Deskbar-Applet - Quick access and search applet

About Deskbar-Applet

The goal of Deskbar-Applet is to provide an omnipresent versatile search interface. By typing search terms into the deskbar entry in your panel you are presented with the search results as you type.

Searches are handled by a series of plugins. Deskbar-Applet provides a simple interface to manage these plugins to provide you with the search results that fit your needs.

A related idea was published earlier as Auric Applet. Similar software from the GNOME family includes contact-lookup-applet, mini-commander applet (in gnome-applets), webeyes and GNOME Launch Box and the Alt-f2 dialog.

Feature highlights

Generic

Sits in the panel waiting for input
Global configurable hotkey to directly focus the entry and start typing
Pluggable backend architecture, allows to add custom backends in home/system dir. Allows third parties to add a backend
Sorting of backend results order is adaptable easily.
Intuitive history menu, to repeat frequent actions
Translated in 69 languages
Use themed icons associated with actions, to have a visual feedback

Backends

Beagle Live: Search all of your documents (using Beagle), as you type
Calculator: Calculate simple equations
Computer Actions: Logoff, shutdown, restart, suspend and related actions
del.icio.us Bookmarks: Search your del.icio.us bookmarks by tag name
Developer Documentation: Search Devhelp for a function name
Dictionary: Look up word definitions in the dictionary
Files and Folders Search: Find files and folders by searching for a name pattern
Files, Folders and Places: View your files, folders, bookmarks, drives, network places by name
Google Code Search: Search public source code for function definitions and sample code
Google Search: Search Google directly from Deskbar
History: Recognize previously used searches
Programs: Launch a program by its name and/or description
Recent Documents: Retrieve your recently accessed files and locations
Tomboy Notes: Search your Tomboy notes
Twitter and identi.ca: Post updates to your Twitter or identi.ca account
Web: Open web pages and send emails by typing a complete address
Web Bookmarks: Open your web bookmarks by name (Mozilla, Firefox 2, epiphany)
Web History: Open your web history by name
Web Searches: Search the web via your browser's search settings
Window Switcher: Switch to an existing window by name
Wikipedia Suggest: As you type, Wikipedia will offer suggestions
Yahoo! Search: Search Yahoo! as you type
Yahoo! Suggestions: Provides suggestions for queries related to the submitted query

News

November 03, 2008

Unstable version 2.25.1 released.
In this release all gnomevfs calls have been ported to gio and glade files are replaced by GTK builder UI files. Therefore, pygobject 2.15.3 or later is required.

Fixed #557570, Crash when proxy port changed
Fixed #551218, Use of strings "Croation" and "Croatian"
Fixed #552203, Typo: affect

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October 20, 2008

Stable version 2.24.1 released.
This release features updated translations only. Download it

September 22, 2008

Stable version 2.24.0 released.
This is the first release of the stable 2.24 series and only contains small bug fixes compared to 2.23.92

Changes since 2.23.92:

Fixed bug #551166: Cannot enable Templates module. Stop monitoring directory when module is stopped. Throw exception when something went wrong and use constants defined in C
Fixed: Wikipedia suggest doesn't respect proxy settings

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September 8, 2008

Unstable version 2.23.92 released.
This is the last release before the before the stable 2.24 version is released. It only contains bug fixes.

Changes since 2.23.91:

Add support for embedding an extra widget into AccountDialog
Fixed #550297, Identi.ca module does not support OpenId causes confussion
Changed default UI "Button"
Added RecentHandler, CalculatorModule, GdmHandler and TemplateHandler to default list of enabled modules. Removed MozillaBookmarksHandler and MozillaSearchHandler from default list of enabled modules

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September 1, 2008

Unstable version 2.23.91 released.
This release mainly features bug fixes. In addition, history items can be deleted in tray mode pressing delete key now.

Changes since 2.23.90:

Fixed #548867, Cannot iterate over gtk.ListStore
Fixed #548422, Invalid tooltip formatting in twitter module
Fixed #542997, Mozilla modules ask for Firefox between 2.0.0.0 and 3.0.0.0, so FF 3.0.1 doesn't work!
Fixed #549203, Superfluous strings for localisation
Fixed #549206, Please add comments along with strings for localisation
Fixed #549375, deskbar-applet 2.23.90 history dropdown doesn't dismiss after selection
Fixed #549432, Fix g_strjoin() call in evolution module
Set the 'source' parameter on updates to 'deskbar'. This should put a small 'from deskbar' links after Twitter posts.
Pressing the delete key will remove the selected item from history in tray mode, too.
Fix a bug in the way the new core.Web module handled updating of account info. Before this fix we leaked accounts each time editing of credentials took place, and we failed to look up the right one if there where multiple.

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August 18, 2008

Unstable version 2.23.90 released.
This release comes with new twitter and identi.ca micro blogging modules. Developers can make use of the new deskbar.core.Web module which provides an easy way to store account credentials in gnome keyring, a dialog for managing an account, an asynchronous url opener that hooks into the account framework mentioned above to ask for credentials. Last but not least, items from history can now be deleted one by one when pressing the delete key. However, this doesn't work in tray mode, yet.

