Five neat new Covergloobus themes


Banner

I’ll start with a dozy: ‘Banner’ is the creation of sir-nimaj over on DeviantArt. Whilst it’s minimal in features it is also beautifully designed.

eDark Covergloobus

This theme has it all: star ratings, player controls, track information, track art and stylish good looks. You almost want to envy it. Linux-purists may deride the similarity to iTunes former mini-player look but that'll be a non-issue for most.

BTX

I have love for BTX because it dares to a) have a unique shape and b) not display any cover art at all. It does have scrolling text (where text is too long) and can be resized without too much pixel-ation in the latest CoverGloobus.
bta

Smaller screen with titles

Looking for something small and discrete? Smaller screen is a minuscule CoverGloobus theme compared to others and has just gained 'track info' support.

Faenzoobus.too

Self promotion alert: I added scrollbar support and some new buttons to my Faenza-inspired CoverGloobus theme - y'know the one with the name you don't even bother trying to pronounce.

How to install CoverGloobus Themes

Once you've downloaded a theme you like the next step is to install it.
  • First you'll need to extract the theme from the .zip, .7z, .rar or .tar.gz archive you downloaded. This is a 'Right click > Extract' affair.
  • Check for any fonts within the theme folder than need to be installed.
  • Next open up your Home folder and press 'CTRL+H'.
  • Search for .CoverGloobus (Note the preceding period)
  • Enter this folder and move your extracted theme to the 'theme' folder within.
  • Right click on CoverGloobus and choose 'Configure > Theme > your installed theme'

Further

Don't have CoverGloobus installed? Click here. Want more themes? Click here.Made a theme we should feature? Click here. Looking for Google? Click here.

Conky-Faenza theme -


Styled in the vein if, but not identical to, mac widget iStat-Pro it provides a tidy and attractive way to keep an eye on system vitals, such as CPU, without needing to resort to a desktop full of screenlets or a run-of-the-mill Conky output.
The setup ships with six themes including Ambiance ( which is set as default), Elementary and Sonar.
The default configuartion will likely serve most people well but you can, naturally, tweak it to your hearts content by editing the .conkyrc file in your home folder.
Download @ gnome-look.org

Install

Got conky installed? No? Click here or search the Software Centre for ‘Conky’.
Once done extract the contents of the conky-faenza archive to your home folder and proceed to run ‘conky’ from either the terminal or via ALT+F2.
Refer to the ‘Read Me’ included for further tweaks and customization options.

Five Facebook apps for the Ubuntu desktop


Today our compendium of computing curiosities commonly called ‘OMG! 5!’ sees us poke around in the software drawers of everyone’s favourite social network Facebook and sees us find five  Facebook-only notification applications for use on your Ubuntu desktop.

Facebook RSS Notifier

A tool simple in its aim: you whack in your Facebook notification feed and, at an interval definable by you, it checks what’s new and alerts you accordingly.
It makes use of a standard GNOME tray icon and the resulting ‘notification window’ is far from bling-beauty, but its easy to set up and even easier to use.

Download

A .deb file is provided on the projects’ Sourceforge page.

Replace the icon

It’s a shame the tool doesn’t use an Indicator Applet rather than the increasingly defunct and démodé trappings of a regular applet. Nevertheless  you can manually replace the default icon with one of your own choosing; replacements should be dropped in
/usr/share/facebook-rss/pixs/

Score

RSS-Facebook-Noifier can only rustle up two Zuckerburgs – it’s functional but could be a lot better than it is.
ZuckerburgZuckerburg

Wallbox

The name is a rather incongruously named entry compared to other notification applets in this list – all of which sneak the words ‘face’ and ‘book’ into their titles -  but Wallbox stands as the most capable of them all
Not only does it ‘notify’ you of updates but you can respond, like and even update your status direct from the desktop.
Truly a power-facebook users dream desktop tool.

Download

Installation is made easy using the Wallbox PPA: -
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ronmi/wallbox
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install wallbox
The application is installed in ‘Applications > Internet ‘ sub-menu.

Score

Wallbox gets four Zuckerburgs out of five for features, but loses one point for the lack of clear branding.
ZuckerburgZuckerburgZuckerburgZuckerburg

Facebook Notify

Facebook notify has Ubuntu users catered for with support for native notification out of the box.
Alerts supported : -
  • One of your friends changes their status, profile picture, or profile details
  • You receive a friend request, event or group invitation
  • Someone writes on one of your friends walls
  • One of your friends is tagged in a photo

Download

Before downloading do check that all required dependencies are installed;
sudo aptitude install python-webkit python-simplejson
Then proceed to download Facebook Notify using the link beneath:
Extract the archive and move the resulting folder to somewhere ‘safe’.
Enter the folder and double click on ‘facebook-notify.py‘, choosing ‘Run’ when prompted. The Facebook icon will appear in your system tray. Left-click on this to login and start receiving alerts!

Score

Facebook Notify gets 3 Zuckerburgs: it’s neat, tidy and a great notifier.
ZuckerburgZuckerburgZuckerburg

Facebook Screenlet

If you’re looking for something much smaller and much less annoying than the above then consider a Facebook notification ‘screenlet’ (desktop widgets for Linux) such as the, very obviously named, ‘Facebook Notifier Screenlet’.
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It doesn’t do much else other than display notifications but clicked notifications do open directly in your browser which saves time. As for extras you’ll need to look elsewhere – but with a screenlet you don’t need much else right?

Score

It does what it claims to and not a jot more. For that it earns a duo of Zuckerburgs.
image9image9

Gwibber

Finally no list would be complete without mentioning the one application available on Ubuntu by default that can do all of the above and more: Gwibber.
This you can find under Applications > Internet > Gwibber Social Client. Authorize Facebook for use with it and away you go.
It allows you to receive notifications via the Messaging Menu, respond to alerts, post status updates etc.

Score

It’s integrated into the desktop and there by default. Ease of use and availability scores Gwibber a full house of five Zuckerburgs.

Force All Websites To Use The Ubuntu Font


Love the new Ubuntu font so much that you want every website to use it? Say hello to the following plucky Chrome extension which offers to do just that
We recently featured a bookmarklet (small javascript tool that sits in your bookmarks bar) which offered to do the same on a manual basis. This extension goes one ste further by forcibly implementing it on every website. The results range from pretty to, well, not so pretty. Fixed-width fonts don’t become fixed-width anymore, and if you have Chrome syncing your extensions with a Windows machine it’ll mess up there too.

Download

MurrinaPolymer GTK 2.x Theme/Style Ubuntu




This light gray GTK theme aims to be clean and easy to our poor eyes.
The colour scheme can be changed trough gnome-appearance-properties.
It has RGBA support; some widgets (buttons, text field, scrollbars) have remained opaque to improve readibility.

Recommended Emerald Theme: Vetro Affumicato http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Vetro+Affumicato?content=126638

Recommended Metacity Theme: Vetro Affumicato Basic http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=133801




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