Docky Update – Active Window What?

So a lot has been going on with Docky lately. (also is it just me or is wordpress incredibly slow to type in?) I am ramping things up in getting ready for Gnome Do 0.8.2 as well as getting Docky ready for release. Some of the new features that are going to be included are:

• Active Window Indicator (with background color that tracks the current icon)
• Completely revamped preferences UI, no more crazy right click menu
• Docklet Support with the following docklets: Clock, Trash, CPU/Mem Monitor, Battery, Viewport Switch, Volume
• Orientation support in the prefs UI (top and bottom only)
• Right click menus have been revamped
• Drag and drop files onto launchers to launch application with file (drag images onto GIMP etc)
• Intellihide

Intellihide is by far my favorite new feature. Its kind of a hybrid autohide mode for docky that determines if it should be hidden or not at the current moment. It works by tracking the currently focused window, if the focused window is obscured by docky, it hides itself, otherwise it is visible. It is slightly more intelligent than that however, it keeps track of child windows and “sister” windows and treats them as a group. Things feel natural with it, even when working with multi-window applications like the GIMP.

As well there have been quite a few bug fixes. Some of the largest user visible ones:

• Matching of Open Office apps to their respective icons
• Ability to adjust dock size when no docklets are in use
• Drag and drop support is now 100% glitch free when interacting with the desktop. (no dead zones)
• Reduced CPU and Memory usage by keeping fewer and smaller buffers which are updated less frequently
• Works better with compiz window preview feature
• Focus behavior fixes (lots of them)
• Hover text can no longer “fall off” the edge of the screen (it gets adjusted)
• Separtor was blurry, now it aint
• Empty trash action gave no warning
• Slow to redraw icons could cause docky animations to hiccup
• About a bajillion crashers (its getting to be pretty stable)
• A couple small memory leaks (memory is now very stable)
• Better handling of multiple monitors and switching between them
• Lots of tiny fixes…

There is a lot of fun in the works. There are a lot of fun things we can continue to do with Docky to make it better, faster, and more useful. Some of these will be quick and easy, some of them will be slow and someone revolutionary. The next version of Docky is going to be AWESOME.

You can try out all these new features by branching the latest trunk

bzr branch lp:do

cd do

./autogen.sh && make && sudo make install

Oh, one last thing I forgot to mention. I get frequently asked how someone can change the icon of their favorite application on Docky. The easiest way to do this is:

1. Remove the item from your dock if its already on there
2. Drag item out of gnome menus onto your desktop (so there is a shortcut there)
3. Right click shortcut, select properties
4. Click on the icon (on the left) and select a new icon for the launcher
5. Close the preferences window (if you have bzr version, skip to 7)
6. Copy launcher into some nice hidden folder where you can leave it and not delete it (bzr version will make a copy on its own)
7. Drag the launcher onto the dock
8. Delete the launcher on your desktop

You Win GNOME

Fine, have it your way…  GNOME Do will sport a straight GTK+ panel applet interface for the next release. Do you feel better now? Now GNOME Do can be as boring as you are.

edit – I have been asked to provide a small bit of rationality for this.  The reasoning is quite simple.  GNOME has a long history of having issues with applications that dont follow the HIG or do not look like other GTK apps.  Even if they look better. We can kill two birds with one stone by doing this and maybe go up for inclusion in GNOME.

Slowly learning…

So I have been hacking on GNOME Do and lately Docky for hours and hours of my day to day life lately.  I am slowly picking up on a couple truths about software development.  I am sure I am not the first to realize this, but I am going to document them here for my sake and maybe any poor soul in my position.

1 – Simple fixes aren’t. Try as hard as you like, the fact of the matter is that you will rarely, if ever, implement something the first time perfectly with 0 bugs.  Additionally, the closer you are to release, the more likely you are to make mistakes.  This is not just murphy at work, this is also due to the fact that you are worried about release and getting things out the door properly.  It makes you sloppy.

2 – Never write code with excessive dependencies. There are always at least two ways to write any piece of code.  There is a quick and easy way, and a longer, harder, more thought out way.  Sometimes it can be very difficult to figure out which is which, but I have found a trick.  The method that relies the least on the other parts of your code will tend to be the best way.  In short, find dependencies, eliminate them, be happy. Sometimes it can be very very hard to notice your dependencies, but there are some big offenders.

