The only problem was that the old 48-pixel icon that came with this version for Windows looked pretty hideous in my lovely new Gnome 3 Shell and Gnome Do menus. Customizing these icons means replacing whatever file the system is using for the default image. Conceptually, this is very straightforward. In reality, the location of these icon images is not always obvious. This post will explain how to replace icons for Windows applications running on Linux via Wine in as concise a manner as possible.

Find or Create New Icon Images

A quick search online gave me exactly what I was looking for: a 128-pixel PNG of the Photoshop 7 icon! It doesn’t always work out to be that easy. Or maybe you want to create your own, original icon. Whatever the case, you just need to create your icon as big as you need it or even a little larger, usually 128, 256, 512 or some other square dimensions that are divisible by 8.

Replace Default Icon Image File

Usually Linux systems will save icon image files somewhere around here:

/usr/share/pixmaps

or here:

/usr/share/icons/your_icon_themes_name/

but Wine saves these icons in a special place no doubt due to the “special” nature of running Windows applications on Linux:

/home/your_username/.local/share/icons/

In my specific case on Ubuntu 11.10 I found a folder titled “hicolor” in the “icons” folder. And inside of that I found the 48-pixel Photoshop 7 icon file in folders titled “48×48″ and “apps”. So I created a new folder titled “128×128″ as well as a folder titled “apps” inside of that.

And, finally, to correctly add a new icon image file navigate to that location and …

1. Find the icon that you would like to replace.
2. In another file browser window navigate to your new icon image file.
3. Copy your new image file to … /icons/128×128/apps.
4. Navigate back to … /icons/48×48/apps and copy the complete filename of the original image file.
5. Return to …/icons/128×128/apps and update the filename of your new icon file by pasting in the copied filename.

In my case the filename was not as simple as “photoshop.png”. It had some arbitrary letters and numbers in it, so make sure the filename is the exact same otherwise it might not work.

Log out and log in to see if you are successful!

Read it for yourself, but here are some of the main points of this ridiculous rant that attempts to make Steve Jobs look like a man that sells snake oil:

Original Macintosh

“What did this pretty beige box offer that a hundred other computers didn’t already offer, besides a higher price, much less choice in software and no compatibility with the rest of the world’s devices?”

Well, for starters, it had the first really successful, useful, graphical user interface powered by a mouse. This change in UI was so good and apparently successful that Microsoft made a really bad copy of it. I’m sure in your list of features and bang-for-buck you aren’t giving this important accomplishment much value. I just don’t see how, as an honest technology journalist, you can brush off the Macintosh as overpriced crap. Are you still working sans mouse today?

Apple Lisa

“Who remembers the Apple Lisa, a chunky desktop that sold for $9,995 in1983?”

OK. So the Lisa was a financial failure and a technological dead end thanks to the success of the Macintosh (see above). The price? Well, nobody put a gun to your head. Besides, Steve Jobs was kicked off of the Lisa team and as a result worked on the Macintosh. (see above)

Apple Newton

“Who remembers the Newton, a $700 PDA/paperweight?”

Try doing some research. You are conflating Steve Jobs with Apple. Steve Jobs left Apple in 1985. The Newton project was started in 1987. One of the first things Jobs did after becoming the Apple CEO in 1997 was kill the Newton.

NeXT

“Then there was the NeXT computer, to which Jobs devoted a decade of his life … starting at $6,500, Jobs sold only 50,000 units ever.”

Yes, the NeXT computers never sold well, but you make it sound like Jobs wasted a decade of his life on a complete failure. Maybe you didn’t know this – again, research – but the NeXT operating system was more highly regarded than the hardware. So much so that, when Apple was circling the drain after failing to build their own next-gen operating system, they purchased NeXT. This purchase is how Steve Jobs returned to Apple and also how Apple ended up with the operating system that it runs today. Without Steve Jobs’s return and that operating system – now called OSX – Apple wouldn’t exist today.

iPod

At this point you actually start giving Steve credit for creating something useful. But you still go on to piss and moan about paying higher prices for prettier things like Apple products have no real value above the competition. Never mind that you say this at a time when the rest of the consumer computer companies are struggling to build iPad and MacBook Air knock-offs at the same price point as Apple.

