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Archive for the ‘Usability’ Category

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openSUSE-GNOME BugDay Weekend Wrapup

May 18th, 2009 by

As posted to the openSUSE-GNOME Mailing List.

Greetings!

Thanks to all who showed up to help on the bug day on
Friday, your efforts are greatly appreciated.

We started with just over 70 bugs and left the *obby
session available over the weekend.  By the end of the
weekend, we had reviewed 14 bugs (9 of which we closed).

These were all Critical and Major bugs listed for openSUSE
11.1.

I will be closing the *obby session this afternoon at about
1700 CDT.

Thanks again!
—
Christopher M. Hobbs [chobbs@siloamsprings.com]
Network Administrator, City of Siloam Springs

Posted in Desktop, Documentation, GNOME, Quality Assurance, Usability | Comments Off on openSUSE-GNOME BugDay Weekend Wrapup

openSUSE-GNOME BugDay: “Community Effort”

May 14th, 2009 by

PSA sent to opensuse-gnome@opensuse.org, opensuse-project@opensuse.org, opensuse-announce@opensuse.org

Greetings!

Please join us for the openSUSE-GNOME BugDay code named “Community Effort” tomorrow
(Friday 14 MAY 2009) at 1100EDT/1500UTC.

We’ll be squashing blocker, critical, and major bugs in 11.1 related to GNOME.

More information can be found on the wiki:
http://en.opensuse.org/GNOME/BugDays/20090514

A Gobby session will be announced at the beginning of the meeting to assign/close
bugs. Should you have any questions, feel free to ask in #openSUSE-GNOME on Freenode,
or email me directly.

We hope to see you there!
—
Christopher M. Hobbs [chobbs@siloamsprings.com]
Network Administrator, City of Siloam Springs

Posted in Desktop, Events, GNOME, Quality Assurance, Usability | Comments Off on openSUSE-GNOME BugDay: “Community Effort”

Problem with an selfmade DVD (DVD RECORDER)

April 12th, 2009 by

Symptom:

Since a few days i had an Problem with playing selfmade DVDs. CDs (Audio and *.avi) can be playes. Original DVD’s too. But i have made DVDs with an DVD RECORDER (for TV). Then i burn 2 Movies on the DVD and the Recorder makes an own Menu for the Movies. But if i insert the DVD to the DVD Player, the Device Monitor sayd me, the only three Alternatives are: open in Dolphin, open with Digikam and do nothing. If i choosed Dolphin, dolphin startsand then i see in the bottom an Red Line with the Error “No Access”.

First tries:

I listed the Directory:
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root          3 10. Apr 15:24 cdrom -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root          3 10. Apr 11:45 cdrw -> sr1
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root          3 10. Apr 11:45 dvd -> sr0
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root          3 10. Apr 11:45 fb -> fb0
brw-rw—-+  1 root   cdrom         11,   0 10. Apr 11:45 sr0
brw-rw—-+  1 root   cdrom   11,   1 10. Apr 11:45 sr1
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root          3 10. Apr 11:45 scd0 -> sr0

lrwxrwxrwx   1 root   root          3 10. Apr 11:45 scd1 -> sr
My User is in the Group “cdrom”.

Then  i’ve checked /etc/udev/rules.d 99-my.rules:
There i found: KERNEL==”[sr*[0-9]”,GROUP=”cdrom”,MODE=”0660″

getfacl /dev/sr0 says:

getfacl: Removing leading ‘/’ from absolute path names
# file: dev/sr0

# owner: root

# group: cdrom user::rw-
user:sascha:rw-
group::rw-
mask::rw-
other::—
For sr1 its the same output.

Then i go to  /usr/share/PolicyKit/policy/org.freedesktop.hal.device-access.policy and set the following:
— org.freedesktop.hal.device-access.policy.orig   2008-12-23
23:34:16.241840351 +0100
+++ org.freedesktop.hal.device-access.policy        2008-12-23
23:34:45.375339211 +0100
@@ -59,8 +59,8 @@
<description>Directly access removable block
devices</description> <message>System policy prevents access to
removable block devices</message>
<defaults>
–      <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
–      <allow_active>no</allow_active>
+      <allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>
+      <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
</defaults>
</action>

Then i made an reboot, but nothing happens. The same Error is
present.

Today i found out, that all non accessable DVD have the following
Rights:
dr–r–r–  3 sascha 4294967295   88 15. Okt 2006  DVD_VIDEO_RECORDER/
^^^^^^^^^^^^

Strange permissions.

SOLUTION:

Then i created an File in /usr/share/kde4/apps/solid/action with the following:

[Desktop Entry]
X-KDE-Solid-Predicate=[ StorageVolume.ignored == false AND OpticalDisc.availableContent == ‘Data|VideoDvd’ ]
Type=Service
Actions=open;

[Desktop Action open]
Name=Play DVD with video player (Kaffeine)
Exec=kaffeine -d %d DVD
Icon=kaffeine

After an relogin, the new Alternative are present. I can go to open with Kaffeine, and than we have finished this task.

BTW: Please check if KDE3/Kaffeine is installed. Without them the Workaround will not work.

Special Thanks goes to: slowhand/medwin

Tags: ,
Posted in Documentation, KDE, lizards.openSUSE.org, Usability | Comments Off on Problem with an selfmade DVD (DVD RECORDER)

Context Menus in YaST Partitioner

March 6th, 2009 by

We received some complains that the redesigned partitioner on openSUSE 11.1 is
tedious to use. To remedy these shortcomings I’m adding context menus to the
tables so that it is no longer required to select the correct view using the
navigation tree to perform some operation. Almost all operation should be
available via context menus in the main view listing all devices.

screenshot

As usual comments are welcome.

