user interfaces

Missing main menu bar in Gnome applications

I had this problem for quite some time now. It’s been haunting me from computer to computer and from account to account. I went through all configuration options I could find. I started my Gnome and GTK profiles from scratch a few times. And nothing seemed to help. I even abandoned Gnome over this and switched to KDE and other desktop managers for some time – that’s how annoying it was. And the worst thing, whenever I tried to Google for a solution – a totally different problem was coming up in the search results.

The problem was that in all of my Gnome applications main menu was missing. The menu bar, which has File, Edit, View, Help, and such – never showed up. Be that a video player or GnuCash or anything else. Today I finally found a solution to this major annoyance. Just in case the original will disappear, I quote for generations to come:

The problem was not in the .gnome or .gtk sub-directories, as I suspected. Instead two packages installed were the problem. gnome-globalmenu-common and gnome-applet-globalmenu were the culprits. There are two options if these are installed. The first is to use the applet on one of the Gnome panels either top or bottom of hte screen. This interesting applet will insert the ‘missing’ menu bar from the currently focused application into the bar the applet is a part of. This will be VERY handy on the netbook, where real estate is an issue. The other option is to remove them.

Thank you, Daniel and mutk from #fedora IRC channel. You sirs have saved my sanity.

Pen-based computing? Really?

Here is a quote form Bill Gates that made me go “Huh? Are you for real?”:

Microsoft has a lot of different tablet projects that we’re pursuing. We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students. It can give you a device that you can not only read, but also create documents at the same time.

What? Pen-based? Really? In 21st century? For students? Even me, who dropped out of college a decade ago considers pen to be nothing but a pain and an absolute last resort for input and notes. I can barely write anything longer than my own signature, and even that comes out different every time I try it. Stylus? Do you mean that thing which is constantly lost or broken or stuck in the pocket? I can’t believe it…

I could understand it as a familiar interface for older people. Yes, why not. But for students? Have you seen any students recently? Most of them have mobile phones growing out of their thumbs. They can type with a single thumb faster than I can do do with ten fingers.

A pen? Nope. I think we tried the combination of pens with computing devices, and we are done with that. It’s been confirmed a painful experience and I don’t think anyone should be betting anything on pen’s future in the technology world.

To all those who complain of Linux being hard to use

Being a Linux-only user for many years now, I don’t even keep up on the never-ending flame wars of Windows vs. Linux. But sometimes a sentence or a paragraph would catch my attention in a totally unrelated article. Here is something that I think a lot of people will find surprising:

There’s an awful lot to be said about the simplicity and usefulness of installing software on Mac or Linux. In the latter case, you simply drag a file to your Applications folder, and you’re done. Linux package managers do all the heavy lifting without any user intervention. If a Linux program requires additional libraries, the package manager finds them and installs them automatically. In both instances, I can install new applications in a fraction of the time it takes to install something on Windows.

Read the rest of the article to put the quote in context. Read comments to the Slashdot story too.

VaultPress – yet another goodie from Automattic

Automattic – an awesome company behind WordPress, Gravatar, IntenseDebate, Akismet, and a few other – announced that they are starting up a new service – VaultPress. While the details of the service are not completely clear yet, it looks like a real-time backup solution plus some security monitoring and automated updates. This service is primarily targeted towards stand-alone WordPress blogs, not the ones hosted at WordPress.com . Maybe WordPress.com support will come later, but for now those guys are settled pretty well anyway.

If you want to try VaultPress, it is in the invite-only stage now. You can request an invite. And while you are there, please do enjoy the beautiful form, which doesn’t follow the conventional “captions, fields, and the submit button” concept. That’s what happens when you have a good web designer around and enough sense to let him work.

User interface changes

Here is a bit of a conversation we had today in the office:

– I hate it!

– What?

– They changed the context menu slightly in Windows 7, re-arranged a few items.

– You mean you end up clicking on a wrong menu item all the time?

– Yes.

– Like what? “Print this page and shut down the computer”?

– Yeah, very close.

– Imagine if there really would be such a choice. Instead of, say, “Cancel” button.

– Someone should write a virus for this. It will be the most annoying virus ever.