Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 9, 2011 21:07 UTC (Mon) by drag (guest, #31333)
In reply to: Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions by clump
Parent article: Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Gnome 3 is actually just about the most keyboard friendly desktop there is.

One of the biggest changes is that you can call forth applications by name.

So say your in your browser and have a dozen applications open you can type

<windows-key> gnome-terminal <enter>

And that will bring forth your gnome-terminal. No need to alt-tab through dozens of different windows or whatever.

You can access search this way. Launch new applications, open existing windows, and search the web. Hopefully they will add additional search features to this. There is a lot of potential.

Also they implement not only the ability to alt-tab through applications, but 'alt-tab' through just multiple windows in a particular application. So if you have 10 terminals open you can switch through those without getting other applications mixed in on it.

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/CheatSheet

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 0:19 UTC (Tue) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link]

I do make heavy use of keyboard shortcuts. I have shortcuts for commonly used applications and use a terminal for the rest. I have a workflow where I have a browser in one workspace, email in another, etc. I use keybindings for all window operations. GNOME 3's lack of static work spaces breaks the flow.

I mainly use the mouse when browsing the web. Quite frequently I don't even start Xorg.

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 5:59 UTC (Tue) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link] (3 responses)

<windows-key> gnome-terminal <enter>

I'm curious... what happens if you're someone like me with over a dozen gnome-terminal windows open across two monitors and 4 desktops? (Some pinned to appear on all desktops, some not...)

From the sounds of it, my stick may be shoved further in the mud than most. ;-)

Some interesting GNOME Shell extensions

Posted May 10, 2011 6:43 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

1. Use alt-tab or 'overview' (windows key) to switch to a terminal if you don't already have one active.

2. Use alt-~ (the alt and then "button above tab") to then select which specific gnome-terminal window you want to access.

A alternative is to go into 'alt-tab' and then release tab while holding the alt button (like you do when you continue to cycle through app windows using tab button). Then use the arrow keys to navigate to which window you want.

Beyond that your either going to have to learn some javascript and do some hacking to get the very specific behaver you desire.

Personally I prefer to have only a couple terminals open. I depend on 'tmux' to deal with multiple shells. I have scripts that will create tmux layouts for me and other ones I can use to do stuff like automatically create new windows with ssh sessions to this or that machine. Fun stuff like that.

I used to use screen, but I found tmux's ability to be controlled through shell scripts and the tmux utility superior.

Some of us think spatially

Posted May 11, 2011 15:19 UTC (Wed) by Pc5Y9sbv (guest, #41328) [Link] (1 responses)

I keep feeling like there has been a coup, and our nice spatial desktop has been supplanted by people who only know left from right when it is written on their sleeves!

I use a 3x3 matrix of virtual desktops w/ large dual screens as my development system. I have deeply trained habits for which virtual desktop has what sort of activity, and most are paired for single hot-key movement between related sets. I have multiple browsers, dozens of xterms, 4 or more emacs windows, and other assorted programs that come and go.

E.g. email/IM/browsing is one step away from calendar/general office tools. But it is also one step way from code editor, deployment, and log watching shells, and another browser and set of terminals where I test web services. And that development space is also one step away from sysadmin/virtual machine management screens. About 50% of my virtual desktops are empty in adjacent slots to these work areas, so I can configure other more specialized working sets which are also related to development, sysadmin, or office work.

I have also experienced how GNOME has slowly abandoned my workflow. Session management used to work, but is now a crapshoot. It often fails to restore my many xterms to their proper locations on differnet workspaces. Sometimes in the middle of a yum update, it suddenly slams them all to the same 80x25 size and same location even in the middle of an existing session!

Some of us think spatially

Posted May 11, 2011 22:11 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

I said much the same in a comment a couple of months back and was told that my workflow didn't matter. Switch to something else: the GNOME devs won't listen to you.