Cinnamon 1.2 Released With Desktop Effects, Multiple Layouts, More

I have not had a chance to try it yet as I do not have a spare partition or machine in which to do so, but yeah, these old eyes need a larger panel in order to see my icons. Plus, I thoroughly appreciate the ability to drag an icon from my menu to my panel and have it stick. I think that should certainly be a goal, if not already implemented.

how to enlarge your panel (is this a TOS violation?)

First:

Then edit the cinnamon .css file: Do a find on #panel and change into or what ever you prefer.

Save this, but you are not done yet. You can change the font-size under panel if you want to. Next: then edit this... change to

and change to

save your changes and do an alt+F2 'r' to re-start cinnamon.

You should have a panel big enough to make the girls swoon!

looking through the CSS I see that button and app icons are styled on different lines, those will have to be updated as well. I am sure this will all be configurable via the GUI cinnamon settings in the futrure.

Thanks I'll give it a whirl

It did not work properly for me. The panel got bigger but the icons did not and in fact they were pushed down so they disappeared off the bottom of the screen...

Thanks anyway...

That shouldn't be surprising, if they're actually using CSS to draw the user interface. Anyone who's worked with CSS knows that it's total cr@p, and why anyone would want to use it to draw UIs on a desktop system is beyond me.

It's not that the idea of using a separate language or settings file of some kind to specify style settings is a bad idea, it's just that CSS is an abominable implementation of the concept. If you're an experienced programmer in C or C++, just try making your own modern HTML5 website with PHP, JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS. You shouldn't have too much trouble with the first 3 (jQuery helps a lot with JavaScript, and PHP is really easy for anyone who's used C-type languages and esp. if you have some Perl experience), but you'll spend the vast majority your time mucking around with CSS, making some little change, seeing what it does, making some other change, seeing what it does, trying to use Firebug to figure out why a font is much bigger than the code says it should be but not being able to determine that with any certainty. It's just a mess.

I only looked through the file quickly.

Because it is CSS the style should 'cascade'

You have to follow the hierarchy and start expanding through all the levels.

I noticed that my notification icons like sound and network (the grayed out ones) did expand. These must be panel icons that I adjusted in the CSS.

The icons on the button and the application launching icons did not change.

looks like other things will have to be updated: .panel-status-button .system-status-icon

I don't think iconGrid.js has to do with the panel. It seems to be for the applications grid.

there doesn't seem to be any programmer's docs in the source. I'll have to keep playing with this to learn more.

The panel.js file is set up to calculate and change many things based on the constant PANEL_HEIGHT. That is good.

It just seems there are icons and there are things that look like icons that are something else.

Anyway, I'm sure this will be settable by GUI soon enough.

I've been using Cinnamon 1.2 on my dell 1420n laptop since Cinnamon 1.2 came out.

I have to say that I like it!

It has a few quirks:

1) The focus does not always return to the desktop when windows are closed so the system does not pick up keystrokes. For example, close the last window on your desktop and then press alt+F2 to open the run dialog and, occasionally, nothing happens. try it again and it sometimes works. click on the desktop and it works

2) Clicking a minimized program in the panel does not always restore it. Click it again and it usually works. Click anywhere else and try it again and it works.

3) Some times, when returning from suspend, the desktop crashes and returns to the ldm login prompt.

The first two may be related. The second seems like a mutter/muffin issue. These are known issues that I have seen reported in the forum.

Clem from Mint called 1.2 stable. I would call it much 'stable-er', but not bug free. The amount of work put into this and the rapid rate of development is amazing.

I like the fact that I can turn off the overview hot-spot and icon. No more disruptive, inefficient view switching that marks the central design of the gnome shell.

Cinnamon is gnome 3 done very well.

I've tried Cinnamon,... Much better than Unity. Not great though. The big advantage of Cinnamon is not having to abandon Ubuntu (or Ubuntu derivatives), and all the available development that's gone on that platform. But Cinnamon needs a lot more work.

Disadvantages include not being compatible with Compiz (less of a problem, since there's more support for native effects, like transparency), lack of themes & Widgets, limits to customization (color themes, different window decorations, etc.), and lack of optimization (it's slower in rendering than Compiz). I'd also like to see margin support, like in LXDE or XFCE.

@number6x: It seems like you wrote a pretty nice How-To article to me. Might I humbly suggest that you publish it as such so that more people can see your instructions?

@Khamul not!

As montezuma points out my solution is only a half solution. It does not properly expand all of the items within the panel and is half baked at best.

