Web Technologies, Linux, Tips, Tricks and my Life
I recently made a video clip to capture a bug with Compiz in Ubuntu that has irritated me as long as I’ve used it.
Now that Ubuntu 10.04 is getting a new and polished theme, it would make sense to polish the visual flaws that this “Wobby Windows” plugin still presents.
I also opened a thread for further discussion about this. You can also view the bug report and mark it as affecting you as well.
If you’re a regular to the world of Linux news then you’ve surely heard the news of Ubuntu 10.04’s new “theme shakeup” and probably seen screenshots of the two new themes that are still in the process of being tweaked and finalized.
I’ve been using the new wallpaper and themes since they were first introduced and I’ve began to love and hate them at the same time. I’ll try to explain why.
<rant>
The theme that I’m using of the two is called Ambiance (the other is Radiance, which is brighter) and it seems to be the best based on appearance in my opinion.
Ubuntu 10.04 Ambiance
As you can see from the screenshot above (click to view a larger image) the title bars have a smooth gradient touch that even works well with transparency (seen in the windows that aren’t focused).
The window controls have moved to the left-hand side by default and have also been reorganized, which can be task to get used to as I’ve only finally began to feel comfortable with the controls on the left-hand side.
Side note: If you’re interested in easily moving these controls around and re-arranging them, you’re in luck!
I can only imagine that the thought process behind the brainstorming session for the window controls position and layout was something like the following poorly executed logic.
Windows is obviously very popular and people relate to their traditional window controls. We can use alternatives to these so we are “different”: “x” for close, “/\” for maximize, “[]” for restore, and “\/” for minimize. Now we can move the controls to the left side of the window to please all of the apple fans. Save. Commit.
The window controls are probably one of the most important design points to any theme. While it appears that Ubuntu is going for a more polished and professional appearance, its going to be near impossible get the polished feel of Mac OS X and the traditional simplistic controls from Windows to integrate together using the new colors that Mark Shuttleworth and his team have chosen.
Many people across the Ubuntu forums and blogosphere are repeatedly comparing Ubuntu’s new theme designs to Mac OS X. While they are correct in identifying the similarities, they are missing the fact that Mac OS X is a continually highly polished operating system with the user interface being one of the main attractions. Rounded window controls and gradient windows aren’t going to be enough to attract users the way OS X does.
The Ubuntu 10.04 Ambiance window controls don’t even have decent hover effects for the current window (window with the red/orange close button).
I for one want to see uniform and consistent icons for all applications as well as attention to folders, drives/devices and thumbnails on the desktop and in other folders. The default orange folder icons have been around for far too long and are in desperate need of some updates.
Moving on, the scrollbars have very little hover attention. While its generally a good idea to be subtle with interface hovers and interactions, the current implementation seems to harm more than help. Rather than fading darker on hover or introducing a bolder border (as XP does), it simply brightens by minimal amount. This isn’t enough visual confirmation to assure the user that they are indeed interacting with the scrollbar.
The scrollbar up, down, left and right arrows have absolutely no hover or press affects. This is a major interface failure and I assume it will eventually be corrected before the theme is finalized. Until then, its a major bug in my opinion.
The buttons. If you look at the screenshot again (from above) you’ll notice how boring and unimpressive the new buttons are (apparently I’m not alone). One thing that I’m impressed with is the was they’ve created a common design between fixed combo boxes and buttons. While the general design of the buttons is just not impressive at all, the thought behind consistency here impresses me.
What doesn’t impress me is the choice of colors for selected and enabled controls..
Window controls (buttons, checkboxes, radio buttons, tabs, etc)
Highlighted button example
To me, this idea that purple and orange are going to be widely accepted among new and current users is just absurd.
I’m sure many people tend to just deal with skins and themes rather than trying to find alternatives that are more friendly. I find that I never need to adjust themes in Windows or Mac, but Linux themes seem to have a history of being poorly designed or poorly executed.
I can see how making the Terminal transparent can be attractive to users who know how to even open it, but what were they thinking when they decided to make it purple?
Seriously? A Purple Terminal Window? WTF?
Anyone serious about Linux is going to be using the terminal. Even those who are not so serious about Linux will be subject to opening the terminal to enter obscure commands as solutions to problems that they don’t remotely understand.
I just don’t see purple being as commonly accepted among the male user-group as I do among the female user-group for integration into the default theme. The point in that being that the themes should be more gender neutral with the purple coloring. Especially in the tooltips, OMG! 
Another common complaint that I’ve seen among fellow Ubuntu users (and a recent blog post) is the default title bar font which is very bold and not very attractive. One thing I wish they would adopt from Mac is the use of text shadow. In CSS this would simply be something like “text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #ccc;“. Mac OS X uses a brighter shadow to enhance the appearance of the title bar font in a very slight and elegant way.
