After reading Aruiz and Dylan I think I could ask your attention on that topic.
I like Dylan’s idea of a Do-ified GTK+ 3.0, it seems innovative, making user interaction more accessible and faster. At least, this is my personal opinion.
From Dylan:
@Cimi: it would be great to see Do-like functionality incorporated in Gnome 3, not just on the desktop, but also at the application level. Programs like the Gimp or Inkscape use a lot of keyboard shortcuts that may be hard to memorize all-at-once. Using the Do-metaphor *within* the application will let you invoke functions quickly, and discover keyboard shortcuts in the process.
I don’t have anything against Mono, but for Do to become an integral part of the Gnome Desktop, I think it would almost have to be part of GTK+, because it needs to communicate with other parts of the interface to know which functions are applicable given the situation (it makes no sense to list ‘Crop to selection’ as an option when nothing has been selected).
I must agree with him, sometimes keyboard shortcuts are complicated to use: how can I remember alt+g, alt+k, alt+y, alt+s, ctrl+alt+h, ctrl+alt+h+super+t+f12+enter+backspace? (omg I’m not playing the piano 
I just want to use my computer!!!)
Typing “fullscreen” is easier than remembering Totem is using “F11″, Banshee “F”, another application “Ctrl+Alt+F” and so on… And while “fullscreen” is something known and famous, what about exotic shortcuts that almost each application has? Those are just useless… and dangerous! Imagine if I press “Ctrl+W” on an important document because I forgot the right command…
Now, your thoughts please 
Posted in Compiz, English, GNOME, GTK, Icons, Murrine | 69 Comments »
29 January 2009 will be another great day for our free software desktops, GNOME Do 0.8 is released!
This is a fantastic release: it’s not just few bugfixes, it’s much much much more! Jason Smith did an amazing job rewriting the whole graphical interface code, allowing Do to feature shiny animated interfaces… for all your tastes!
Send to pastebin, imageshack, manage your music collection, access files, browse google docs, open conversations, add bookmarks, control your jedi lightsaber… EVERYTHING: just with one simple key!
GNOME Do 0.8 will dramatically change the way you interact with your desktop, saving a lot of time for better moments with your girlfriend 
(or your lightsaber!) I would really love to see GNOME Do or something similar in our GNOME 3.0 shell. This is the key, the Do key.
While I mentioned Jason for the graphical part, I can’t forget David Siegel, Alex Launi, Chris Halse Rogers and every contributor!!! They did an amazing job, they *are* an amazing team.
So, that’s all folks: go and spread the voice
It’s time to rock on for 1.0!
Posted in Compiz, English, GNOME, GNOME Do, GTK | 28 Comments »
As promised, a small guide for linux on the samsung nc10.
Updated software seems to contain enough compatibility for this netbook, in fact everything worked fine except the “Fn+keys”.
You have to follow this step to make “Fn+keys” work:
To enable the Fn+F5 hotkey (disable monitor brightness) do:
- Install xbacklight
- copy this script into /usr/bin and make it executable: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/175266/nc10/xbacklight.sh
- Run these:
gconftool-2 -s --type string /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_1 xbacklight.sh
gconftool-2 -s --type string /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_1 XF86Launch1
Some notes:
- Check out the upstream kernel bug: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=12021
- Feel free to write a better xbacklight.sh script
- The brightness keybinding should work with gnome 2.24. I’m not sure about the “XF86Launch1″ command, which could change (?) on some distributions. “XF86Launch1″ is the command recognized by fedora after patching the kernel.
- Change the id of the keybinding_command if you have already bound other commands.
Posted in English, GNOME, Howto, Metacity | 16 Comments »
This is the first of a set of quizzes touching the things I don’t know how to code in cairo
I need to draw some “glow” as the one you see here:
and here: (it’s just an example, I don’t want to copy vista!!!)
Something like a radial gradient, but streched!
The first Idea I’ve got was this but it is ugly because of the fixed radius and the idea of drawing it with a big circle…
Ideas?
Posted in English, Murrine | 2 Comments »
I bought a Samsung NC10, because portability is really important if I want to take it with me at the university. I’ve saved few money from the donations which will be dedicated to future hardware issues and opensource-related stuff!