Posted in Systems Management, Usability, YaST | 11 Comments »

YaST Qt UI with Context Menus

March 6th, 2009 by

Context menus are supported by almost all UI frameworks and most people got used to them. Therefore it’s high time to provide context menus in the YaST Qt UI as well. yast2-qt-2.18.6 offers this feature, packages are available in my build service repository.

contextmenu

In four simple steps YCP programmers can benefit from this new feature:

Step 1:
Create a widget and tell via `opt(`contextMenu) that a ContextMenuActivated Event should be emitted when the user right clicks the widget:

`SelectionBox( `id(`sport), `opt(`notify,`immediate, `contextMenu),
"Open a context menu:",
[
"Item1",
"Item2",
"Item3"
] );

Step 2:
Wait and analyze events:
event = UI::WaitForEvent( ... );
...
if ( event["EventReason"]:"" == "ContextMenuActivated" )
...

Step 3:
Open a context menu. The argument of OpenContextMenu() describes the menu structure:

UI::OpenContextMenu( `menu(
[ `item(`id(`folder), "&Folder"  ),
`menu( "&Document",
[ `item(`id(`text),
"&Text File" ),
`item(`id(`image),
"&Image"     ) ]) ]  ));
Step 4:
Analyze the returned `id and trigger an action. An example called ContextMenu.ycp is included in the package yast2-ycp-ui-bindings.

Usability
A Context menu provides shortcuts to actions for a certain widget or item. This features improves usability when it’s used properly. Application programmers should avoid making certain features only using context menus because users might not find them.
Please keep in mind that YaST ncurses doesn’t provide context menus. Each operation that is only available via a context menu is useless in YaST ncurses because the user cannot select it.

Posted in Miscellaneous, Usability, YaST | 4 Comments »

Zypper: Improved bash completion and practical usage

February 12th, 2009 by

Because no one reported any bugs to perl-Bootloader, I have some free time. I use it to improve bash completion for zypper, because I find current one have some really annoying things. In short now completion work also for zypper global options, hint also for short version of commands and help name of repo, service and lock, if you use command which takes that as argument. Next few paragraphs contain practical examples how it help improve your command line productivity, how to get it to your system and also some notes how I implement it. (more…)

Posted in Software Management, Usability | 9 Comments »

USB EVDO (Alltel UM175AL) under SLED 10

February 9th, 2009 by

This was a bit of a bear, but I’ve inhereted a generic looking USB EVDO stick at the office. After some research and elbow grease, I’ve managed to get it working. In this post, I’ll detail EVDO configuration under SLED 10. I’ll leave out most of the gory technical details as others have covered that for me. I’ll link to the appropriate reference where necessary.

(more…)

Posted in Documentation, Miscellaneous, Usability | Comments Off on USB EVDO (Alltel UM175AL) under SLED 10

Registering your shiny new HP Mini-Note 2133

February 6th, 2009 by

So you just got an HP Mini-Note 2133 pre-loaded with SLED 10?  Great, right?

Well…  It’s not been so great for a lot of people.  It seems that HP simply put this laptop together, half-assed a SLED load and sent it out into the wild.  I’ve had a ton of problems with it, the two major ones being that I couldn’t register the machine with the Novell Customer Center (not even with my site license) it ships with a non-working wireless card.

My wifi fix was simple, buy a new usb wifi dongle…  Registration, however, was a little easier to fix (after some wailing, gnashing of teeth, and chat in #opensuse-GNOME… thanks captiain_magnus!).

If you attempt to use YaST to register you copy of SLED on the 2133, you’ll be re-directed to a “special” Novell Customer Center login.  It’s a little different than the normal one in that it wants an HP license, not any other SLED license you may have.  The biggest difference, however, is that it’s broke.  It simply refreshes the page when you click submit and sends nothing to Novell.

They’re pretty sneaky about hiding your license number as well.  It happens to be on your restore DVD.  It’s located on the right hand side below the HP logo and the “2133” text.  It’s in a series something like NNNNNN-XNN, where N’s are numbers and X is some letter.

To get around the registration bug, have your license number handy and fire up your terminal.  Use ‘sudo’ or just ‘su to root and issue the following command:

suse_register -n -a serial-hp=NNNNNN-XNN

Where “NNNNNN-XNN” is your registration code.  Sit back and wait, it took almost 20 minutes for this command to finish for me and you’ll receive absolutely no indication that it’s functioning.  Once it’s done, you’ll simply be returned to your prompt.  Fire up YaST or your favorite terminal emulator and check your repositories.  You should now have a Novell repository added.

Enjoy!

Posted in Base System, Distribution, Miscellaneous, Systems Management, Usability | 2 Comments »

Thats how I roll: Installing Ruby on Rails on openSUSE

February 5th, 2009 by

There’s been some discussion about Rails on openSUSE recently, so I thought I’d add to my Ruby articles with a Rails installation guide.

Getting started with Rails on openSUSE is a breeze.  In this particular article, I’ll quickly outline installation and startup of Rails on openSUSE 11.1.  You’ll need to install Ruby, ruby-sqlite, and ruby gems.  I’ve detailed these in my previous articles on ruby.

(more…)

Posted in Documentation, Usability | 4 Comments »

Application Icons in the Package Selector

February 4th, 2009 by

Desktop files contain a lot of information about KDE/Gnome/X11 applications (e.g. names, icons).

Displaying this data in the package selector allows to provide a more detailed package description. The user can easily see which applications are included in an installed package.

Running these applications via mouse click is technically possible, but unfortunately security concerns don’t allow it. Please let me know if you have an idea how to solve this issue.

Posted in Desktop, GNOME, KDE, Usability, YaST | 9 Comments »

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