While this is a major change from the previous default Human theme, Ubuntu still presents itself as unpolished and unprofessional. Developing a truly unique and efficient interface is without a doubt a difficult task. The previous interface promises that were abandoned are proof of that. However, the importance of introducing a polished interface can’t be stressed enough.
Developing a truly polished interface takes time. This is one thing that is not on Ubuntu’s side with the release of Ubuntu 10.04, which is to include the new theme, scheduled for April 29, 2010 (less than 2 months away).
What they should have done is start this new theme back in the developmental process of Karmic and only installed it through the community-themes package. This would allow people to easily test the theme and provide a fair amount of time to turn feedback into progress. If they had followed this model, the new themes would be very matured by now and especially by the final release of Lucid.
While the final release may produce a polished set of new themes for Lucid, just remember that they could have been (read: should have been) more polished and thought out.
</rant>
In case you were interested in seeing the Radiance theme..
Ubuntu 10.04 Radiance
While there are many other flaws that I’ve encountered in the new themes, the ones mentioned above are in my opinion the ones that are most important. If you’ve got opinions about the new themes, voice your opinions and share your ideas!
I recently posted an idea in the “Idea Mill” for Gwibber which is a social client for GNOME developed with Python and GTK+.
My idea is to evolve My.Opera from a traditional web browser based social community to a client based community so that users can quickly and effortlessly update their status, reply and receive private messages, follow community updates and more.
This project will require a large effort to get going from the start, but would help the My.Opera community grow by making the service available to a larger crowd.
The current problem with My.Opera is that it depends on a community of Opera enthusiasts. Lets face it, Opera has a very small market share when compared to the current leading browsers. If the community is to truly succeed it would make more sense to remove the requirement of being an “Opera fan” and focus more on making the service a social success such as Facebook or Twitter.
With my idea, My.Opera could integrate with applications such as Gwibber and TweetDeck to allow users of the online service to easily follow others, review and update their private messages, keep track of community updates and stay updated in general with the activities available at My.Opera.com.
Here is my mockup for Gwibber:
As you can see, My.Opera would be able to attract users in a fashion nearly identical to that of Twitter with features that already exist and have existed for some time now.
The only current setback….My.Opera doesn’t offer an extensive API to make this idea possible. While they do have some API support in place, they lack what is needed (AFAIK) to make this support possible without fetching and parsing pages designed for a web browser.
The inclusion of this support would be very beneficial to My.Opera, especially when Ubuntu 10.04 is release with default integration with the social client Gwibber.
Making this giant step into the micro-blogging and “friending” era via clients would also be very beneficial to Opera Software ASA’s business model. With more people joining the My.Opera community (after seeing the service support in Gwibber and other clients) the number of people exposed to the Opera browser would be fantastic!
This could potentially be a game changing move for Opera and it would be wise to take advantage of it as soon as possible with the current popularity and high demand for social micro-blogging services today!
If you’re a frequent My.Opera user and you’re interested in this idea for Gwibber and potentially other social clients, please cast your vote to show support and let the My.Opera community developers know that you’re interested!
I’ve been using Gwibber on and off for a while now, but recently I’ve started using Ubuntu 10.04 full time and Gwibber has now been directly integrated.
Back when I used Gwibber before, it was a half-developed Twitter client. Its much more than that now and its progressing nicely!
Gwibber 2.29.90.1
Some people might compare it to TweetDeck for Windows, but it has a little ways to go before its as feature complete as TweetDeck.
I’ve decided to start making contributions to the client via user interface improvements and improving service reliability among other things. However, I’ve started with a simple contribution that is one requirement for me…the use of my favorite url shortener service: U.NU
U.NU is your basic url shortening service, but it lacks a great deal of features that other services typically offer such as detailed statistics for each link. This doesn’t bother me, as the most important thing to me is a short url.
Now that I’ve submitted a (very) simple python script that enables a new url service in Gwibber, I’ve marked a point where I’ve actively began contributing to the open source community (to applications that are not my own).
Gwibber is now a part of Gnome so I’m hoping that when Gwibber 2.30 is released, along side Gnome 2.30, they will include my little patch/contribution so I can use my favorite url shortener in my tweets. This is the beauty of open source. 
If you’re curious about the theme I’m using, it’s the Homosapien Metacity theme. I used the online Homosapien Metacity Customizer to get the blue theme though. You can make your own remix of this theme there if you wish or you can just download the exact one that I’m using.
If you’re using the same web cam that I’m using, the Microsoft LifeCam VX-1000, then you may already be familiar with the difficulties involved in the process of getting this web cam to work in Ubuntu…or rather, the difficulties that were involved.
After countless days spent and hours wasted over the past 4 months that I’ve owned this web cam, I had not been able to find a solution to see it work even once.
