More about Epiphany

Hello !

I blogged about the goods of Epiphany before, but there's a lot more to tell about my favorite webbrowser! For example, most people don't know about the power of it's simplistic but "Just Working" popup-blocker. By default all (normal) pop-up windows are blocked. When you surf to a website that opens a pop-up window, epiphany will block it and show an icon in the status-bar to notify you about it. If you want the popups to show up, you just have to open the "View" menu and select the "Pop-up windows" entry. The window(s) will pop up without you having to reload the page, and, it will remember you want to allow popups for this page. So the next time you visit that website, the pop-up windows won't be blocked!
Another thing I just have to mention is the "epiphany extensions" package. When you install this, you have a load of plugins for epiphany you can load/unload with Extra > Extensions. One of my favourites is the mousegestures extension. This kind of functions can also be found in Firefox extensions or the Opera browser. When you load this plugin, you can close tabs/windows easily by drawing an 'L' while the middle mousebutton is pressed, you can switch tabs by dragging the mouse up and then to the left or right with the middle-button down, go to fullscreen-mode by dragging it down and then left, creating a new tab with up-left-down and view a page's source-code with up-right-down. Those are the ones I used, if you know about more gestures, don't hesitate to share 'm with us.
Another great extension, the "search" extension, makes type-ahead searches work the same way as they are in Mozilla Firefox. It adds a bar just above the status-bar where you can easily press 'next'/'previous' to search in the page etc. By default epiphany only searches in links on a webpage when you type-ahead-search. If you want to search in all the text on a page, press '/' before typing your search.
There are a lot more extensions, most are self-explanatory, have fun with 'm !

See you!

Edit: I forgot to tell about these mouse-gestures: hold down your middle-mousebutton and just mouse your mouse up (far enough) and you'll create a new window .. the same you do with moving your mouse down and you'll create a new tab. Enjoy!
Edit2: Thanks reinouts who gave me the idea to blog about the pop-up-blocker

I need you, you, you ...

Heya,

Party with me, we are now on Planet Gnome-NL! This doesn't mean I'm going to blog in Dutch although it would make life easier for me and this blog gramatically much better ;). I created a 'hakergotchi' for a better presence on the planet-page, but my gimp-skills are even worse then my English ... so, if you are a graphics artist and you have a great idea for a design, you can mail me ;), I'd be very thankfull!
If you checked my last post you could have had some problems with the screenshot, that is because it's hosted on a free hosting service I found as the space I get from my universityis rather limited and thus allways full. Though, this free hosting thing I found does not seem a good solution. If you know any good free hosting service without adds (I am willing to add a link to it in the "Supported links" section of this site), please mail me :).
I didn't have a lot of spare time to blog anyomre and this won't change in the near future, I fear. Therefor, if someone who experiences the same fun with gnome as I do is willing to contribute to this blog, you know my e-mail addres ;).

Ciao!

Desktop Background tips

Hi,

I changed my desktop background yesterday, and thought you may be interested in this trick I used. See, when you set a background you know you can choose to set a picture (you can have it in the middle of your screen, strecht it to fill your screen, have tiles ...) or set a gradient of 2 colo(u)rs (horizontally or vertically). But, did you know you can use a (semi-)transparant image and have the gradient shine trough it ? Maybe you did, if not, you'll have a lot of fun trying it out ;).

Here's a screenshot of my desktop:

(Click for the full sized-image.)

Now, I'll quickly explain how I set this up;

First, find some cool backgroundpicture. I found this great photo of a beautiful girl on the website of RubenV, someone I know from Gnome-NL. As I only wanted that girl on my desktop, I cut her out of the image using The Gimp as following;
I created a new canvas (File > New) with the dimensions of my desktop (which is the screen resolution) and a transparant background. Then I dragged the image I wanted to use from Nautilus on the canvas, right-clicked it to make the newly created layer as big as the image (Layer > To image-size), selected everything on the layer (Ctrl-A) and dragged it to the bottom right of the canvas as I want the girl over there on my desktop (tip: you can quickly zoom in/out on the canvas with the mousewheel, holding down the 'Shift' button, and scroll it horizontally pressing the 'Ctrl' button).
Then I picked the "free selection" tool (third tool-button). I set it up to use the first mode (create a new selection) and to use "Feather edges" with radius 100 (maximal). To change the settings, double-click the tool-button.
Then I selected the girl leaving enough space around her. Then I inverted the selection with Ctrl-I, removed the selection with Ctrl-X and saved hte result as a PNG-file.
Then I opened the Background-Properties dialog window, and dragged the file into it, set up some colors for the gradient ... and enjoyed the result. This all took me less then 2 minutes, and I'm sure that if I had some skills in Gimp'ing, it even would have been less :).

Ciao.

Gnome 2.10.1

Heya,

The first bugfix release in the 2.10.x series of the gnome desktop is available. Ok, this news is a day or 2 late for those using Ubuntu hoary/breezy, but I just wanted to post something to make sure "y'all know this blog ain't dead" (damn I sound kinda 'gangsta' ... it's not on purpose though). It's been a while since I posted my last entry but I've been very busy. I hope I'll soon have some more spare time again to blog about cool things in Gnome;

Gnome 2.10.1 come with a lot of fixes and updated translations etc, you can check it here.

Cheers!