How Beryl/XGL and Deskbar simplified my life

|Screenshot of my simple gnome| Screenshot of my current desktop

Yesterday I was playing with Gnome's basic layout and I decided because Deskbar was so good at locating what I wanted that it was quicker to use Deskbar than the standard Gnome application list. I decided to take things farther and remove some key GUI standards from my screen because I found that using alternative methods of accomplishing the same thing were quicker.

Removed the Application Menu

First I removed the application menu in favor of using Deskbar. It's much quicker to hit the Deskbar keyboard shortcut and type out "web" or "mail" to launch Firefox or Evolution. The application menu is still accessible by pressing Alt-F1. The benefit of ALT-F1 is that it opens the menu where the cursor is. This reduces the amount of movement the mouse has to do to accomplish the same thing. I'm also able to use the arrow keys to choose an item in the application menu

Replaced the Run Dialog with Deskbar by Mapping it to Alt-F2

Normally the run dialog is mapped to the shortcut Alt-F2. Because Deskbar includes the ability to run an application by the executable name, there was a overlap of functionality between the run dialog and Deskbar. Replacing the run dialog with Deskbar does not remove any functionality. In fact Deskbar gives me more functionality.

Removed the Standard Gnome Window List

|Example of the Scaling Plugin| Scaling Plugin

I removed the standard Gnome Window List in favor of Beryl's Scale plugin. Beryl's Scale functionality resembles OSX's Expose functionality. Because the Scale plugin displays all the windows currently open and unminimized at a keypress, I can quickly find the window I want visually and select it either with the mouse or with the arrow keys.

The one flaw I had always found with the window list is once you get more than five windows open, you can no longer see the window title and easily identify the window you want. What also tends to happen is when I have multiple windows open, the only thing I can see is the logo of the window and no more. This makes it extremely difficult to find a window.

Another problem is when I have multiple Gnome Terminal windows open. The title bar with Gnome Terminal is usually the current directory I am working in. Trying to find the window by the current working directory is not enough to determine the correct window and I end up clicking a number terminals before finding the correct one. Being able to see all the windows currently open, I can see the terminal that resembles the shell I'm looking for.

Change My Perception of "Minimize"

Because I no longer have a window list in my panel, I can no longer easily find windows that I've minimized. The solution I found to alleviate this problem is to change my perception of what minimize is used for.

Instead of using minimize to put the window in the window list but not on my screen I now think of it as hiding the window. To find the window, I added the window selector applet to my main panel. That way I can find the window I hid.

Fitts' law

Fitts law is a well know model in ergonomics and user interfaces. Granted I'm not a usability expert by no means but I doubt you have to be one to understand Fitts. This is an over simplification of the law, but I'll try to explain it. When it applies to the mouse cursor, Fitts' law says that the time to hit a target is related to the target's size and the distance from the starting point.

For instance moving the mouse from the center of the screen to a target a hundred pixels to the right takes a certain amount of time. The size of the target also plays a part because a large target is easier to put the cursor on than a small target. With a small target you have to be careful not to overshoot the target and therefore you have to slow down when you get near the target.

Another principle of Fitts' Law is if the target is in a location where you cannot overshoot, you do not have to slow down to hit it regardless of it's size. The target is thought to have an infinite size and therefore it is easier and quicker to hit the bottom of the screen than it is to hit a 64x64 size icon sitting 10 pixels from the bottom of the screen. This principle is a key reason for Apple putting the menus for applications on the top of the screen as opposed to within the window like Windows/Gnome/KDE does.

The key way to understand the application of Fitts law is to understand that it only applies to one dimension at time. The distance is either horizontal or vertical. Even though you may move the mouse diagonal to reach a target there is actually two distances in play. You are both moving the mouse horizontally and vertically when you move it diagonally.

How Fitts' Law is used on my desktop

Though you can't see most of the applications of Fitts in the my screenshot, it is used in a few places:

  1. The window selector panel applet that I use to locate hidden (minimized) windows is located in the topp left. This gives window selector icon infinite width and height because it's in the corner. If I'm too low and continue to move the mouse cursor to the left past the left edge of the screen the cursor will slide upwards into the corner.
  2. The Scale plugin is activated by simply moving the cursor to anywhere on bottom edge of the screen. This gives that target an infinite height because the target is on the bottom and an infinite width because it doesn't matter where on the bottom I hit. All I have to do is fling the cursor to the bottom of the screen and I see all my visible windows.
  3. Deskbar is on the top center of the screen. While I generally use the shortcut to access Deskbar. Putting it on the top of the screen gives it an infinite height. It is also in the center of the panel, although this does not give it a infinate width, it substantially increasses the ease of hitting the target. Having the deskbar applet in the center makes the max distance horizontally no more than half the screen minus the width of the Destbar applet. If the deskbar was on the left or right side of the panel the max distance horizontally would be the width of the screen minus the width of the deskbar applet. I also made the width of the deskbar applet nearly 50% of the screen. 90% of the time the cursor would be between the second quarter and fourth quarter the of the screen. So the max distance horizontally is essentially zero because more often than not I would not have to move the cursor horizontally to get to the deskbar. Moments when my cursor is within the 1st quarter or the 4th quarter of the screen, the max distance my mouse would have to travel would be a quarter of the screen.
  4. The Scaling plugin has the ability to display only windows from a single application, all applications on the current virtual desktop, and all windows. I've mapped the "Show all windows of a single application" function to the top right of the screen so that it has infinite width and height. This is good when I have multiple Firefox windows open.