Changes since 2.23.6:

Add method load_base64_icon to deskbar.core.Utils. Handy for inlining icons inside modules for easier distribution
Introduced a new utility package deskbar.core.Web with tools for dealing with online services
Introduced a Twitter and identi.ca micro blogging module
Set entry width to 10 when the value is smaller than 10 in CuemuiacAlignedView
Fixed bug #538558: Check for directories in $PATH if they are actual directories and if they exist, are readable and executable

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August 5, 2008

Unstable version 2.23.6 released.
This release includes a new Google module that will display search results from Google as you type. In addition, you can now configure the entry width in preferences when the stick-to-panel UI is used.

Changes since 2.23.5:

When retrieving tomboy version wait until the process exited to avoid zombie process.
Added get_locale_lang function to Utils.py.
Fixed bug #544587: unknown locale
GconfStore.py: Added sanity checks when setting values and emitting signals (fixes bug #486549)
Added Google search module. Written by Helton Doria. Requires simplejson Python module. Fixes bug #535360
desklicious.py: Fixed bug #545791: local variable 'dom' referenced before assignment
Removed built-in gnomedesktop module an use gnome-python-desktop's instead
Added option to change entry width when Button UI is used
desklicious.py: Adjusted url to RSS feeds. Check if content is formatted properly before parsing it. Fixes bug #544645

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August 3, 2008

Stable version 2.22.3.1 released.
This release fixes a bug that appeared because of the new version of delicious.com.

Changes since 2.22.3:

desklicious.py: Adjusted url to RSS feeds. Check if content is formatted properly before parsing it. Fixes bug #544645

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July 21, 2008

Unstable version 2.23.5 released.
This release stores files according to FreeDesktop's XDG basedir spec. In addition, history can be accessed as in the 2.18 version. An arrow is displayed next to the Deskbar icon which open's a list of recently used actions.

Changes since 2.23.4:

Fixed bug #378755: Use contact's name, not their email address, when writing new mails (patch by Oleg Andreev)
Fixed bug #535236: the dialog location change every time it's displayed
Set top/up/down/bottom buttons insensitive by default (patch by Goran Rakic)
Added check if iter != None when one of the above buttons is pressed (fixes bug #490981)
Set default log level to WARNING. Added -d/--debug options to display debug messages
Place user's modules in $XDG_DATA_HOME/deskbar-applet/modules-2.20-compatible and history file together with modules' configuration data into $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/deskbar-applet
Fixed bug #542638: Don't put dict keys in gettext call parameter (patch by Claude Paroz)
Check if display name is not None (fixes bug #500087)
Fixed bug #516142: Should use plural for strings
Access history like in 2.18. Added arrow beside the Deskbar icon. Clicking on it will show the a list of previously activated actions.
Display history in tray mode as a sub-menu.
Catch OSError when calling os.listdir. (Fixes bug #494922)

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June 30, 2008

Stable version 2.22.3 released. This is the last release in the 2.22 series. Changes since 2.22.2.1:

Set TomboyNotesModule.tomboy to None when module is stopped
Fixed bug #538425: local variable 'stream' referenced before assignment

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June 16, 2008

Unstable version 2.23.4 released. Changes since 2.23.3:

Fixed bug #536752: Applet not transparent
Set TomboyNotesModule.tomboy to None when module is stopped
Fixed bug #537694: Search history broken
Made OpenBeagleFileAction backwards compatible
Fixed bug #538425: local variable 'stream' referenced before assignment
wikipedia-suggest.py: Only add match when the result contains the expected number of columns
Utils.py: Don't import deskbar.core.Categories to solve cyclic dependency
Added calculator module with permission from the original authors

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May 26, 2008

Stable version 2.22.2.1 released. Changes since 2.22.1:

Fixed bug #534972: Exception in DeliciousHandler
When checking Firefox version. Wait until the process terminated to avoid zombie processes.
Fixed bug #520278: Window in sticky mode too small
desklicious.py: Replace all whitespaces in query with spaces. Catch exception that might appear during parsing and cleanup correctly in any case. (fixes bug #484667)
yahoo.py: Catch exception that might appear during parsing and cleanup correctly in any case.
Adjust layout when applet is moved from one panel to another
Fixed crash when two modules with same name should be loaded. Warn instead.
Fixed bug #530057: Catch GError when making beagle call
Fixed bug #527023: KeyError in beagle-live, when only directories are returned by beagle
Fixed bug #522585: Crash when changing default browser
Added support for Iceweasel browser. When the default browser is changed Mozilla and Iceweasel are supported, too. When Firefox is used and the command must contain Firefox instead of being exactly Firefox
Use subprocess module instead of os.popen. Catch OSError when retrieving version (fixes bug #533842)

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