Discover magazine should be ashamed of themselves for publishing this misguided, lazy and factually incorrect editorial as though it were objective journalism. It makes me question everything else I read in their magazine.

There’s also a program called easystroke that employs mouse gestures for executing shortcuts. The only reason I know this is because someone smarter than myself described the solution on the Ubuntu Forums. So, to “stinkeye” of the magical land of “Woop Woop”, I bequeath a laurel . . . and hearty handshake for answering this question about keyboard and mouse shortcuts in Gnome 3. Though I am including two solutions below, I recommend the xbindkeys solution.

First, descriptions of what  xdotool, xbindkeys and easystroke do:

• xdotool
  This tool is invisible. You will not directly use it. But it will give you the ability to compose a commandline instruction for telling your computer that a button or group of buttons have been pressed. There is more to it than that, but for our purposes that’s all that matters.
• xbindkeys
  This tool allows you to use bind keyboard and mouse keys to shell commands.
• easystroke
  This tool allows you to use “mouse gestures” to submit commands to your computer. Mouse gestures are akin to the “touch gestures” that are an important part of newer touch interface computer systems like Apple’s iOS and even OSX via their ever-growing touchpads as well as Android, Windows Phone 7, etc. etc. The instructions below will be using this program to merely press a mouse button. I won’t be talking about gestures today.

Making a Mouse Button Make Things Happen with xbindkeys

As described above my only motivation for this functionality is to summon the Gnome Shell Overview. The directions below will describe how to do that. Feel free to substitute your own functionality as you see fit. Hopefully the instructions will be written in a clear enough way as to make that easy to do.

1. AssignKeyboard Input to the Desired Functionality
   System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts
   In my case I set Show the activities overview to the Menu key, because I use the Super/Windows key for Third- and Fourth-level switching.
2. Install xdotool and xbindkeys 
   You’ll have to figure out the best/easiest way to do this for your flavor of Linux. If you are running Ubuntu you can install them via the Software Center or:

   sudo apt-get install xbindkeys xdotool

3. Determine Mouse Button Identity with xev
   Open a terminal and enter this command

   xev

   Xev will create a small, empty window. Hover your mouse over this window and click the various buttons on your mouse. After you click xev will tell you the identity of that button. Now that you know their identities we can use xbindkeys to associate them with shell commands.

4. Configure xbindkeys
   Open a terminal and enter this command:

   gedit ~/.xbindkeysrc

   and press Enter. This will open the xbindkeys configuration file in Gedit. It should be a blank file. Add the following to the document and save.

   # Gnome Shell Mouse Button 8 to Overview
   "xdotool key Menu"
   release + b:8

   The above configuration sets the mouse button 8 to activate the Gnome Shell Overview. The first line is a comment to help you remember what this setting does. The second line defines the shell command to be enacted within double quotes. The third line defines the button action, in this case upon the release of the mouse button 8 the command will be executed.

5. Set xbindkeys to autostart on login
   From the Gnome Shell Overview > Applications list, look for “Startup Applications” and start it. After the application window appears click the Addbutton. You can title the entry whatever you want, but “xbindkeys” is nice and concise. Most importantly though, enter the following into the Command input:

   xbindkeys &

   Once correctly entered, click OK and then Close. Now xbindkeys will automatically start upon logging in.

Making a Mouse Button Make Things Happen with easystroke

1. Install xdotool and easystroke
   You’ll have to figure out the best/easiest way to do this for your flavor of Linux. If you are running Ubuntu you can install them via the Software Center or:

   sudo apt-get install easystroke xdotool

2. Easystroke Preferences
   Start Easystroke. Go to the Preferences tab. Under the Behavior section, click the Gesture Button button. Move your cursor to the empty gray space in the resulting window and click the mouse button that you would like to associate to activating the Gnome Shell Activities Overlay (or whatever you are trying to do at the click of a mouse button). Once you click you should see a change in the settings at the bottom of the small window. In my case I have a Logitech laser mouse and I am using “Button 8”. Also under the Appearance section check the option “Autostart Easystroke”.
3. Create New Easystroke Action
   Go to the Actions tab. Click the Add Action button. Name the action “Overlay via Mouse”. The Type should be “Command” and the Detailswill be:

   xdotool key Menu

4. Associate Mouse Button to Easystroke Action
   In Easystroke highlight your new “Action” by clicking on it. Click the Record Stroke button. Move your cursor to the small resulting window and click the desired mouse button. Click the Yes button to confirm your mouse button input. Click the Hide button when you are finished.

