GNOME 3.8 gains a Background Menu!

This post was made with another stylesheet and it might be messed up!

magica-small Magica put a spell on GNOME Shell and it seems that more and more users’ requests are getting fulfilled by Gnomers in this version . The latest addition is a context menu in GNOME background that is enabled by right click or by holding down/long press the left (for touch screens).

I bet this new element will receive a great hacking by Extensions Authors!

Context Menu in Background

This (#681540) came mostly to give easy access for changing wallpapers and settings options. On the other hand it is going to be one of the favorite modules for extensions contributors. They certainly can add lots of useful things in these two menus. Specially for people that have large or dual monitors, context menus on desktop’s right click won’t be bad idea.

The feature was easy to be implemented but the choice was hard for the UX Team. Luckily it arrived for 3.8. And even if tomorrow is the feature freeze for GNOME modules (beta is out), I think that Shell still have time to get some new features that are currently under way.

If you’re running GNOME Upstream you will find the new code in :

/gnome-shel/js/ui/backgroundMenu.js

Mattias Bengtsson

“The feature was easy to be implemented but the choice was hard for the UX Team. ”

Actually I think I read somewhere that this wasn’t possible until support for fallback mode could be removed.

alex285

Well, I don’t know that. I am mostly referring to the discussions about what menu-items should add there, and if they should add a context menu from first place.

Stiph

Actually, quite the opposite of the article: this was quite a big development as the background was not reactive (not a UI object), just look at least to the number of patches in the bug to get an idea of the work involved. backgroundMenu.js is just a tiny detail of the work!

Also, the background rendering moved from gnome-settings-daemon to mutter so gnome-shell can handle itself the transitions and the like itself. This will get us nice transitions from gdm to the session: nice!

alex285

We have this joke. When Jasper writes code (no matter if is a lot or not) he finishes in seconds :)

foobaro

Yeah, Jasper is the Commander Keen under us: He can destroy hard problem with his programming fingers just like Keen destroyed the Armagedon Machine only with his pogo stick. Just without auxiliary material.
alex285

Jasper likes only Italian football, because all matches end: 1 0,1 0,1 0…1 0,1 0,1 0
hells_dark

So Jasper is the Chukc Norris geek version !
sramkrishna

hah

hells_dark

Good decision and great job Gnome Team !
JJ

Any of you get the files/documents etc. from the Nautilus in shell search. I get only the folders.

alex285

Do you also have latest Nautilus?

JJ

Yes, I get the search results, but only folders. I created a bug but no responses.
Within nautilus, I get the results and desktop search (tracker) also provide the results.

JJ

i.e., version 3.7.5

alex285

They didnt renspond because it isnt a bug, there is a workaround for jhbuild installations that I cant recall
JJ

This isn’t jhbuild installation. I am using raring. But if it is some settings workaround, please let me know.
Anyways 3.7.90 is starting to come in. So will see…

alex285

It works for me (you also need latest Nautilus). I had a similar issue and I had to link the search providers of Nautilus. But I can’t remember how I solved that :(

JJ

Do you have usr/lib/nautilus/nautilus-shell-search-provider
I saw that in arch, I don’t see it in my install. I wonder how to check if the search provider is working fine.

alex285

Nop I don’t.. I had asked someone and told me how to fix that 2months ago. But I have a really bad memory. If is Raring issue how ever you should file a bug in Canonical

Vincent O’Neil

Great. It only took about 3 releases to get this. -_-

http://profiles.google.com/tshimulu Luya Tshimbalanga

An expression stated: “Better late than never”.

Vincent O’Neil

This feature was already available in Gnome 2.x. and was removed in 3.0…only to be reimplemented in 3.8. Another expression goes: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”

JohnGoodman

It was also available under Ubuntu, just keep the ubuntu settings with Gnome-Shell desktop, the best mix!