Pmenu And Ubuntu Netbook Launcher


Pleng

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Dec 28, 2006
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Have these projects been shelved? XFCE and Minimenu are fine for what they are, but Pandora is crying out for a decent gaming/media interface, IMHO
 
Pmenu is in the firmware, but it crashes when you switch to one of the tabs. I could never get Ubuntu Netbook Launcher to run, but it's also in there.
 
Thanks SomeGuy. I'm already aware of that. I'm just wondering if development is continuing on them? Have OPT 'assigned' anybody to work on fixing them? Or have they decided that what they have is 'good enough' until somebody possibly decides to work on it off their own back?
 
I seem to recall (although I can't remember in what thread, so I don't have a link - sorry) that it was mentioned that it was felt that the Netbook Launcher was a bit too early to use at the moment. I don't remember what the deal might be with Pmenu, though.
 
Ive had a little play with Pmenu and, aside from the crashing, it looks really nice. The only thing it's lacking is an interface for wifi/network manager. Does anybody remember who was responsible for Pmenu? Are they still into Pandora?
 
Just off the top of my head, I'm pretty sure that it was Cpasjuste. (My apologies if I've gotten that wrong, though!)

EDIT: Yep, it was. Very old thread.
 
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Hmm last active June 24 so he's still about. Does anybody know if he's still working on it?
 
Cpasjuste got really busy and i think burnt out near the end; its hard to keep to a moving target so in his free time (not much), i think he got frustrated spending half of it tryin to catch up. I thnk hes still trying to get his sanity back... You'll notice we're all in various states of soulcrushed :)

Jeffphone
 
Pleng said:
Ive had a little play with Pmenu and, aside from the crashing, it looks really nice. The only thing it's lacking is an interface for wifi/network manager. Does anybody remember who was responsible for Pmenu? Are they still into Pandora?
What feature did pmenu have that mini menu lacks that you want? They are pretty similar the main difference is that mini menu has an icon grid instead of a small list that you scroll through to select an app. The grid is much quicker to use.
 
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skeezix said:
Cpasjuste got really busy and i think burnt out near the end; its hard to keep to a moving target so in his free time (not much), i think he got frustrated spending half of it tryin to catch up. I thnk hes still trying to get his sanity back... You'll notice we're all in various states of soulcrushed :)

Jeffphone
I can only imagine... it was bad enough trying to meet a rolling target with PandoraPanic! Doing thing for core OS components... yes it's a draining experience.
 
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DaveC said:
What feature did pmenu have that mini menu lacks that you want? They are pretty similar the main difference is that mini menu has an icon grid instead of a small list that you scroll through to select an app.

Real time clock & battery info, SD Info and integrated video (and presumably audio?) playback through Mplayer.

And it looks real nice to. Bling.

Yes, I want my Pandora to look the part at the expense or a few CPU cycles. You don't, I gather. That's great. You already have minimenu. I like minimenu; if it didn't use the Pandora button to kill apps (far too easy to accidentally press when start-selecting out of a level in Super Mario World, or when selecting items in Zelda) then I'd use it as my main menu. But only until such a time as a more feature/bling rich menu became available.

The grid is much quicker to use.

I can spare an additional 2-3 seconds of my life selecting an emulator or game. Really, I can.
 
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Pleng said:
DaveC said:
What feature did pmenu have that mini menu lacks that you want? They are pretty similar the main difference is that mini menu has an icon grid instead of a small list that you scroll through to select an app.

Real time clock & battery info, SD Info and integrated video (and presumably audio?) playback through Mplayer.

And it looks real nice to. Bling.

Yes, I want my Pandora to look the part at the expense or a few CPU cycles. You don't, I gather. That's great. You already have minimenu. I like minimenu; if it didn't use the Pandora button to kill apps (far too easy to accidentally press when start-selecting out of a level in Super Mario World, or when selecting items in Zelda) then I'd use it as my main menu. But only until such a time as a more feature/bling rich menu became available.

The grid is much quicker to use.

I can spare an additional 2-3 seconds of my life selecting an emulator or game. Really, I can.
Minimenu has clock and battery info. No sd info but that could probably be added. Probably easier to add that than switch to something else. No video but is it that hard to select an icon for one?

If you don't like the look and think it looks so bad it is completely skinnable. All graphics can be changed.

It would probably end up to be more than 3 seconds to scroll a bunch of times when we have allot of stuff. What is the advantage of the small list? You really can't see as much of what is on the card that way, you just have to kind of remember. That is the con, what is the advantage of it? Is there some feature the list gives that I am missing?

There could and probably should be a way to set which button is the app kill button. That doesn't seem like it would be hard, maybe ask Skeezix about it.
 
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I don't know about you guys, but I dont ever use icons, or anything. I just prefer to run the program from the um... terminal in linux, or using the Run program in windows, or using the Windows 7/Vista search.

If it was working fully i'd use it every once in a while.
 
DaveC said:
Minimenu has clock and battery info.

It's not realtime. Leave your Pandora for an hour, open the lid and have a look at the numbers.

Granted PMenu's CPU meter seems slightly erratic at the moment but both it and the clock update in realtime.

I wonder how comparatively easy it would be to integrate network management features into each system.