I have not had time to go back and gather all of the variables that need to be updated in order to get the correct effect. It certainly can be done, as some of the Cinnamon themes do implement a different size panel correctly. It seems to be a matter of finding the correct changes in both CSS and .js files.

If I get it correct, I promise I'll do a write up. Write now I'm drawing lines between cylinders (database mapping for a new project at work) and picking the best colors for each tier of the project. Development is always more fun than design, but the pretty pictures get funded by management better than the whiteboard drawings do.

Quoting:it's just that CSS is an abominable implementation of the concept

CSS is not a programming language, it is a Parametric Definition Language. I think you are blaming the wrong part. CSS is not so bad itself, but what makes it look so bad sometimes is the implementation by the rendering engine and lack of its compliance with the standard.

Also bad implementation does not help.

You really have to cascade. Set the rules that apply to the page as a whole. Then override those rules on special subsections. Much CSS simply reapplies the same rules over and over for each set of items.

That is SS, not CSS.

@Fettoosh: From what I've seen personally, both Firefox and Chrome do a pretty good job of compliance with the standard (or, at least, are very similar in how they interpret the standard, even though they use totally different rendering engines). The problem isn't compliance, it's that it's a terrible standard. The stupid thing doesn't even allow variables; what if you want to use the same color in a bunch of different places on the site? You have to copy the same #aabbcc RGB code in every place you want to use it, instead of just defining it as a variable. How stupid is that?

Someone actually made an improved version of CSS that addresses many of the idiotic deficiencies in CSS, called "LESS", but since it's not a standard, it has to be read using Javascript. http://lesscss.org/

@Khamul,

Thanks for the link, I haven't heard of lesscss before.

I think this should help explaining the reason CSS doesn't have variables and also shows a workaround for defining variables.

http://icant.co.uk/articles/cssconstants/

http://www.w3.org/People/Bos/CSS-variables

Their reasons for not having variables are beyond flimsy. There's a world of difference between having simple variables, and embedding Javascript into CSS and the security problems that entails. And processing speed? Are they kidding? Maybe in 1994 that was a problem, not now. We're not using the same version of CSS as we were in the 90s; they've had 15 years or so to get it right. The simple truth is that it's just a bad standard, written by committee.

I think my solution to dealing with the Cinnamon problem is going to be switching to XFCE. I'm coming to the conclusion that it doesn't make sense to have two desktop UIs that essentially do the same thing. In my opinion, XFCE does it better.

I recently tried out LXDE, KDE, Unity, and manipulating Gnome to work with Cairo-dock and Compiz (like I had done before). My verdict is that XFCE has matured to the point where it's the desktop UI with the most flexibility in configuration, while still being lightweight.

While it's nice that there's work being done with Cinnamon, to try and fix the fiasco that Gnome with Unity or Gnome 3's shell has become, I think it comes up a little too little and too late. I encourage those who want to make Cinnamon work, and am impressed how fast it's come about. However, I just don't think it's enough to save the train wreck that any modern form of Gnome has become.

And I hadn't realized that Cinnamon was so heavily dependent on JavaScript. Knowing that it is makes me agree with Khamul about its security issues.

@JaseP,

XFCE is certainly a much more mature solution. Gtk 2 is also more mature than Gtk 3 at this time. I'm going to keep playing with Cinamon as I think it is a much better implementation of Gnome 3 than is offered in gnome shell.

I highly recommend debian sid with XFCE. You may have more to set up to get sid to be an average desktop, but the performance is superior to ubuntu implementations of xfce. Slack and pclos XFCE desktops even seem better than the ubuntu ones.

I know it’s a matter of opinion, but that's mine :)

Cinnamon is definitely not ready to take on XFCE or kde, but I think that it easily can compete with less mature desktops like Gnome shell and Unity. Maybe when XFCE is ready for its Gtk 3 port, you will be there to help test the early implementations and make sure it works with what you need in a desk top!

Variety is the spice of life!

Sorry,

Forgot to add a link on the linuxmint cinnamon sight on the steps to use to create a custom theme for Cinnamon:

http://cinnamon.linuxmint.com/?p=144

Ubuntu is important because of development projects associated with it. There's a lot of work going on in and around Ubuntu. I've tried going to Debian before,... but I've ended up having to reinvent the wheel with some of my hardware setups with it. And despite Ubuntu being based on Debian, Ubuntu packages don't always work in Debian. Ultimately I have to spend a lot of time getting my systems to work together the way I want, but going to Debian would double or triple that,... nope, not a solution for me, sorry.