Thursday, 28 March 2013

Nautilus Tips and Tweaks,openSUSE 12.3, GNOME 3.6

 Nautilus has undergone massive changes in recent versions and it is going to be a challenge figuring out a few things. The following long winded article would be useful in figuring out various "Hidden" functionalities of Nautilus. But before doing anything, do Configure Community Repositories openSUSE 12.3
Where are Preferences / settings in Nautilus?
 After opening Nautilus you need to click on the Nautilus icon on top panel to pull down the various settings / preferences.
 Do you need nautilus to confirm with you before executing each script and provide an option to run in a terminal?
If yes then you can enable using following menu in preferences
How can i sort icons ?
 By clicking on the drop down button next to the "Wheel" like button on the menu bar, you can access functions like :-
  • Zoom in / out which allows us to increase and decrease icon sizes.
  • Reload which allows us to refresh Nautilus. (keyboard : F5).
  • Allows Sorting and reverse sort of icons by:-
    • Name
    • Size
    • Type
    • Modification Date
  • Hide / Show Hidden files & folders (Names starts with a dot (.) )
 How can i Bookmark various folders ?
  Bookmarking folders in Nautilus makes them appear in the "pane" on the left hand side of Nautilus. You can use the wheel / Gears like button on top right hand side of Nautilus to :-
  • Bookmark Folders (keyboard : Ctrl+B) so that they appear on "left pane".
  • Open New Tab in Nautilus (keyboard : Ctrl+T)
  • Create New Folder in present working directory.
  • Selecting all matching items (keyboard : Ctrl+S). You can select all png files in a folder using this functionality.
Where are "New File" and "Refresh" Context / Right click menus ?
  They have ahem! been "removed". We can easily restore these functions by using "Nautilus Actions". I would take a look at this post (Nautilus Actions?) before coming back here to read further.
Use "touch" command to create a "New File"
 Install "xdotool" (sudo zypper in xdotool) to simulate key presses. Now, all we need to do is simulate F5 key press to add refresh functionality to context menu.
Restored "NewFile" and "Refresh" Menu items
How can I preview files ?
 Preview functionality in Nautilus allows you "preview" contents of all files without actually opening them. You can even play video and audio tracks using this functionality. It can be accessed by ensuring that you have the following packages installed:-
  • Install "sushi" (Quick Previewer for Nautilus) sudo zypper in sushi
  • Install "unoconv" (Allows us to preview doc,ppt,xls,docx,odt,odf etc) sudo zypper in unoconv
  • Install "nautilus-evince"(Allows previewing pdfs) sudo zypper in nautilus-evince
  • Install Gstearmer libs (Allows previewing Audio and Video files) sudo zypper in gstreamer* (Will pull in lot of packages :) ).
 After installing above stuff you may restart system and to preview files you can press "spacebar". You can "preview" virtually any file now :). You can see preview samples here:- Audio,video and doc preview features in Nautilus
Also chekout :- Image resize,create thumbnail and image rotate using Nautilus on openSUSE 12.3, GNOME 3.6
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9 comments:

  1. Luis Valdez1 April 2013 at 01:19

    Thanks! I wasn't finding nautilus settings.

    ReplyDelete
  2. vazhavandan1 April 2013 at 08:07

    Hi Luis, You are most welcome

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sasha K-S7 October 2013 at 16:55

    Now how to find the settings for restoring dual pane f3 mode which they destroyed the file browser by removing :(

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jon L.5 November 2013 at 10:44

    Too bad they took out the status bar option. Now I have to take extra steps to figure out the size of selected groups of files. It was a subtle feature, but I really miss it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Jon L.5 November 2013 at 10:49

    A status bar like popup will display when selecting groups of files. Still, I miss that status bar.

    ReplyDelete
  6. vazhavandan22 November 2013 at 00:15

    They probably took these status bar related design clues from Firefox. Once upon a time Fx too had status bar :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. vazhavandan22 November 2013 at 00:16

    you cannot the dual pane back . You can try and alternative file/folder manager

    ReplyDelete
  8. Sasha K-S22 November 2013 at 11:35

    That's what I did. Shame that they had to wreck Nautilus for no tangible reason or benefit whatsoever.

    ReplyDelete
  9. gangsta4life9 August 2014 at 13:06

    There is much easier way how to have NewFile back in Nautilus context menu. Just create NewFile ((in terminal touch ~/Templates/new) in your home Templates folder. And restart Nautilus. That's it

    ReplyDelete

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