No sd info but that could probably be added. Probably easier to add that than switch to something else. No video but is it that hard to select an icon for one?

Well SD info isn't working in PMenu either right now but there's placeholders in place for it.

Right now the only to launch a video I have to launch MPlayer and open the video file from there, or launch Thunar, navigate to my video directory and run from there.

No it's not too difficult but I don't want to do it that way. And I don't want to have to explain what to do to other people when they are using it.

If you don't like the look and think it looks so bad it is completely skinnable. All graphics can be changed.

I've made plenty of skins for minimenu. I never said it looks bad. I just said PMenu looks nicer. It has transitions, glowing category tabs, it's simply very aesthetically pleasing. These are things that minimenu CANT do. And, indeed I'm sure you'd be the first to complain if these features were implemented, as they detract from minimenu's purpose of being a basic app launcher.

It would probably end up to be more than 3 seconds to scroll a bunch of times when we have allot of stuff.
Well I only have enough emulators to fill one screens space anyway. I have a lot more games on there 'just because I can'. I'll be taking a lot of them off sooner rather than later. I dn't expect to have more than 2 screens worth of games.

What is the advantage of the small list? You really can't see as much of what is on the card that way, you just have to kind of remember. That is the con, what is the advantage of it? Is there some feature the list gives that I am missing?

No, no feature. It just looks nicer. For the same reason I have homebrew browser on my Wii displaying apps in list format with the name in a clearly readable font as opposed to bunching them all up in small icons and displaying them on the same screen. If bling isn't important to you then that's fine. But you have to accept that some people like a bit of eye candy, even if it's at the expense of some degree of functionality.

There could and probably should be a way to set which button is the app kill button. That doesn't seem like it would be hard, maybe ask Skeezix about it.

I have done.

Look it's great that you like minimenu. As I say, if it didn't have the app kill issue I'd probably be using it as a main menu. But if PMenu was usable I'd switch without hesitation. And you'd keep minimenu. And we'd both be happy.

Can we please not turn this into a DaveC 'I love minimenu and if you dont youre wrong' thread? You don't see all the XFCE fans here feel the need to say why they prefer using a full desktop environment, do you? I made this thread to find out if PMenu was still being developed. I have the answer now: Not right now, perhaps in the future, who knows? If there's any updates to this situation I'd be pleased for them to be posted here. Otherwise the thread can die it's natural death.
 
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Pleng said:
Can we please not turn this into a DaveC 'I love minimenu and if you dont youre wrong' thread?

It's not realtime. Leave your Pandora for an hour, open the lid and have a look at the numbers.

I've made plenty of skins for minimenu. I never said it looks bad. I just said PMenu looks nicer. It has transitions, glowing category tabs, it's simply very aesthetically pleasing. These are things that minimenu CANT do. And, indeed I'm sure you'd be the first to complain if these features were implemented, as they detract from minimenu's purpose of being a basic app launcher.
I didn't say you are wrong, I was just asking about what features you like more. I asked not to try to convince you to like minimenu but to consider some future features. Minimenu code was blasted together by Skeezix in a couple of weeks of speed coding. I helped him with concept,layout, graphics, etc. I still think it is kind of "beta" myself though. It is good enough to launch apps but some rough edges could still be smoothed out hopefully.

I didn't notice the clock before but yeah I guess it doesn't update. That may be a bug, not sure. I would think that could be fixed to maybe update once per minute or something.

Is there a way you may want to post some of these minimenu skins you made? Maybe users would like those better or select one of those after they get bored with the stock one. Since skins can be switched through a config it wouldn't hurt to have more.

Some of those other graphic effects could probably be added. I am not sure how hard they would be to code (not my call there). If it only added a couple of seconds to load times then they would be worth while (or maybe have an option to disable for those that don't want). Glowing tabs shouldn't be too hard to add I wouldn't think. I don't remember what the transitions were as I only played with pmenu a couple of times. I think icons scaled up as they were selected or something, not sure.

For the kill button the issue is that you can't use a keyboard button. Maybe another way could be to hold the pandora button for 1 or 2 seconds to exit (if you accidentally hit it wouldn't be long enough to exit) or a key combo like Fn+pandora button or something like that.
 
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DaveC said:
[
I didn't notice the clock before but yeah I guess it doesn't update. That may be a bug, not sure.

I would think that could be fixed to maybe update once per minute or something.

It currently updates whenever you change tabs, so I guess it's a 'feature' as opposed to a bug

Is there a way you may want to post some of these minimenu skins you made? Maybe users would like those better or select one of those after they get bored with the stock one. Since skins can be switched through a config it wouldn't hurt to have more.

they're in the 'skinning minimenu' thread in software hacking

Glowing tabs shouldn't be too hard to add I wouldn't think. I don't remember what the transitions were as I only played with pmenu a couple of times. I think icons scaled up as they were selected or something, not sure.

yea the preview pics scaled up.

For the kill button the issue is that you can't use a keyboard button.... [why not use] a key combo like Fn+pandora button or something like that.

what's ruling out a keyboard button combo? and if that's a problem then how can fn be used, as it's on the keyboard (incidentally fn-pandora was the combination I suggested to Jeff)
 
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