Again, unless you specifically want to use mouse gestures, I think xbindkeys is a better, more responsive solution than easystroke. You should be able to test this fancy new functionality immediately. If not, try logging out and logging back in. Enjoy.

Images above are from other sites:
Gnome 3 from gnomeshell.wordpress.com , Ubuntu Unity from ubuntuvibes.com

However, there were a few small details with Gnome 3 that I found frustrating and ultimately unacceptable:

1. Adwaita, the default theme, had excessive amounts of chrome and seemed excessively bright. The default theme of this new version of Gnome was not all that bad, but it certainly wasn’t exciting or a massive step forward from Gnome 2. Ubuntu’s default theme seemed much more refined and distinct.
2. The Shutdown Option was not available unless you pressed the Alt (or Shift?) key. If you didn’t realize this secret, you would only be able to put your computer in Suspend mode. Apparently the Gnome developers didn’t read any of the articles about how much power we are wasting with gadgets in standby mode. Way to be green.
3. The top panel is too tall, the panel and Shell text is too big and, confusingly, the panel icons are too small.
4. Wasted Screen Real Estate. Maximized windows have a too-tall title bar smashed up against a too-tall top panel. Next to Ubuntu Unity, which employs a global menu and a somewhat quirky but very efficient maximized title bar that merges with the top panel, this felt like a step back.
5. No Application Menu. Launching an application went from taking two clicks to taking 4 or 5 clicks via Gnome Shell.
6. No Native Appearance Adjustment. If I wanted a desktop environment that only gave me the option to use blue or graphite highlights, I’d go back to using OSX. At the moment the only way in Gnome 3 that an ordinary user can change their theme, font and font settings is via a hack called Gnome Tweak. It works well, but it’s interface is pretty raw and it’s not integrated with the new Gnome Systems Settings.
7. No Custom Mouse Buttons. This is probably due to the fact that the Gnome developers are imagining that their interface is for computers with touch screens. (sarcasm) Most likely the functionality simply hasn’t been created yet, but it seems like customizing mouse buttons on Linux should be baseline functionality.

Many of these problems were due to Gnome 3′s relative immaturity. These details need to be carefully worked out. And the only way to get a lot of developers and users involved enough to care and get excited is to flip the switch and migrate everybody to the new environment. At least the early adopters, anyway.

The Rise of Shell Extensions

The good news is that Gnome has not been standing still. A new capability was recently enabled that has allowed hackers to correct some of the above problems. This new capability is called Gnome Shell Extensions. These Extensions make it possible to alter the way Gnome Shell looks and works. The available set of extensions is not very large at the moment, but a handful of good ones suggests just how powerful this new feature is. Shell Extensions are actually not new, but being able to install them easily IS. Check it out: https://extensions.gnome.org/

In a nut, Shell Extensions are now as easy to install as Firefox Addons via the above website. Actually, the Gnome folks have made something much better thanks to the fact that Gnome is a desktop environment. The website functions more like your very own Shell Extensions Control Panel. No downloading, just two clicks and the extension is enabled. Here’s a handful that I just installed:

• Alternative Status Menu (adds “Power Off” and “Hibernate” options)
• Jump Lists (advanced contextual menus for the Gnome Shell Launcher for recent docs, bookmarks, etc.)
• Music Integration (an Ubuntu Unity-esque sound menu with music player controls)
• No a11y (removes the accessibility settings icon from the top panel)

Now, after installing at least the above list of Shell Extensions, there are a few more small tweaks that I think really make Gnome 3 sing. Well, singing with a few missed notes here and there.

