Wetab on Life

Closing Apps in Window Picker Mode in GNOME Shell

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 21:20:00 +0530

One of the pain points when using a touchscreen device is closing applications while in window picker (overview) mode.

Why not add a “Trash Can” target to the dash or dock where windows can simply be dragged and dropped to close them? It would only need to be visible while in the window picker overview.

Thoughts?

Tablets: Unity and GNOME Shell

Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:17:00 +0530

I have been thinking about writing this down for quite a while: my hands-on experiences testing Ubuntu Unity and GNOME Shell on the WeTab tablet.

Unity

Unity makes a fine netbook interface, but tablet support feels underdeveloped. After configuring auto-login, I was greeted by the standard desktop and launcher. However, launching an application and maximizing it hides the dock launcher entirely, making it awkward to bring back with a finger. Furthermore, scrollbars are difficult to grab, and multi-touch gestures like drag-to-scroll aren’t yet implemented. Aside from those tablet friction points, the interface shows potential.

Changing Brightness from GNOME Shell

Wed, 07 Sep 2011 23:23:00 +0530

gnome-power-manager was rewritten for GNOME 3.2 and merged directly into gnome-settings-daemon (g-s-d) as a plugin responsible for system power policy. Most power management is handled by UPower, with backlight brightness being a key exception. Backlight is managed at the session level by gnome-settings-daemon via its power plugin using XRandR or standard sysfs, depending on hardware and driver support.

To read screen brightness over D-Bus:

gdbus call --session \
 --dest org.gnome.SettingsDaemon \
 --object-path /org/gnome/SettingsDaemon/Power \
 --method org.gnome.SettingsDaemon.Power.Screen.GetPercentage

Why bother with this? On a tablet device (such as the WeTab), brightness settings were buried deep in system menus and cumbersome to reach. With the custom GNOME Shell brightness extension (download archive), you can adjust screen brightness directly from the top bar. This requires patching gnome-settings-daemon to emit the Changed signal (GNOME Bug 658493).