The Fitts Optimized Targets All Have Keyboards Shortcuts to reduce hand movement ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I am a Dvorak keyboard user and a huge fan of Ratpoison. The main goal of both the Dvorak layout and Ratpoison is to reduce the movement of your hands. It takes a lot of time, both physically and mentally to switch from keyboard mode to mouse mode and vice-versa.

While I probably use the keyboard more than the average joe, it's no secret that we live in a point and click world. It's common for me to be surfing the web and need to switch to another window. Hence the Fitts optimized trigger for the scale plugin. It's also not uncommon for me to be hacking away in Emacs and need to switch to another window. It would be a waste of energy to move my hand from the keyboard, grab the mouse and fling it to the bottom to see all the windows.

To minimize the movement of my hand from the keyboard to the mouse and back again, all areas of the screen that were chosen because they are Fitts optimized to reduce mouse movement have a keyboard shortcut to reduce hand movement.

If I decide I want to choose another window while my hand is on the mouse, I simply fling the cursor to the bottom and select the window with the mouse cursor. If I have my fingers on the keyboard, I simple hit F8 and use the arrow keys to select the window I want.

Decreased the importance of the Desktop

Normally the Nautilus file browser is the central application when interacting with the computer. I deactivate the icons on the desktop with gconf . There are three reasons for me to do this. The first reason is I wanted to use Nautilus like any other application. The second reason is the desktop usually gets cluttered with files, the third reason is that there is an easier way of accessing your files than desktop icons.

To prevent the clutter, I took a cue from Windows and OSX and created a number of folders in my Desktop folder:

  1. Applications, these are user installed applications that would normally go in opt if installed system wide. Applications like Songbird, Opera, Limewire go in here.
  2. Reference, the idea for this folder was taken from "Getting Things Done". It holds all kinds of reference information, generally saved documents that will need to be referenced later. I avoided calling it the vague term, "Documents", because a document could be anything. The name "Reference" defines the purpose of these files.
  3. Media, obviously media files. This has subfolders to keep this folder from getting cluttered
  4. Images
    1. Photos, actual photos taken from my camera
    2. Illustrations, Vector based images
    3. Backgrounds, I seperate backgrounds from photos or illustrations because backgrounds are generally novalties. The name "Backgrounds" also describes the purpose of these files.
    4. Novalites, Images that completely pointless but funny
  5. Videos
    1. Movies, Full length movies that I've ripped from DVDs
    2. TV Episodes, TV episodes that I've downloaded
    3. Novalties, Novalties items like silly you tube videos of people falling over or cats attacking cealing fans. Basically mental junk food.

With these folders I've created bookmarks in Nautilus so that I can easily access these folders from, the nautilus side bar, choose/save file dialog or deskbar's "File and File Bookmarks" plugin.

The reason why this is easier use than using the desktop for storing files is that it's quicker to get to the files you need using deskbar.

The normal way to access the desktop is that you need to either use the show desktop icon, or use the beryl show desktop plugin. Once you get to the desktop, if you keep all your stuff on the desktop, you're done, but you have a cluttered desktop.

If you keep all your stuff in sub folders of the desktop, you need first locate the subfolder on the desktop, then locate the files in that folder. It's a multistep process.

Using Nautilus bookmarks and the "Find File and File Bookmarks" deskbar applet is that to get to the subfolder that's on the desktop, it's a two step process: Click on deskbar and type subfolder name. The normal way would be: Show the desktop, locate the folder, open the folder. It may seem like a one extra step, but the time it takes to locate the folder takes longer to do than typing in the name. You could say that the old method is two steps more because typing a name is so much quicker than scanning the desktop for an icon

Limitations

Although I think that this setup is great, and it's optimized allow me to do many of my common tasks with very little effort and energy, there are a few flaws. This set up is also only a day old and I'm sure I'll find others. I'll append this section with any that I find.

  1. Once the Gnome Volume Manager (the thing that monitors the system for removable media) mounts a drive, I can not unmount the drive from Nautilus. The only way that Gnome made it possible to unmount removable media is by the desktop icon. I'm sure that there is a way to umount a drive with some sort of panel applet but for the moment, I simply run "pumount [mount point]" in the terminal.
  2. When deskbar hangs, I can no longer launch anything. The solution I've found is to hit ALT-F1, open up the application menu, open terminal, and kill deskbar.
Eric Moritz

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