Remove Title Bar from Maximized Windows

Sure, you could set the top panel to autohide, but I personally like having the clock and system status indicators visible at all times unless I’m watching a video. Ubuntu Unity does a great job at this and since the usefulness of the title bar is completely diminished once there’s only one mostly-full-screen window, why not simply remove it on maximized windows?

Thankfully, somebody at apathyonline.net described how to decrease the height of the title bar on maximized windows. They explain how to do this for the Adwaita theme. However, I wanted to do this same thing for Ubuntu’s Ambiance theme and unfortunately all Gnome 3 themes are not made in the same way. If you’re a fan of Ambiance, here’s how to do it:

1. Open a Terminal
2. Enter:

   sudo gedit /usr/shared/themes/Ambiance/metacity-1/metacity-theme-1.xml

   and click ENTER.

3. Search for

   <frame_geometry name="geometry_maximized"

   and add the attribute and value

   has_title="false"

   to the frame_geometry element.

4. Then, as one of the distance elements within the frame_geometryelement, make sure one looks like this:

   <distance name="title_vertical_pad" value="1"/>

5. Save the document and quit the text editor application. You might need to restart Gnome to see the change.

This seems like such an obvious enhancement. I’m curious why the Gnome 3 developers didn’t think of it or decided against it. However, they are discussing how to eliminate the menu bar, so that’s interesting.

Install an Applications Menu Extension and/or Gnome Do

Along with the shell extensions that I mentioned above, there are also two extensions available that add an Applications Menu back to the top-left of the top panel. Both seem to employ the same menu drop-down, but the way they are accessed from the top panel differ:

• Applications Menu Adds a small Gnome-Foot icon to the right of “Activities” that summons the menu on click.
• Frippery Applications Menu Replaces “Activities” with the word “Applications” and inserts the logo-icon of your system in the left corner the way the Gnome 2 applications menu traditionally did.

Again, since Gnome 3 is apparently designed for computers with touch screens (sarcasm, can’t help it) the functionality of hovering has been demoted. So this application menu involves 3 instead of 2 clicks to start an application (if you know which section the application is in to begin with). So it’s not quite business as usual, but it’s close. And maybe the Gnome team is showing a lot of foresight in removing any primary functionality from the “hover” state.

I guess I’ve embraced the brave new world of Gnome 3/Unity enough that the Applications Menu mentioned above feels out of place in Gnome 3. I was already a big fan of Gnome Do and Docky in the Gnome 2 world (and originally Quicksilver on OSX). Although Docky is obviously getting pushed aside by Gnome Shell’s and Unity’s built-in launcher bars, I find that the functionality, appearance and interface of Gnome Do is very consistent with both Gnome 3 and Unity. Actually, Gnome Do’s functionality is also being pushed aside by the built-in search-and-launch functionalities in Gnome 3 and Unity but, Gnome Do is still so much faster than either of these. So I am using Gnome Do as my primary launcher until something better comes along.

Good Enough

Let’s take another look at my list of show-stopping problems:

1. A Better-Looking Theme – The Ambiance theme from Ubuntu is an improvement over Adwaita in my opinion, but with the know-how to remove the title bar from any given theme you can certainly switch to whatever theme you prefer. Just be prepared to discover that not all themes define the height of the title bar in the same way.
2. Shutdown and Hibernation Options Restored – Shell Extensions save the day.
3. Top Panel Is Still Too Tall, Shell UI Seems Oversized – Strike 1.
4. Title Bar Removed from Maximized Windows – See #1.
5. Application Menu Restored (or Replaced by Gnome Do) – Shell Extensions save the day again.
6. No Native Appearance Adjustment – Well, Gnome Tweak does the job for now.
7. No Custom Mouse Buttons – Strike 2. Custom Mouse Button via xdotool and easystroke!
   I’m on a roll this weekend. Read about how to set up custom mouse button shortcuts in my next post.
   

