Daily Archives: July 30, 2010

Improved Thumbnails In Nautilus

Published by kyleabaker on July 30, 2010 in How-To, Linux, Multimedia, Open Source, Picture and Ubuntu. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , .
This is how your images look by default.

If you’re using Ubuntu 10.04 or newer then you’ve probably seen the borders around your thumbnail pictures and movies.

nautilus thumbnail frames default 300x221 Improved Thumbnails In Nautilus

This is how your images look by default.

You may like them with a thick white border, but if you’re looking for something a little sharper then give my thumbnail frame tweak a try!

nautilus thumbnail frames modified 300x221 Improved Thumbnails In Nautilus

This is how they look with my tweak!

The image that you’ll be downloading to use from me gives the thumbnails a drop-shadow effect and gives them a bit of a 3D stylish feel rather than a rounded clunky feel.

Open a terminal window and copy/paste the following commands to install or remove.

How to Install

  1. wget http://a.imageshack.us/img135/8666/thumbnailframe.png
  2. sudo mv thumbnailframe.png /usr/share/pixmaps/nautilus/thumbnail_frame.png
  3. killall nautilus

Restore to original

  1. wget http://a.imageshack.us/img651/5790/thumbnailframey.png
  2. sudo mv thumbnailframey.png /usr/share/pixmaps/nautilus/thumbnail_frame.png
  3. killall nautilus

Enjoy the new style thumbnails if you like them! This was brought about by a thread at UbuntuForums.org entitled “Changing the Nautilus ugly thick white border for thumbnails“. You can post either here or at the forums for help or general friendly comments!

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Ubuntu 10.10 Message and Sound Indicator Updates

Published by kyleabaker on July 30, 2010 in Linux, Multimedia, News, Open Source, Operating Systems, Picture and Ubuntu. 7 Comments Tags: , .
Messaging Menu updates bring highlighted message counts!

The indicator menus have seen some more slight improvements in the latest updates and they’re beginning to take shape nicely!

Messaging Menu Highlights

ubuntu 10 10 message indicator menu updates Ubuntu 10.10 Message and Sound Indicator Updates

Messaging Menu updates bring highlighted message counts!

The new updates to the Messaging Menu have brought highlighted message counts so that new messages can be easily recognized. The updates aren’t final and have caused a slight misalignment (as you can see on the left margin of the menu), but they do look promising!

I was unaware that this change was in the pipeline, but I must say that I fully approve.

I suspect that the next step will be to configure a color change for the bubbles and text for when the menu entry is hovered, as the bubble and text are hardly legible in this instance.

ubuntu 10 10 message indicator menu updates inlegible 300x161 Ubuntu 10.10 Message and Sound Indicator Updates

Notice the difficulty in reading the message count.

Sound Menu Playlists

ubuntu 10 10 sound indicator menu updates 300x160 Ubuntu 10.10 Message and Sound Indicator Updates

Menu updates bring Playlists into the picture.

You’ve probably seen, in my previous posts regarding the sound menu, that Playlist integration has been planned from the beginning. Only recently have the signs of inclusion seen the light of day.

The new Playlist sub-menu looks to be very promising and a real time saver if you’re the type of person to create mood-lists. icon razz Ubuntu 10.10 Message and Sound Indicator Updates

That being said, it looks to be a while longer before your listed Playlists are of any use. The current listed Playlists as seen in the image above are apparently faux placeholders until the real code to embed them in menus is written and committed.

Sound Menu Play Buttons

In the latest updates, I also notice that the selected hot spots for the play buttons (previous, play/pause, next) have changed. Looking through the code last week I found the code behind the buttons and they are temporarily rectangular hot spots rather than shaped to form the visible buttons.

Seeing this, I spent a short bit of time writing a fix and submitted a potential patch for this to LaunchPad. In the latest updates, they’ve not yet included my patch or written their own fix, but the rectangular hot spots have been fine tuned a bit.

If you’re waiting for features to be completed or have found a nagging bug, I encourage you to download the source code, fix it and submit a patch! After all, this is what Open Source is all about! icon wink Ubuntu 10.10 Message and Sound Indicator Updates

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