Novell’s New Main-Menu: Slab (GNOME Main Menu 0.6.2)
So, On Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS, I’ve installed [from cvs] Slab after customizing it a bit by changing some YaST2 Specific Entries in the schemas, etc.
Here’s a screenshot tour of what it looks like on my GNOME 2.14.2 desktop:
When clicked on Computer [in the bottom left corner]:
Then, there is another field called Recent Applications that keeps track of all the recent applications that were launched from the panel/application browser/favorite applications, etc. I have not yet gotten this part to work in Ubuntu but I’ve found out how the SUSE Linux guys do it [or well, SLED10 Guys], and have not yet found a solution.
Then, there is the well known, recent documents, that exists in the regular gnome menu under places.
Then, there is something that is not available in the regular gnome main menu, which is “Search”, which uses Beagle-Search search your harddrive, etc.
Here is the actual search window that it opens, which is not new to us (beagle-search GUI):
Then, there is something that I really liked about slab, a control center. Even though I did enjoy the simplicity that GNOME menu had with the preferences and administration [in the Ubuntu Menu anyways], I liked this approach a lot better. So here are two screenshots of the Control Center that comes with slab. I also did have to mess with the code and the schemas to get it working but its not all that hard.
Here’s the control center, when you select something like “Preferences”:
Now another aspect that I enjoyed about Slab is its application browser. When you click “More Applications”, the application browser starts up, and its really nice and pretty fast to navigate through as well. Three screenshots here, one with the main window, one with “System Tools” selected, and one with something being filtered. I enjoyed this.
Overall, I think Slab is a very fine piece of software, and I really hope that the Upcoming GNOME Releases think about offering Slab as a menu choice with the recently-used-apps working, etc.
Update 06/11/06: New Slab Video
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