So with a few extensions, additional applications and tweaks Gnome 3 is good enough to get work done. The lack of a mouse button shortcut for summoning the Exposé-like Shell Window Overview will continue to interrupt the way I work. Though Compiz feels like a massive kludge, it is a relatively mature kludge that supports mouse shortcuts. Since Unity is a Compiz plugin it can take advantage of Compiz’s maturity. But Compiz will always be a sort of stopgap, a great temporary fix that probably help spawn some of the new thinking about user interfaces that we are being experimented with in Gnome Shell and Unity. I’m sure that the thought and design that went into the foundation of Gnome 3 will continue to bear fruit, resulting in a useful and well-integrated desktop environment. At least I hope that’s the case!

How to customize the subject line in an automated email generated by the Drupal webform module

Sometimes examples save a lot of descriptive verbiage…

field label “First Name” – field key “fname” –
webform email custom subject line “Message from %value[fname]”

and

field label “Last Name” – field key “lname” –
webform email custom subject line “Message from Mr. %value[lname]”

unless the field in question is contained in a fieldset element! If that’s the case:

field label “First Name” – field key “fname” – fieldset field key “contact_info” –
webform email custom subject line “Message from %value[contact_info][fname]”

and then click “Save e-mail settings” and you’re done!

This information was derived from the last comment on this page: http://drupal.org/node/823408 after 45 minutes of looking through a bunch of dead ends. I hope this post is easier to find, digest and get back to what you were doing before you forget why.

Since reading Khoi Vinh’s Ordering Disorder: Grid Principles for Web Design I’ve been using grids – mostly just columns, really – to bring greater order to my designs. So far this new approach has been fruitful. A helpful tool in this regard is The Gridulator, which makes it easy to determine the dimensions of your grid and also download a graphic representation of the grid that you can use as an overlay in the above mentioned graphics programs while you are working out the details of a site design.

However, even if my idea is pretty nailed down in the sketching and graphic-editor stage, the act of actually building the site with HTML + CSS always presents new problems and solutions. Part of this is due to my clients not providing all of their content (or even knowing what it will be) until I’m at that stage. Another part of it is that laying out website designs in a static graphic state makes it easy to overlook some aspects of the site.

For these reasons and others I find myself doing a lot of actual designing from within the browser, either via Firebug or just a lot of trial and error with different properties in the code. Page structures in HTML + CSS can get complex fast and it can be tricky to stick to your grid if you aren’t always keeping it in mind. It would be helpful to have an easy way to overlay your grid over the web pages as they are built, adjusting the CSS properties until they are absolutely perfect. Or at least pretty damn close!

One recent weekend I had a freelance project that I wanted to avoid and so I determined that I would focus on this grid overlay problem and see if I could build it better and smarter. Figuring out this grid problem was a lot more important than working on a project that I would get paid to work on. I’m sure you can relate to the wacked-out sense of logic that leads to such decisions.

The result of that ridiculous procrastination was the initial version of what I am calling The Heads-Up Grid. It was actually looking good enough to share with others at that point. A friend suggested I post it on Hacker News to see if anybody would find it interesting. I did just that and got one comment from somebody that suggested I use JavaScript to generate the HTML elements, simplifying the necessary setup to get the grid working. They even gave me a bit of code to show how easy it is to do that with jquery. Once I saw that and understood how it worked, I really went to town!

The somewhat-final result is a fairly easy-to-use web page grid overlay. It has some nice features:

• simple settings
• vertical grid with columns and gutters
• horizontal or baseline grid that can be vertically adjusted
• on/off button displayed in top-right corner
• set grid to be on or off on page load

Please give The Heads-Up Grid a try. I hope you find it useful. I would love to hear feedback about it being useful or if you have some ideas about how it could be better.

It makes a good point. And I was actually taken to that comic by an article that breaks down the futility of how we all generally manage our passwords: 

“I’m sorry, but were you actually trying to remember your comical passwords?”
by Troy Hunt 
http://www.troyhunt.com/2011/08/im-sorry-but-were-you-actually-trying.html

It’s some good food for thought. I’m certainly looking in to programs like

1Password http://agilebits.com/products/1Password

And the prominent cross-platform (Mac, Windows and Linux/*NIX) but not nearly as easy to look at …