I must say woooooohooooooo and thanks to you all! Now I’m trying to get Fedora up and running…
If you’re ok, I would like to open a page in the Murrine website where I will mention everyone who donated.
I will post something in the future, starting from some guides for other NC10’s owners.
Posted in Donations, English, Murrine | 6 Comments »
I’ve sad news for you all.
This year I will be at the university during the weeks and, since I don’t have a laptop, I’m actually forced to stop the development of Murrine, Clearlooks and all other projects in which I put my effort. I hope you can help me to not have to stop working on Gtk+ software.
Please Help Me
At the same time, being a student, I don’t have the means on my own to buy a laptop, even a cheaper one. So I am asking for your help by means of a donation. Only with a laptop I can continue to organize the work needed for a fully functional system-wide transparent RGBA mode in upcoming GNOME release as well as following your requests and adding features.
So, if you enjoyed my work these past years and you want to keep these things alive, or if you just want to give me your personal *thank you for creating Murrine* or *thanks for the Clearlooks restyling* please consider a donation. All funds received will be used only for supporting the development of my free software projects.
I don’t know how much I can achieve from this, netbooks start at 400$ and if I get more I can hack on more advanced effects
I’ve opened a new section in the Murrine’s website, Feature Requests, where the most popular features could become a reality when I can code again. It is like my thank you for your donations. In that way you’re sure you’re donation will be used to the development. And after donating you can see some of your dreams implemented
By the time I’m writing the post there are seven pending features:
But these are just a few, with your donations I can implement them and what you like!
I would like to thank everyone will help me.
Status of the Gtk+ RGBA support
For the guys who missed my
first RGBA revolutionary post, they could see
how a Gtk+ engine could be transparent
Enabling RGBA
inside applications was a test, but the real goal is to set RGBA system-wide, so
every Gtk+ interface will have this channel and all of its benefits (
not only transparency, but also rounded menus, fancy tooltips, notifications and visual effects…).
- To achieve this there was a bug in the system tray which was fixed in trunk few days ago, and another patch pending in gnome-panel that needs approval.
- Got it, the next step is to write a small patch for Gtk+ in order to give the user a xsetting or an environment variable to enable/disable the RGBA visual/colormap. There was a discussion months ago, I ask Gtk+ devs for their opinion on this topic.
- Reached this point, we need to start testing applications, and submit patches to the applications that behaves in a wrong way (for example Gnumeric or Abiword), or poke Xorg guys if we will find new Xorg bugs.
If everything is ok, GNOME will be fully capable of using RGBA colormaps for its themes (wow a rounded gnome-panel!)
Summary of Murrine Projects
One of my dreams is to involve more and more people, and coordinate a group of talented themers/artists with the common goal of creating visually-satisfying and high-quality themes using and improving Murrine engine to its best.
- Murrine: Since the latest stable release (0.53.1) I’ve rewritten the code two times, I’ve fixed bugs, I’ve simplified the code improving the rendering speed, I’ve added a huge number of new options and now, thanks to the Clearlooks style code it is really modular and supports different styles like Glossy, Classic, Gummy, Inverted for Clearlooks. For example: writing a new style for next Ubuntu releases is possible without a rewrite, I just need to add the new drawing code, choose a name for the gtkrc option, and map it If we ever had released a 1.0, this would definitely qualify for a 2.0.
- Website: First of all don’t forget to register to the Murrine Website, a place where you can easily submit your themes, send your mockups, request your features, download per-application RGBA patches, ask questions to themers, vote your favourite contents! More sections could be added, email me if you have an idea.
- Murrine-Themes: From September I’ve asked lucazade to start developing a high quality set of themes for the next-gen Murrine release, using options to achieve original looks while providing an usable everyday visual experience. This project, called murrine-themes and hosted on launchpad, it is still far from being high-quality, but I’m sure that in his hands and in your hands (if you want to participate) it will be a must-have complement to the engine.
- Contest: The best themes published in the Murrine Website could be part of Murrine-Themes!
