Written manual or video howto’s? (and how to make them)

In time, the number of features in Bluefish has grown to a very large number. More and more we receive requests for features that are somewhat superfluous: a similar feature is already present in Bluefish. Often if we explain the submitter how to use a certain existing feature he/she is quite satisfied. This means that some Bluefish features are (too) hard to find.

So what is  the best way to improve this? Is written documentation with screenshots the best way to introduce features to the users nowadays, or are video tutorials (screencasts) better?

From the community the support for our manual project has been declining over the last years (I must admit that I personally think manual writing is not the most rewarding work). Currently the Bluefish manual is mostly improved by a single volunteer, and therefore continuously behind. Is this a sign that written manuals are considered less important nowadays? At least the Bluefish screencasts on YouTube do well (194000 views, but is that high or not?).

So what do you think? Written manual or screencast?

Second subject for this post: what is the best way to create screencasts? Previously I used the built-in screen recorder in gnome-shell: excellent quality with a high compression. Merging the sound, however, always was lousy (tried Pitivi and Openshot): the quality decreased while the file size usually grew a lot. And it was a lot of work. But with the last Ubuntu release (gnome-shell 3.6) the feature seems to be missing (Ubuntu bug or Gnome-shell bug?). What is the best way to create screencasts (with sound) in Gnome-shell?

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Install Gnome3 on Ubuntu 12.04

You like the nice configuration defaults of Ubuntu but not Unity?

Add this to your /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/gnome3-team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main 
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/gnome3/ubuntu precise main

Now run

sudo apt-get update && apt-get install gnome-shell

and you have an up-to-date gnome-shell. Even many of the pretty extensions are packaged as well.

As a bonus I found out that Gnome 3 runs much snappier than Unity on an old IBM T43 laptop (which has 6 years old Centrino technology).

Bluefish 2.2.0 released

Bluefish 2.2.0 is a new major release and the start for the 2.2 series. Under the hood Bluefish 2.2.0 has a massive number of changes: Bluefish now works with gtk-3 (gtk-2 is still supported), and the syntax scanner had a major overhaul to make it faster, which is especially noticeable when working on large files.

Another big change in Bluefish 2.2.0 is the new search and replace function. It has been completely redesigned: the simple search function is now integrated in the main window, and the new function supports both search and replace in files on disk (next to already opened documents). Other new features include a toggle comment function that is context-aware (add <!– –> comments in html code, use // comments in javascript code, /* */ in php code, etc. even if all of these languages are in a single file) and a select block feature that automatically selects the current context block and can be used multiple times to select the parent blocks. Another new feature of the syntax recognition is the autocompletion of user-defined functions, and a jump function that will bring you immediately the the definition of a function.

Next to all the new features many existing features have been improved and polished. Furthermore support for new languages has been added, such as Google Go, D, Vala and Ada.

I created an introduction movie using the built in screen recording option of the gnome 3 shell, which has no sound recording. I recorded my voice with audacity and tried to merge them both with pitivi. Pitivi just hanged at rendering 98% no matter what I tried. Then I switched to openshot, which crashed a few times but it did render my video. Unfortunatelythe result was bigger than the original video and sound files, with worse video quality. Anyway, you can see the result on youtube:

p.s. the 2.2.1 release of Bluefish will have a zen-coding plugin!

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Gnome shell starting to become my favourite

I have several different computers, running Gnome 2, Gnome 3, Unity and Mac OSX. New interfaces always take a while to get used to, so after the initial launch of Gnome 3 and Unity the “classic” Gnome 2 interface was still my favourite to get my work done.

Gnome 3 has the best looks (yes, I like it better than OSX), but to get my work done I don’t need the best looks. A long time ago I ran Enlightenment with the aliens theme to have a very cool desktop, but I always switched the Sawfish when I had some real programming to do.

So what is making Gnome 3 making my first choice? The main reason for that is the keyboard control. Hit <alt><f1> or the <windows> key and start typing some characters of the program name and hit enter. Better, start typing the name of the bluefish project file that I used recently and hit enter, and I have my project open. I don’t have to type the exact name of the command (typing “te” already selects “gnome-terminal” for me, “tru” selects my “bluefish_trunk” bluefish project file, “fi” selects firefox, etc.) which makes it very fast and convenient. Switching virtual desktops (called workspaces in gnome 3) is <ctrl><alt><up> or <ctrl><alt><down>, and when I need a new desktop it is automatically created by hitting <down> one extra time.

Some other things I like a lot: tiling widows side by side by dragging a window to the right/left, and restoring the original size when moving the window again. However, I would like to be able to widen the windows after tiling, the left window can be widened on the bottom-right corner, but there is no way to make the left window a bit wider. I like <alt><`> for switching between windows of the same application (it feels natural because it is so close to <alt><tab>). I like <alt><f2> to start new commands, especially when using <ctrl><enter> to start that command in a new terminal.

What would make things even better for me:

• <Alt><tab> behavior per desktop per window. I just doesn’t make sense to me that switching between two web-pages in two firefox windows is different from switching between two web-pages in chrome-and-firefox. I often <alt><tab> between a couple of terminal windows and bluefish windows. The default just switches applications, and I usually need a specific session of that application on the same virtual desktop. The alternate tab extension however, makes me tab between all open windows on all virtual desktops (which usually is a long list).
• Easier mouse access to virtual desktops. The hot corner is left, but to switch to a different virtual desktop without key combination, I have to move the mouse all the way to the right (which is a long way on a widescreen display). I have the workspaces menu extension installed to have the virtual desktops in the top bar, but it needs two mouseclicks to switch between two desktops. An improvement could be to make the top-right of the screen a second hot corner that activates the workspaces area by default (I have the right-hot-corner extension installed, but I first have to move the mouse to the top right for the hot corner, and then to the middle to activate the workspaces area).
• Better use of the vertical screen space. The top bar of each window is quite high, and it only has a close button and you use it to drag the window. Especially when maximising a window the top space of the screen has a lot of unused space. This is an area where Unity tries to do good things (except that the menu thing in unity is slow and buggy as I posted earlier). Luckily Bluefish has a fullscreen feature!
• Make it the default to open a new window. For most programs I use I have multiple open windows (terminals, bluefish sessions, firefox sessions etc.). If I want to switch to an open window it is much faster to select that window in the overview mode than clicking the icon in the dash (which selects just one of the open sessions which is anyway usually not the one you need). I want to use the dash to start a new session, regardless if I have a session running already. Having the hold <ctrl> while clicking is annoying. Same for starting a program using the keyboard control: if I type “fi” and hit enter, I don’t want any of my existing firefox sessions, I want a new session!