KeePassX http://www.keepassx.org/

1. Have a WordPress website up and running
2. Install the NextGen Gallery plugin
3. Install FancyBox the old fashioned way or as a plugin
4. Read this post about Facebook Open Graph WordPress Integration to learn about adding proper Open Graph meta elements to the header of your site.
5. From your WordPress admin pages go to Gallery > Options > Effects
1. JavaScript Thumbnail Effect: Custom
2. Link code line: rel=”gallery”
6. Then go to Gallery > Options > General Options
1. Actiate Permalinks: YES and define a slug.
7. Then go to Gallery > Options > Gallery
1. Show ImageBrowser: YES

The trick with getting NextGEN Gallery to both display your image galleries large images as FancyBox overlays and create unique pages with URLs to display each individual image is to enable the ImageBrowser mode but then alter NextGEN Gallery.php template so that the FancyBox (or other overlay solution) code is used regardless of the “Show ImageBrowser” setting.

With the above settings in place, backup a copy of the NextGEN gallery plugin files from your web server.

/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/

Then navigate to following file and open it with your favorite text editor.

[YourDesktop or wherever]/nextgen-gallery/view/gallery.php

Scroll down to the part where it says “Thumbnails” in comments. This is the loop that outputs the thumbnail grid that displays your embedded NGG gallery on the page. Find the line below:

<a href="<?php echo $image->imageURL ?>" title="<?php echo $image->description ?>"
<?php echo $image->thumbcode ?> >

and change it to:

<a href="<?php echo $image->imageURL ?>" title="&lt;div style=&quot;float:left;
width:70px;&quot;&gt;&lt;iframe src=&quot;http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?
app_id=YOUAPPIDNUMBERHERE&amp;amp;href=<?php echo urlencode(get_permalink()) ?>%2F
YOURGALLERYSLUGHERE%2Fimage%2F<?php echo urlencode($image->image_slug) ?>&amp;amp;
send=false&amp;amp;layout=box_count&amp;amp;width=50&amp;amp;show_faces=true&amp;amp;
action=like&amp;amp;colorscheme=light&amp;amp;font&amp;amp;height=60&quot; scrolling=
&quot;no&quot; frameborder=&quot;0&quot; style=&quot;border:none; overflow:hidden;
width:70px; height:60px;&quot; allowTransparency=&quot;true&quot;&gt;&lt;/iframe&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;" <?php echo $image->thumbcode ?>  rel="gallery">

Save gallery.php and upload to your webserver. If you have the OpenGraph meta elements in place you should now be able to navigate to a NextGEN Gallery on your site, click on a thumbnail and see something like this (right):

This is an individual Like button, allowing your visitors to “Like” specific images within a gallery. Now, it doesn’t work perfectly. Even though you are linking the Like button to a URL that is specific to that image, in my experience Facebook still grabs the first image from that gallery for the thumbnail displayed on the individual’s Facebook Wall. And it seems like the link from Facebook will take visitors to the gallery page of the specific image. Again, this is odd and shouldn’t be, but Facebook is doing a lot of magic here, so who knows why it isn’t working perfectly. The important thing is:

1. Your visitors can Like individual images.
2. If visitors see a link to your image on Facebook, clicking the link will take them to the gallery that contains the image in question.

If you get this successfully working to fulfill your needs, be sure to keep a backup of your gallery.php file. Every time the NextGen Gallery plugin is updated this file will most likely get overwritten.

Fig. 1: Default WordPress Admin Bar

At least since WordPress released version 3 of its open source website CMS it has included a new feature called the “Admin Bar”. This Admin Bar is a menu bar displayed at the top of your WordPress site’s public-facing pages when you are logged in to your site. It is a handy way to move back-and-forth between your public pages and your site administration pages. (see fig. 1)

Sometimes this isn’t a good solution. Especially if the navigation on the public site is at the top of the page with fixed positioning. In that case the admin bar lays over the site’s actual navigation, making impossible to use while logged in.

Fig. 2: Example of Admin Bar as a Sidebar

I haven’t seen a lot of discussion online about how to customize this without installing another plugin. After attempting some tweaks by manipulating the CSS with Firebug it became apparent that this Admin Bar could easily be styled by simply adding CSS rules that apply to the end of your theme’s stylesheet.