- Murrine Configurator: Two Australian guys started developing a new kind of configurator, hosted on launchpad, compatible with every engine, that will make Murrine theming fun as a video game If you are interested in joining the development or starting a configurator optimized for Murrine (it will be better of course, seen the high number of options), ask and you’ll be part of this great theming crew.
- Bazaar Playground: Murrine is first of all free software, why don’t play with the source code? There’s also a launchpad mirror, where you could play with your own branches! And why not, good modifications could be merged!
If you want to talk directly with the few guys that populates the chat, if you want to keep track of the development, don’t forget to join! We are (well, there are just few guys actually) on Freenode, channel #murrine. Add it to your autojoin!
Status of the Official GNOME Theming Projects
The “Clearlooks restyling” you’ve seen from 2.19 was done to achieve an enjoyable professional look, while being original (Clearlooks is not a copy of OS-X or Vista). A theme that could be used for years without getting annoyed
I don’t have in mind another restyle for Clearlooks, but there are a lot of minor things that require always a bit of work: starting with bugfixing to some gnome-panel theming (which will require more work). Two things that were planned for 2.24 are a compact theme (for small screens) and a dark theme for Clearlooks. I would really like to help more Benzea on this side, he is totally praiseworthy.
I would like to provide another good set of free wallpapers, at least in the gnome-themes-extras package.
Another thing in mind, but I won’t personally code for this, is colorscheme support for Gtk+ themes! You choose a theme, click on the color section of the appearance capplet, and select through a combobox or a listview the colorscheme you like. As well as storing a new one.
Donations are important to keep me inside the GNOME Art Team.
Spread the Voice
This post is really important because it’s a summary of the future Gtk+ theming, where I consider Murrine as a great tool for artists and themers. Please spread the voice on Digg and other social websites so everyone could learn from this.
Posted in Donations, English, GNOME, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 15 Comments »
…It’s just easy as creating a Tomboy folder inside Dropbox’s Shares and do a local synchronization!
Posted in Dropbox, English, GNOME, Nessuna | 15 Comments »
I’m almost sure I will forget
However, for the guys like me that usually miss meetings today there’s our art meeting at 20:00 UTC [0]
As always, channel #gnome-art on irc.gimp.org!
The Agenda so far is:
- Introduction, News
- Discussion of the Roadmap Draft by Hylke [1]
- Miscellaneous
If I won’t be online/in front of the PC, these are the three things I would like to see implemented as soon as possible:
- RGBA xsetting/environment variable (whatever gtk+ devs decides) to test also RGBA bugs inside applications. This could start in gtk+ 2.x and be complete for 3.0.
- Colorscheme support continuing the work of giusef (Giuseppe Fuggiano)
- Give the us the ability to theme the panel (with widget_register?)
Hope to see you!
[0] World Clock (check your local time)
[1] GNOME 3.0 Roadmap by hbons
Posted in English, GNOME, GTK, Icons | No Comments »
In the last few days I’ve rewritten the drawing code for the second time since the last stable release (0.53.1), now the code is much more modular and permits easy additions/tweaks in the widgets appearance.
Adding a glaze style like this requires less than 20 lines of code for ALL the widgets and both RGB and RGBA mode!
This means that mockups are really appreciated.
Of course please donate if you want to help me in the development, for more/faster features
Posted in Donations, English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 17 Comments »
To show all the possibilities given by the development versions of Murrine, and the new options it will support, I’ve thought about some kind of contest/brainstorm, where the best themes will be part of a separate package that will be out with the next release of Murrine.
The Goal
I’d like to see themes that uses all the new features, gradients shades, contrast, etc etc… to provide an original theme package, a not a simple colorscheme set
Themes should be submitted in the Murrine website, after registering. That will give access for optional voting and similar things.
Donations
Unfortunately this year will be really hard for me and I’ll have less spare time to code with the same free effort I had in the last years. So please consider donating, thinking that I’m a student and I can’t get money from my own due to the little spare time I have, that I’d like, if possible, to spend on free software: murrine, rgba stuff, gnome-do, clearlooks and much more
I really like to write a complete documentation for the development version of Murrine, as well as writing new cool themes for gnome-do!
Thanks for all your help!
Posted in Donations, English, GTK, Murrine, Themes | 3 Comments »
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