ve previously mentioned the Gentle GNOME mocks. Finally, last year I also made some mocks, which was discussed on desktop-devel-list.

[1] Remember – chicks dig linux (courtesy of the wonderfully sounding phrase “yubnub‘s gimyim”).

Update (2006-02-06): tab icons (favicons) as the window icon is available as an Epiphany extension.

Bling:
Compare with last year’s fashions:
And the humble beginnings:

Mikkel exclaims, “Desktop sweetness; your name is deskbar“. Screencasty goodness. What else is there to say?

P.S. Why, the day after going snowboarding (badly), do my abs hurt? I feel like somebody just made me do a hundred sit-ups, out of spite.

Update (2006-02-06): Raphaël (aka kikidonk) has a couple more screenshots. Feel the love when we all link to each other’s blog posts about, well, each other’s blog posts.

Superswitcher 0.2 is out. Bon appetit.

I’ve moved to Mountain View, California, but I just spent the weekend in Los Angeles, seeing an Aussie Rules football match (!), as part of a “let’s flog Oz” marketing event. The Swans played ugly, ugly football. And got pumped by 60 odd points. Meat pies were $7.50 (US!), but they didn’t offer a five dollar shake.

Steve Irwin (aka the Crocodile Hunter) gave a little show, surrounded by various sharp-toothed meat-eaters. Genius, madness, it’s a fine line, that one. And I spotted Rupert Murdoch wandering around the crowd, somewhat less intimidating in real life (the baggy sweatshirt probably had something to do with that). There was a Daddo, various Aussie movie starlets, and I accidentally sat in the reserved-for-Sydney-Swans-members section and was five bums down from Big Bad Barry Hall himself.

I’ve been at my new job for a week. Don’t want to say too much about it, yet. The side of caution and all that.

In Deskbar news, I ain’t done squat for some weeks now, but Mikkel and Raf are polishing a new UI that’s starting to blossom. I’ll defer to their screenshots here and here.

In related news, Holmes has landed in Beagle’s CVS. As sexy as Spotlight? No, but it’s still pretty schmick.

I came to Canberra in 1996. I left Canberra in 2006, fitter, happier, more productive, comfortable, not drinking too much. Good times, good times (sniff).

Announcing a wee program that some might find useful.

SuperSwitcher is a (more feature-ful) replacement for the Alt-Tab window
switching behavior and Ctrl-Alt-Left/Right/Up/Down workspace switching behavior
that is currently provided by Metacity.

When running, use the “Super” key (also known as the “Windows” key) to switch
between windows and workspaces. This key is usually found between the Ctrl and
Alt keys on the keyboard.

Super-Tab works just like Alt-Tab does (with and without Shift), but also:

• Super-Up and Super-Down cycles through all windows in the current workspace in
  a fixed order (as opposed to Alt-Tab or Super-Tab, whose list of windows is
  ordered by most-recently-used first – which is good if you want recently used
  windows, but it’s clumsy to cycle through, for example, all three or four
  windows in the one workspace). Hold down Shift to re-order the list instead of
  switching between windows.
• Super-PageUp and Super-PageDown maximize and minimize the active window (or
  restores them if it was already maximized or minimized). Super-Ctrl-PageUp and
  Super-Ctrl-PageDown do this to all windows on the current workspace, not just
  the active one.
• Super-Left and Super-Right cycles through your workspaces. Hold down Shift
  to also bring across the active window into the new workspace. Hold down Shift
  and Ctrl to bring across all windows from one workspace to the next. Unlike
  Metacity’s Ctrl-Alt-Left and Ctrl-Alt-Right, this “loops” so that, when you get
  to the end of the list, you cycle back to the start.
• Super-F1 moves to workspace number 1, Super-F2 moves to workspace number 2, and
  so on, up to Super-F12. Again, hold down Shift to bring across the active
  window, and both Shift and Ctrl to bring across a flock of windows, just like as
  described above.
• Super-Insert creates a new, empty workspace. Again, hold down Shift to also
  bring across the active window (if there is one) into the new workspace.
• Super-Delete deletes the current workspace, if it is empty. Super-Shift-Delete
  will delete all empty workspaces, down to a minimum of one.
• Super-Escape closes the active window. Super-Ctrl-Escape will close all windows
  on this workspace.
• Whilst holding down Super, typing regular letters or numbers will show you only
  those windows whose titles match that pattern. Pressing Enter (whilst still
  holding down Super) will then cycle through the matches, regardless of which
  workspace you are on. For example, if you have a lot of windows open, and you
  want to get to your web browser window that is showing planet.gnome.org, then
  hold down Super, then type “p” “l” “a” “Enter” and then release the Super key.
  Shift-Enter goes in the other direction than Enter (i.e., up and left with
  Shift, versus down and right without Shift). Use the Space key to enter
  multiple word fragments, such as “pla gn”, to further refine your search.
• Finally, when holding down Super, click on image or text representing a window
  or a workspace to activate it.

Download it from SourceForge.