Thursday, May 10, 2012

two custom tools

I added a couple of tools to my Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise) desktop that help make it a bit easier to open up some of my frequently-used applications.

For Unity, I added a "quicklist" that contains entries for several applications. I wrote about this in my "shaping up" post on May 5th. The instructions are basically the same as what I used for Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty) (see  "unity quicklists").

Next, I installed nautilus-actions and used it to add some entries to my desktop right-click menu. This works for Unity as well as for GNOME Shell. I first posted about this back on May 25, 2011 (see "GNOME desktop right-click menu"); since then, a newer version of nautilus-actions has been released, so the instructions are slightly different.

I ran nautilus-actions-config-tool. Here's how the GUI looks now:



They've added a few more tabs than they had before.

On the Action tab, I selected the selection and location boxes and gave the context label a name. I tried to add icons as well, but the icons didn't show up in the resulting desktop right-click menu, so maybe that part doesn't work.

On the Command tab, I gave it a label and a command. On the Schemes tab, I created a new scheme called “x-nautilus-desktop,” selected “Must match one of,” and deleted the default scheme that was there. 

Sometimes, changes take affect right away, but I think most of the time it's necessary to start a new session.

The new menu entries show up in the desktop right-click menu under the sub-menu “Nautilus-Actions actions.” Here's a screenshot:



Setting up these tools gives me an alternative to using Unity's Dash (and, in the case of the desktop right-click menu, an alternative to GNOME Shell's Activities Overview as well) to open up my favorite applications. Takes a little bit of work to set them up, but I think it's time well spent.

2 comments:

gman said...

As a Dish customer, I can say I am one of those “lovers” you mention, Hugh. I love skipping them, not necessarily because I hate commercials, (they get better all the time it seems) but because I can watch more programming in the same amount of time. Like the way a Dish co-worker put it: “the Auto Hop feature makes that, put simply, easier, by selecting “yes”, when pop up on the screen asks me if I want to skip them.” It also takes less time than manually pressing the fast forward button.

MALsPa said...

@ gman: Your comment has nothing at all to do with this blog post, I'm afraid.