May 3, 2007

Avant Window Navigator (a dock-like bar)



Avant Window Navigator (Awn) is a dock-like bar which hosts shortcut links and open windows and applications. Therefor you may consider replacing your windolist applet in gnome panel with this one. It is also almost like the other windowlist screenlet that I talked about earlier.
It has good looking visual effects, you can set background patterns or jusr use its default semi transparent glassy appearance.



Long story short, go to synaptinc, then:
settings > repositories > third-party software

and add:
deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/syzygy42/ feisty avant-window-navigator

then again in synaptic, click on reload button.
Now search for:
avant-window-navigator-svn

and have it installed. Then in terminal type:
avant-window-navigator &

and start having fun. If you like it, add it to your startup programs in sessions.



You should be aware of the fact that avant window navigator is not free of bugs. For instance, sometimes the background does not stay on top and you have to close the application and restart it to make it right. It also gets tricky sometimes, when you want to add a new application. The usual way to add new application is to drag and drop it on the bar.
But the good news is that once it is up and running, it runs (almost) flawlessly.

My personal advice is to use windowlist screenlet if you want something more stable. Though you won't have the integration of quick links and open windows under one roof. But if you are looking for something truly amazing, go for Avant window navigator.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

well its cool, but I'm kinda getting used to gnome+beryl, and the small snapshots of windows it provides when you hover over the tasks.
If it had the same enlargement effect as the osx dock I'd have given it a try though... :)

Anonymous said...

Doctor jan salam
What did you do with your old weblog? anywyas, thnx for your comment on my new one.

Anonymous said...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=418910&highlight=kiba

have u checked out kiba-dock yet?

Anonymous said...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=418910

"Knows how" said...

Yes! I have tried that. Avant is the only one that combines a lunch pad and task list/window list style together, pretty much like what we have in OS X.

Anonymous said...

i am having trouble with this tutorial. everything goes fine until it has to download the packages and it says some of them cant be downloaded and then i search for the thing it says to search for and it cant find it.

help?!