ADeskBar 0.4, Available For Download [Lightweight Application Launcher]

If you use Lubuntu or another LXDE / Openbox based Linux distribution, you could give ADeskBar - a lightweight application launcher for Openbox -, a try. Even though it's especially designed for Openbox, ADeskbar also works great under Gnome or XFCE.

The latest ADeskBar version (0.4) which has been released 2 days ago, comes with a new menu and easy configuration.

ADeskBar has most features other popular docks have, such as a panel mode, different styles (Edgy, Floaty and 3D) and icon effects, autohide and intellihide, configurable screen position, transparency (including fake transparency when compositing is not available) and many other features. Of course, ADeskBar also comes with some built-in applets such as a menu, show desktop icon, terminal, volume mixer or digital clock. There's also a notification area applet - to use it, make sure you firstly remove any other existing notification areas or else it won't work.

Besides the standard "tasklist" way of displaying your open windows, ADeskBar also comes with a "Window list" plugin (like the Window List plugin for the Gnome panel - I'm not sure if there's one for LXpanel as well) which can display the running applications in a list.

And finally, every bit of the way ADeskBar looks can be configured through the advanced options:

Here is a quick screencast with the latest ADeskBar 0.4 in action (recorded by the ADeskBar developer, ADcomp):



(Video available in HTML5 if you've enabled it on YouTube)


Download ADeskBar 0.4.1 (includes Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint / CrunchBang Linux .deb as well as source files)

Thanks to Marcin Mach @ Netbit73 for the tip!

Kupfer v202 Adds Ubuntu AppIndicator Support

Kupfer is an alternative to Gnome DO, heavily inspired by Quicksilver (Mac). What does it do? It's a quick launcher - an application you can use to easily control different applications and/or actions via plugins.

Kupfer v202 has been released today, finally adding AppIndicator (application indicator) support for Ubuntu users.

Kupfer v202 also adds an option to hide Kupfer when focus is lost - this is now enabled by default, as well as other minor tweaks and updated/new translations. Full changelog.

(Kupfer AppIndicator)

Add the Kupfer PPA and install the latest Kupfer in Ubuntu using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kupfer-team/ppa && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kupfer

And two Kupfer tips:

1. Download and install Kupfer monochrome icons

2. To remove the titlebar (and make Kupfer look like in our screenshot), run the following command in a terminal:

sudo gedit /usr/share/kupfer/kupfer/ui/browser.py

Then search for "self.window.add(widget)" and under it, paste this:

self.window.set_decorated(False)
self.window.set_border_width(6)

This last tip is thanks to Pablo @ glatelier.

Skylight Launcher Application for Windows

Skylight is an application launcher for Windows that can be used to launch application, search files, look up meanings of words in online dictionaries, search Google, YouTube etc. For those familiar with this type of applications, Skylight is very similar to Blaze or Gnome-Do.

After installing the application, a small icon will show up in your tray bar. You can run the application either by clicking the icon, or by a hot-key combination (the default one it Alt+Space). It works quite quickly, despite the fact it uses over 70.000K out of the Memory Usage.

You can start by typing the name of the application you want to launch and it will generate a drop down list with all the programs matching your search criteria (as you can see in the screenshot above).

If you want to search for a file, a word in the dictionary, or search YouTube, you have to click the extreeeemly small arrows in the left (when not selected they have the same colour as the background so you'll have to really want to find them).

Skylight also understands acronyms, missing letters and typing errors. This allows you to type any letters that are be in the name of the program you are looking for and Skylight will find it.

Main Features

- search inside any document, e-mail or notebook
- inline calculator
- folder browser with filtering
- YouTube search
- send e-mail (using default application)
- built-in text to speech converter

Download Skylight

Application seen on Instant Fundas

Blaze: The Smartest Application Launcher For Windows [ Open Source ]

Blaze is an application launcher, like Launchy or Gnome Do, for Windows only, but unlike thouse 2, Blaze is not a common application launcher. Yes, Blaze has the ability to index all your applications so you can easily launch them and it also allows to browse the web and the files on your computer.

But - and here is where the interesting part comes in - Blaze has the power to automate recurrent tasks. Here is how it works: Blaze watches silently in the background, waiting to observe you performing repetitive tasks. When it spots something, Blaze will alert you and offer to create an action to handle the task next time.

If Blaze comes up with a suggestion which is not what you were looking for exactly, you can tweak the suggestion to your liking before giving Blaze a go ahead to perform it. You can click on the arrows to cycle through the various suggestions that Blaze has to offer, you can increase or decrease the number of repetitions that should be performed, you can control the speed with which the automation is performed allowing you a chance to jump in if something is not right.

Another great Blaze feature is that is able to understand typos therefore, you don't have to be so careful while typing a command:

Just like with Launchy or Gnome Do, you cannot fully understand exactly what this application does until you actually use it.

Blaze is free, open-source and works on Microsoft Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, in both 32 and 64 bits versions. It also comes with a portable version but you still need .NET Framework 3.5.

Download BLAZE

[via makeuseof]

[Linux] Remove The Clutter On Your Gnome Panels With Drop-Down Launchers

This isn't something new, but I for one didn't know what the "Drawer" Gnome panel applet does so I thought I'd write about it.

If you're like me and want to have all the commonly used applications one click away, you probably have a lot of launchers on your Gnome panel(s) (I only have one which makes it even worse). But you can create drop-downs for these launchers, so that they take up a lot less space, and you don't even need to install anything. Here's how:

Right click on one of your panels and select "Add to Panel", then choose "Drawer". That's mostly about it. Now all you have to do is either right click the newly created "drawer" and select "Add to Drawer" to add other panels applets in the drop-down, or you can drag any launchers you have on your Gnome panel to the drawer.

This way, you can create a single drop-down launcher for, let's say: your browsers (I for one like to use multiple browsers at one from time to time), for Internet applications, multimedia and so on. Basically, this way, you can have your own custom Gnome menu with just common used applications, 1 click away. Well, actually 2 clicks, but that's close enough.

Further more, you can customize each individual drawer: modify it's size, icon and so on. For that, just right click it and select "Properties".