• Instances of classes that depend on (and are the sole users of) static classes
• Static classes that take in instances of other classes and offer them back as properties (cheat for getting globals)
• Anything to do with the word singlet.

3 – If you don’t know how to do something, sleep on it. If you are at all like me, your brain doesn’t stop just because you have. Sometimes it is useful to implement something wrong and then see its wrong and do it right, most of the time however it is not. I have in the past run into situations where I was not sure what to do, so I picked one of many options, got it wrong and felt stuck with it.  As time has gone on I have tried to go back and fix those, but there are a lot as they do accrue over time. I find now in these situations that its best to just put things down, and let your brain mull it over for a while (don’t even actively think about it, you will have it come to you). Sometimes I will talk it out, like a crazy person, but hey it works. In the end you will still get it wrong from time to time, but at least you will do better.

4 – Do something more than program with your computer. Programming is fun and rewarding, but you must do other things with your computer.  If you never use it for anything else you will suffer from several things.  Not the least of which is losing your ability to type fast.  Sure you can touch type, but your hands vocabulary goes to the shitter.  Write blogs, or articles, or documentation, anything that requires actually writing full complete sentences in your native language. Never let a day go by without writing a proper sentence or 20.

That is all for today.  I hope to get more blogging done in the future, I find this fun once I get into it.

GNOME Do 0.8.1 Released

Announcing GNOME Do 0.8.1

It has been about a month since our last release and its time to follow up on all those bug reports and close them all.  Tarballs are available for both core and plugins. Please note that while 0.8.0 plugins will work with 0.8.1, it is strongly suggested that you upgrade to get the best experience, especially for Docky users. Some quick statistics.

• 2 New plugins
• 38 Bugs fixed
• 8 New Translations

Additionally Docky has recieved a major overhaul based on all the feedback from the 0.8.0 release.  Here is what it looks like now!

Docky has received a minor visual refresh, and a clock!

Visible Changes:

• Docky’s right click menu is now more compact and beautiful thanks to Kalle, our awesome artist
• Zoom is visibly smoother and does not “wiggle” as much as it used to
• Zoom is slightly wider to give a smooth appearance
• Dock separator is sleeker and less obtrusive
• Glow dot color changes to match your gtk theme

Functionality Changes:

• Docky no longer differentiates window items from launchers in any manner.  They are all merged together.  Items can be pinned to the dock simply by dragging them to the left of the other transient launchers, making them permenant fixtures on the dock.  It’s never been easier to add running items to your dock.
• Launcher matching is now much more robust with only prism and open office being the known remaining issues with it.  Hundreds of linux applications have been tested and confirmed to work.  As more testing comes in this will become even more robust.
• Right click menus no longer have a remove from dock option, use drag off to do this.
• Cannot drag off items that have running windows attached to them as this presents a conflict of ideas.
• There is a clock!  And if you click it… something magical happens.

And last but not least, the magic…

Rock out with your clock out

GNOME Do 0.8 released! Rock Out With Your Dock Out

The Developers of GNOME Do are proud to release:

GNOME Do 0.8.0: Rock Out With Your Dock Out

See what others have to say! y en español!

Digg It!

Since my big contribution this time has been in the UI area I figured why not do a full walkthrough of the new Docky.  56k people beware, the images are full desktop shots to provide a real perspective on how Docky will look on your system.

What is Docky?

Docky does docks right

Docky is a dock of sorts.  It has a fisheye zoom similar to what is Cairo Dock, launchers, window tracking, standard features of almost any dock worth its salt.  However Docky is more, and we will get into that later.  What is important about Docky is not so much what it does but how it does it.  Docky was inspired partly out of the need for a class project (college student) and partly because I felt every dock on Linux did one thing or another wrong.

Dock Fundamentals, Doing It Right:

From the start I felt Docky had a chance to do a lot right where things had been done wrong with Docks in the past.  So I decided to focus on a couple key points.

• Make a dock so simple a 5 year old can use it.
• Drag and drop for everything.  Add/remove launchers, rearrange, trash bin, drop files into folders, everything.
• No configuration UI.  If there is a need for a separate UI to configure Docky, it is probably not needed as an option.
• Dead simple resizing, just grab the handle and drag.
• Flawless automatic hiding.
• Extreme simplicity and easy of use. Be intuitive.
• Launchers are applications, not windows.
• Stay out of the way. A polite, one time request, is all that is needed.
• Do something new!

