Ubuntu Tutorials

I’ve been doing a lot of customization lately with my GNOME installation, trying out new layouts and trying to gain as much screen real estate as I can. I came across an issue this morning in regards to the GNOME panel that I wanted to write down / publish. In the short article below I will describe how to completely hide the GNOME panel, allowing your applications to use 100% of the screen.

Autoide.. not 100%

Some of you might be thinking “Just click ‘Autohide” on the panel properties. How hard can it be?” The problem is that the default autohide still displays a few pixels, meaning your applications won’t extend to the absolute edge of the screen. When I tried it initially my panel still took 6px across the top. While that isn’t a lot, it still left a gap and was something I wanted to remove.

I found the value for this change within the gconf-editor. To ensure that your Autohide doesn’t continue to show any pixels (0 pixels), use the following command:

gconftool-2 --set --type integer /apps/panel/toplevels/top_panel_screen0/auto_hide_size 0

You can also find this value in the graphical editor using the following instructions:

ALT-F2 > "gconf-editor" > apps > panel > toplevels > top_panel_screen0 > auto_hide_size > 0

I prefer the command, its much simpler.

There are quite a few more “hidden” settings within the gconf-editor that allow you to change values not held within the normal Properties menu. I’ll have more of these to post in mid-October, after my GNOME presentation is finished for the Utah Open Source Conference.

In less than a month I’ll be presenting at the Utah Open Source Conference regarding GNOME UI Customizations. This topic will cover usage of the graphical  gconf-editor as well as using command-line tools to track and implement UI changes. In preparation for this event I would like to ask for public feedback regarding common desktop customizations. Please comment or email me regarding UI changes that you make to your desktop.

To get started with some ideas, here are the most common changes that I make:

• Move bottom panel to top
• Shrink both panels to 19 pixels
• Update system font to Droid Sans (ttf-droid package), 8pt font
• Updated workspace switcher to four workspaces
• Activate GNOME-based compositing
• Set gnome-terminal to white-on-black, Droid Sans Mono, 8pt font. Disable scrollbar and menubar
• Set custom wallpaper, screensaver and GDM login screen
• etc..

I’d like to make sure that my presentation can cover the most interesting and popular changes to the UI. If you would like to share the changes you make, please comment. Feel free to include links to screenshots, GNOME-look.org references, etc.

Thank you!

Have you ever wondered what the actual command is behind the application you’re launching from the Applications Menu?  I’ve found it useful a number of times, and I have two three methods of finding out what the command actually is.  If there are any Gnome devs reading this, could finding the properties be made simpler directly from the menu itself?

What’s The Command?

There are actually two three ways that I can think of to do this.  One includes the Main Menu Editor, which I blogged about yesterday, the second involves a bit of a quick workaround and the third just uses your browser.  Do you have any other suggestions on how this might be done?

To find the command using the Main Menu Editor you would simply launch the tool:

System > Preferences > Main Menu

Find the application in the list, and then double-click the entry to find the details.  You’ll see something like:

The second method that you can use, and this is the one that I’ve used most often, is quickly adding the application to your panel and then checking the launcher properties.  Because the properties are not available from within the menu itself (again, Gnome devs, can this be added?) we can add the application to the panel and then check the properties.  To find the details this way we’d do the following:

Navigate to the application through the main menu.  Right-click on the application and select “Add this launcher to panel”.  This will add the menu-based launcher to your panel.  The next step is to right-click on the new panel launcher and select properties.  You’ll then find what command and details are being used to launch that application.

Once you’ve found what you’re looking for you can safely remove the newly added launcher via right-click > Remove from panel.

The third method, which was found apparently by accident recently, is simply to drag-n-drop the menu entry into a Firefox tab.  It’ll open the .desktop file, which will outline the command and a whole lot more.  Look for the “Exec=” line for the command used.