The problems I ran into were that the few solutions for this camera were specifically for 32-bit Ubuntu, while I’m using 64-bit Ubuntu.
Typically these days, this type of problem isn’t architecture specific in Linux, which means that fewer people have to battle the problems that are unique to x86_64 platforms. In my experience with Ubuntu, x86_64 application/firmware support 4 years ago was a joke. Today, x86_64 support is commonplace and practically a standard.
After upgrading to Ubuntu 10.04, I was able to see this support change yet again! Without configuring anything in Ubuntu 10.04 x86_64 the video feed from my web cam was working flawlessly (I tested using Cheese 2.29.90)!
There is the small matter of getting the mic on the web cam to work, but for now I’ve got an old mic that plugs into the ports from the motherboard. So I will have sound, just not through the web cam just yet. Hopefully I can find a solution to this as well, in which case I will be sure to link you to.
In the future, I’d also like to submit a patch or hack to enable the LifeCam Call Button like I did previously in Windows 7 so that you can configure what the button should do…take a picture, video, start a call or chat, etc.
I just recently bought a new webcam via eBay for a great price of $5.50 and have been catching up with some of my Skype friends just for fun.
What’s great about this little webcam is that it has an excellent turning radius and can tilt to just about any angle you need it to.
Another great feature that this webcam offers is the ability to be mounted are rest just about anywhere. The base of the camera opens if you need to hang it somewhere rather than resting it on your desk or tower. The clip can be used to mount it onto your desktop monitor whether it’s an old CRT or a new LCD and it even mounts on very sturdy to my HP Pavilion dv4000 laptop screen.
The picture quality of this little camera is great. Not surprisingly, you can pay a little more and get even better cameras such as the VX-3000 or the VX-6000.
With a built-in microphone, I was able to give away my old microphone and maintain the same capabilities.
My only complaint is that the focus ring around the lens was never mentioned on or in the packaging so it took me a little while to figure out how to get rid of the blur (just rotate the lens to adjust).
The camera even offers a one-click access button on the top of it that can launch video calls instantly for Windows Live Messenger. I don’t use Windows Live Messenger much myself (read: at all), but I figured I could play around with the drivers in a hex editor and figure out how to make the button customizable…maybe open the Digsby or Trillian contact list (who knows) so I wrote an application to make this button customizable.
I had plug-and-play luck in Windows 7 with this webcam, however, Ubuntu 9.10 x86_64 has been less than forgiving. I’ve been searching around for a little while trying to configure my webcam that seems to be detected, but the video that’s displayed is corrupt. It seems that it’s a small problem with a fairly easy fix, but I just haven’t found it yet. At least it’s recognized! Hopefully I can write a script or a guide to get this webcam working in Ubuntu for others…once I get it working for myself of course.
If you’ve been looking for a webcam and debating whether or not to buy one then I would suggest this one. It’s affordable, has everything you need and extremely good picture quality!
We’ve all heard the rumors about Google secretly building an operating system…or was it just my imagination?
Now that the news about Google Chrome OS is out, I’d like to be the first to start a few new names for the operating system.
From the Unix side of the naming ideas I come up with Google ChrOS which would be pronounces Google Crow-S (similar to the idea of BeOS). It could be shortened to read GOS, making it “short and cool” like Mac, but it just doesn’t have the same cool ring to it. Or how about Google COS? Or GhrOS?
I’m not a big fan of the current name Google Chrome OS. Some would say that this is a very Mac naming system, but I think Google OS 1 would have been perfectly fine. Even if Chrome is later evolved to a point in the operating system that later barely resembles Chrome as we know it today it could still continue with this naming system as Mac OS did with 8/9 and then X which was completely different.
News of Google Chrome OS has been spreading like wild fire through my Google Reader feeds and even via Twitter reaching at least 6th place on Trending Topics.
With Google’s experimental project called Native Client (NaCl) in the works, it appears that Google is attempting to do something similar to what Microsoft attempted to do ages ago with ActiveX. Where Microsoft has (in my opinion) failed, it appears that Google’s Native Client may succeed at allowing support for web browsers to natively execute code for a deeper integrated position with…Google Chrome OS.
With all of this news about Google finally graduating their entire suite of web apps (from what seemed like and eternal Beta stage to what is now considered final and safe for public usage) it seems all too clear that they have an evil plot to take over and dominant the PC world.
The general idea of Google Chrome OS is similar to what I have been want to create for nearly two years now. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t originate this idea, but then again neither did Google.
Basically, Google will be using the Linux kernel to start up and run in the background and to handle hardware and software interactions. That is all in the background, things you won’t see all that much of.
What you will see is that when you turn on your computer, instead of seeing the dominance of applications in the sense of executables, your applications will be web based applications that integrate nicely with the rest of the system.
