Page Surfing: Improving Firefox in Ubuntu

I’m getting frustrated trying to scroll on pages and I’d like to introduce an idea:

Since we have a full screen app that really is taking up the entire screen, there seems to be a good opportunity to use the screen when an app is maximised to scroll the largest scrollbar in the app. I have no idea how hard it would be to tie the scroll bar into something which could be controlled via the operating system, technical details.

The idea here is to put the top and bottom infinities to use, allowing them to be used to allow easier viewing of the internet. This could obviously be made generic so it could be used to control all kinds of apps (optionally?).

Maybe this kind of thing could be made an extension, something to try out and do some experiments. Maybe others will see it as an essential part of their ubuntu experience.

Your thoughts, as always, welcome below…

Netbook Launcher now Available for Natty!

Hey guys, you might remember that a few days ago I was asked to build the lucid netbook launcher functionality for maverick; enough people asked me for a natty version that I wanted to make sure you guys got access to the clutter based netbook-launcher too. So here you go!

Of course this repackaging can’t go on forever, the packages I’ve sent to my PPA have no maintainer and sooner or later there is going to be major api failure as gnome3 moves on and ubuntu doesn’t ship the libraries this interface needs.

With that caveat out of the way, you can install the netbook launcher (3D) like this:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:doctormo/netbook-launcher
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install yeold-netbook-launcher

If you would like the 2D version of netbook-launcher, then the best thing to do is to install the netbook-launcher-efl which is shipped in natty (and meverick), true it’s a daft package which sucks in unity by mistake, but it still works and unlike the 3D code, the 2D code is still being developed (if only in small ways) by mterry.

Thoughts, comments and problems, please post below…

Question: Ubuntu Simple UI

I have a number of people in my family who suffer from poor eye sight, not blind, but poor. Some are elderly, some suffer from health problems. What they have in common is a reluctance to use the computer to communicate with their family and friends.

Now, I would suggest that these people adopt ubuntu, it’s more flexible that windows xp when it comes to what you can do with UI, especially with fonts, colours and accessibility options. But what I’d like is something even simpler. A GUI with very few buttons that can be installed on top of gnome, which contains a simple interface into a browser, a message/IM system perhaps with video chat and email. I know all the backend technologies are in place, I guess it’s just a matter of finding something that brings it all together.

So, Ubuntu community, what different UI’s do you know of?

I wanted to find out what ui was being used for UNR, but I couldn’t seem to find much information on it or how to install it on a standard ubuntu install. Thoughts? could that solve a few of these problems?