Most of these goals are acheived, and for a first release I am pretty happy with it.  Docky sports every basic feature I have been missing in my docks and then some.  There are obviously still interactions that need to be worked out, otherwise there would be no point of working on Docky.  However, I feel at the core of it, Docky is ready for prime time, and I am proud to ship it!  Consider this a 1.0 release of Docky.

What Makes Docky Different?

Well it is but a dock after all, if not the newest player on an already too large field of Docks on linux.  However from the start, it was clear that with my background in GNOME Do, and my desire to make it part of Do, that Docky could be a lot more than just a dock.  There are probably hundreds of Docks for every OS out there by now, some of them more animated than others, but they all work in a pretty similar way.

1. Take icon from menu | nautilus | konqueror and drag onto dock.
2. Click icon on dock at later time, has the same effect as clicking it in whatever source you dragged it from.
3. Icon now acts as “base” for windows of that application.
4. Return to step 1.

Bye Bye Rythmbox

There are things like applets, and sometimes really shiny things like stacks, but the idea does not really change at all.  There is nothing new being done with the concept, just logical extensions to it.  So when as a team we looked at this set of actions it became clear that steps 1 and 4 leave a lot of room for improvement.  Why do I have to drag things onto the Dock?  I mean I launch everything from there, it knows of all the applications I use, it should be able to put two and two together and figure out what to put on the Dock.  Additionally, doing this repetatively is kind of annoying to set it up.

If Do can, so can Docky

So there was a tiny ah-ha moment, and it became clear that GNOME Do already knows what applications you use most.  Not only does it know what applications you use most, but it knows what music you listen to, what people you talk to, what bookmarks you use the most.  Why not let GNOME Do add some of these to the Dock?  Obviously we wont remove the ability to manually add and remove things from the dock (you can even manually remove these automatically found items from the dock in the same way), we just augement that with the ability to have a Dock that is more adaptive to who you are.

Making Docky a First Class Interface for GNOME Do.

Docky is GNOME Do, really!

Docky needed to be part of Do to make it work, so we had to make it summonable.  Summoning and working with Do is no different than any other interface for GNOME Do (oh and there are a lot now). Further, when in “Summon Mode” as it is called, Docky can add any item to the dock provided the dock supports hosting it.  That means, for the most part, no actions as they make little sense on the dock.  In fact there are many ways to add items to Docky.

• Simply use the item enough in Do, Docky will add it automatically (unless you have removed it in the past, so you dont get items constantly reappearing)
• Drag and drop from the GNOME Menus
• Drag and drop from Nautilus
• Drag the left and right edges of the dock outward to add more items from Do’s statistical guesses.
• Clicking the “+” button when in summon mode.

Any of these will result in Docky adding an item to the dock that functions as expected.  By being a first class citizen of GNOME Do, we can do things that no other dock can, and we can do a lot of things other docks do better.

The Future

There is always a lot of fuss about these things.  Some people insist we do not need another dock for Linux, but I think what they mean is that we do not need another half finished dock.  With that in mind, Docky will continue to progress and improve, bugs will be found and quashed, and the experience and simplicity will improve.  We will be done when there is nothing left in Docky to take away, when every feature has been scrutinized and reviewed intensively.

Coming Features:

• Orientation
• Full dock plugins
• Applets

Known Bugs:

• Docky does not use system font in tooltips. (fixed in bzr)
• Docky has some odd interactions with summon mode when zoomed really small.
• Docky can get in the way of drag and drop when not autohidden.
• Icon zoom has a bit of a jitter on some systems (fixed in bzr)

Docky Update – Bug fixes and future plans

Docky is getting almost all of my programming attention these days.  I figure now is a good time to give a general update about what is going on and what my plans for the future of Docky are.  I figure the easiest way to break up this post is to internal changes and user facing changes.  This way we can keep the interest of those who wish to write plugins and allow those who just want to see the shinies to skip ahead.

Docky Internals:

Docky is going through a little bit of a rewrite internally.  I am trying to clean up some of the architecture of Docky that evolved in a less than desirable manner.  First though, a tiny bit of background on the design of Docky.

Docky started off as a project for a GUI programming class I was taking here at Western Michigan University (I am but a student after all) and kinda fell into what it is now.  As such, some of its initial design decisions were good, some of them were really bad.  I did get an A however.  The good things include Docky’s decision to do all of its drawing in a single Gtk.DrawingArea (big performance win here) and do all of its rendering based off of timestamps instead of relying on GLib Timeouts to give good accuracy.  This means that Docky animates in a constant time across all systems, and the only performance indicator is the number of FPS the user sees.  This is different from every other dock I have used (I am not sure about Cairo Dock here) and turned out to be a good decision.  Really I was just guessing.