In fact, if Google is able to implement this operating system as I would love to have been able to do myself (had I of been able to of found the time) then it will integrate so tightly with the web applications that you will (hopefully) not notice a difference between the two.
This is important for any operating system. The sense of integration is clearly important. Take a look at Mac OS X for example and their strict code of proper layout and design with a balance of clean and elegant user interfaces. If Google Chrome OS is able to bring this level of integration from the web and merge it with the general set of tools and applications provided then it just may be a success.
With so much of our time being spent on the web already, will it really be that difficult to make a move to a web based operating system?
Several tools are also available straight from the web, just proof that the web is the future! Take this web based screen recorded for screencasts provided by Screenjelly!
You can watch most anything video-wise from the web already! The one thing that I’m really waiting for is for large amounts of storage in the clouds for a super cheap price!
Just a neat little cartoon to leave you pondering. 
This is just proof that you can learn something new about Linux everyday.
So, are you tired of trying to copy and paste information from one source to another by means of pressing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V? Or better still, by right click -> copy and right click -> paste?
Well, there’s a much easier way to do this. No seriously! I just found out about it myself after trying to track down where this bug or accidental copy-n-paste was coming from.
Once you learn to use this, however, it becomes very useful and will most likely replace your keyboard shortcut method. It may even be a cool trick you can tell your friends about.
You see, normally if you want to copy text or anything else from point A to point B you will be using a copy method that stores that data into the clipboard, holding it until it is replaced by the next copy.
With this method, oddly enough, what you already have stored in the clipboard is not altered at all!
The method I’m talking about is copy-n-pasting via middle clicking (that scroll wheel on your mouse of course). Here’s how it works.
When you select any text (any text at all) in Linux, you may not know it, but it is being stored in a clipboard of it’s own. To access that clipboard to paste from it, all you have to do is middle click!
To try this out, select the text here in bold red and press Ctrl-C or right click -> copy. This stores that text in the clipboard that you’re used to.
Now, select the text here in bold blue (it doesn’t matter if you leave it selected or not, it works either way). Now, go down to the comments section of this post and middle click in that text area.
If you’re in Linux you’ll most likely see that it pastes “bold blue” into the text area (color and font weight won’t appear in that simple text area). Now press Ctrl+V or right click -> paste and you should see that it pastes “bold red” into the comment text area!
If you see both items pasted into the text area, then that means you can take advantage of both clipboards as well as a faster method of copying data!
It may take a little time to become familiar with it, however, I’ve not been using it long at all and it’s already nearly replaced the old method for me entirely!
I’ve recently been flip flopping between two themes that are offered in Ubuntu 9.04 and I like to have everything integrate nicely.
So, I spent a little time putting this skin together, or modifying it rather, so that it helps give Opera a more integrated feel into the Ubuntu New Wave environment without sacrificing the graphics and layout that Opera has by default.
You can find this skin in the Opera section along with a few others that I’ve uploaded or simply take the direct link to the skin page.
You can also find out more details about the skin there as well as a complete change-log with previous versions of the skin.
Click the images below to see a larger version.
If you’ve ever used Opera in Linux, then you most likely installed it by manually downloading the install file.
Now I’m going to show you how to add the Opera repository so that it automatically updates when you check for normal updates in Linux.
There are some directions listed at deb.opera.com, but they don’t make it very clear in my opinion for Ubuntu.
Open: System -> Administration -> Software Sources -> Third-Party Software
Click Add, copy and paste the following
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ sid non-free
This can be confusing if you’re using Ubuntu, however, I’m using Ubuntu Jaunty and the above source worked great for me.
*If you want to use the latest stable version of Opera, then the above line will be just fine. However, if you prefer to use Betas or Snapshots then you can replace the “/opera/” with “/opera-beta/” and “/opera-snapshot/” respectively.
*If you’re using Debian or maybe even an older version of Ubuntu then you may need to use a different release name than “sid” in the source above, so you can use any of the following: potato, woody, sarge, etch, lenny, sid
After adding the correct repository, you will need to add the repository key. You can do that by running the following line in a terminal window:
Debian users:
wget -O – http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | apt-key add -
Ubuntu users:
sudo wget -O – http://deb.opera.com/archive.key | sudo apt-key add -
Now, if you have any version(s) of Opera already installed, you will likely need to remove it:
sudo apt-get remove opera
Now you need to update apt before Opera will be available via the newly added repository:
sudo apt-get update
All that is left is to install Opera again:
sudo apt-get install opera
You may be wondering why you need to remove Opera only to install it again. This is because, the first time that it was installed, it was installed as a “local or obsolete” package and is not “maintained” by any package manager or update application. After you update apt and install Opera, it is maintained with the rest of the applications that you install and update directly through a package manager.
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