On a recent project I developed some CSS style rules to add to your site theme’s style.css file. These styles will transform the long, horizontal admin bar into tall sidebar. This probably won’t work for a 1024px-wide screen, but for many widescreen laptops and displays this should work well.

It still has the default WordPress admin look so I figured this little bit of CSS might be helpful to others. Below is the CSS that I used to make the Admin Bar appear as it does in fig. 2.

/* WordPress Admin Bar Styles */
div#wpadminbar {
    width:120px;
    min-width:120px;
    height:100%;
    background:url('/wp-admin/images/menu-shadow.png') repeat-y top right #737373;
    border-right:solid 1px #999;
}
div#wpadminbar ul li {
    width:100%;
}
div#wpadminbar .quicklinks > ul > li > a {
    border-width:0 0 1px 0;
}
div#wpadminbar .quicklinks li#wp-admin-bar-my-account-with-avatar ul,
div#wpadminbar ul li.menupop ul {
    z-index:1000;
    margin-top:-28px;
    left:114px;
}
#wpadminbar .quicklinks .menupop ul {
    border-top:1px solid #DFDFDF;
}
div#wpadminbar div#adminbarsearch-wrap {
    display:none;
}

I make no guarantees, but do let me know if this worked for you or if you see any problem areas.

The worst thing I see, because the available screen typeface discussion is off-topic, is by the active application’s name in the top-left. That presentation of the application’s icon by the name is distracting and not helpful. The top bar is supposed to recede, but including the app icon there breaks with that goal. It would have looked much cleaner to replace “Activities” with the Gnome icon (or ubuntu logo or take your pic) and simply present the name of the application.

I prefer Unity’s approach in that regard except for the idiotic window-close-minimize-buttons being squashed into the main menu bar. That is awkward and I think they’ll find a lot of people, trying to click on the Ubuntu icon in the top-left, accidentally closing their application window. But we’ll see.

My other big gripe is the prominence and amount of work that has gone into workspaces/multiple desktops. Gnome claims that this system is focused on simplicity, but most users I know struggle to get their mind around using ONE desktop/workspace. The multiple workspace feature is purely for advanced users. It’s way too abstract of a concept for the basic user. I consider myself a VERY advanced user and workspaces are the first thing I turn off on a new Linux install. I am much better at organizing my workflow in terms of applications. Trying to break those applications up over workspaces is redundant and I don’t care where the window is if I can summon it when I need it and hide/minimize it when I’m working on something else.

They should be working harder to make workflow/task management even MORE organic. It should be so organic that I don’t have to be thinking about how to organize it. Right now I get along great with a basic Ubuntu install, simple keybinding to summon the Scale function (Expose) to switch between documents, Alt+Tab to quickly switch apps and Docky to open/switch apps. I think the problem is that Linux developers think in terms of Window management when they should be thinking about Application and Workflow management.

Supposedly these new desktop interface designs have been run by test groups, but I’m a little skeptical. With that said, there are a LOT of good and cool ideas in both Gnome 3 and Unity. When in doubt, try many things. And seeing these ideas being developed is refreshing. Neither Microsoft or Apple is attempting to make such dramatic changes to the way their desktop interfaces work.

One More Thought

After publishing the above comment it also occurred to me that the new Gnome desktop defines a specific functionality to the “Windows” key on most keyboards. I have been using my Windows key to summon a third-level (and fourth) keyboard to make it easy to enter larger group and “special characters”. [I wrote about this in detail here] It baffles me that making third and fourth levels of keyboard characters is not a bigger priority. This is a MAJOR advantage that Apple has over Microsoft in the world of desktop publishing. Every graphic designer knows it. And people like me that find Linux to be a good and soon to be great graphics platform would like to see some focus on these details.

I need to make time to get involved with the Gnome development community. I need to get in there and push for better keyboard functionality and, more importantly, better integration of color management. Granted, both of these area DO get a lot of love. It’s just that they have to be implemented manually. Neither of these two features are addressed by default installs of the major Linux distributions.

Do take a moment to check out the Gnome 3 features: http://www.gnome.org/gnome-3/ There’s still a lot of cool stuff coming to a Linux desktop near you.