However, in the original design there was very little separation between the Summon mode of Docky and the Dock mode that they were essentially inseparable.  One could hardly exist without the other and the rendering code for all of that was custom done to accommodate this.  Essentially, Docky was impossible to extend and add new modes to without custom casing in each new mode.  This is not what I desire.  Additionally, much of the classes had become muddled together, each containing references to their parent class and passing that on to sub classes and so on.  This became a big problem for debugging and made it very difficult to make serious changes to Docky without breaking things.

The New Hotness:

So I fixed things, or am fixing things.  In my polish/breakage branch things are in a much different state than they are in trunk.  The primary drawing area has no concept of what Summon mode is, this is all handled through a service that allows arbitrary plugins to register as painters for the Dock.  There are services to provide functionality within Docky, a service to interact with Do, a service to do Text rendering (very important even though it sounds simple, but this helps keep things consistent), and a service for interacting with and adding items to the main Dock interface.  This way applets, when the API is finalized, will be able to do all these things without having to have crazy implementations or initializers or anything like that.

In general, the status of this looks a lot like:

• Drawing Service – 50% implemented
• Items Service – 80% implemented
• Painter Service – 99% implemented
• DoInterop Service – ??

Applets:

A common request for Docky is applets.  It is coming!  Let me give an example of how code looks for them right now.  The simplest applet imaginable (just an icon and text) is done like this.

public class MyApplet :  BaseDockItem
{
const string MyIcon = “some-icon”;
public TrashDockItem()
{
SetText (“It’s an applet!”);
}

protected override Pixbuf GetSurfacePixbuf ()
{
return IconProvider.PixbufFromIconName (MyIcon, DockPreferences.FullIconSize);
}
}

Easy huh?  There are of course methods you can override to provide additional functionality.  You can override methods for click events, drop events, (soon) scroll events, as well there are easy ways to request your icon be re-rendered should you desire that.  You can also implement things like a dock overlay renderer (no example code here) that will let you do things like a “Summon Mode” to display whatever information you need to display in a nice format.  This could be especially nice for plugins to handle things like intercepting system messages, or doing a system tray (fun), or god knows what.  I thought a nice sample that does a weather applet will be my example for this when the time comes.

Applets will be installed in the same way all Do plugins are, by simply dragging the DLL right onto the preferences window.  This will make it nice and easy to install and remove applets from Docky.  Implementing custom right click menus is also just a couple lines of code.  It’s just an additional interface you implement on top of BaseDockItem to add a right click menu.  Takes 2 minutes tops.

Docky User Facing Changes:

Some new things are going in to Docky after the 0.8 release that users may find interesting.

New Features:

• The drag and drop system has been revamped to give better feedback.
• The fisheye algorithm has been worked and changed to use double’s instead of int’s so it is smoother now and less “jittery”.  In fact I dare say there is no jitter at all anymore.
• Rendering speeds are improved so that netbooks should have a better experience.  I doubt I can get it liquid on them, but I am aiming for it anyhow.  Maybe once I switch to glitz?
• Positing continues to improve.
• Better fonts that match your system theme instead of just being whatever pango picked

Bug Fixes:

• Docky blows up and dies horribly when I do xyz with my windows
• Extreme CPU consumption when not doing anything (rare)
• Autohide more consistent
• Resize can leave icons looking “funny”
• Dragging icons can result in crashing
• A series of index out of range errors
• Removed useless Copy To Clipboard action from right click menus
• Sorting is awkward

Oh yeah, there is one more change.  A results list!  People have been requesting this pretty much since the start of Docky, and it’s going to happen at long last.  I will post screenshots sometime when I get less lazy.

Docky : Work In Progress

So i have not blogged about Docky at all. Partly because I didn’t want to, partly because I couldn’t. I guess this blogging thing isn’t exactly what I like to do. As it happens, I do have something to share though, however I don’t have much to say about it. So in short, here it is.

Docky sits at the top of the screen too

Everything is pretty self explanitory. Docky can sit at the top of the screen too. It will be able to sit at the sides if anyone can present me a mockup of summon mode on the left or right side. Everything I come up with is too ugly to ship.