Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
In the Unity interface, most of your activities that have to do with the operating system itself (including launching of applications) are done from the Dash. I personally think the Dash has some inherent shortcomings, but we can certainly find ways to work with or around them. One of the really handy aspects of the Unity interface is the built-in hint capability: You can press and hold down the Super key (most often labeled as a Windows key, especially if your Linux machine started life as a Windows device). That will bring up a screen showing you your keyboard shortcuts.
Dans l'interface Unity, la plupart de vos activités qui ont à voir avec le système d'exploitation lui-même (y compris le lancement d'applications) se font à partir du tableau de bord. Personnellement, je pense que le Dash a certaines lacunes inhérentes, mais nous pouvons certainement trouver des moyens de travailler avec ou en parallèle.
L'un des aspects vraiment pratiques de l'interface Unity est la possibilité des conseils intégrés :
Vous pouvez appuyer sur la touche Super et la maintenir enfoncée (le plus souvent étiquetée comme une clé Windows, surtout si votre machine Linux a commencé sa vie comme appareil Windows). Cela affichera un écran qui vous montrera vos raccourcis clavier.
Tapping the Super key without holding it down, will invoke the Dash. The Dash is also (usually) the first icon on the Launcher (the strip of icons defaulting to the left side of the screen). The Dash is where you will do a lot of your work in the Unity interface: The Dash gives you access directly to applications and recently used files and folders. There is a line of icons at the bottom of the Dash that modifies its focus. These are referred to as Dash lenses. The Dash will default to the Home lens (an icon of a house), but can be changed to Applications (an uppercase ‘A’ character), Files and Folders (a dog-eared sheet of paper), Videos (a Play button), Music (a musical note), or Photos (a camera icon). I only personally ever use Home or Applications, but the other options allow you to make quick and easy searches for particular media.
The Home lens will show you your most recently used applications at the top, and will also allow you to expand to more of your recently used applications, or to search all your installed applications. The Home-based search will search both applications and files/folders. The Applications lens is the one I personally use the most. Click the ‘A’ icon at the bottom of the Dash to invoke it. This will allow you to search for or manually launch any of the applications installed on the machine, either by using Recently Used or Installed (all). It also allows you to control Dash plugins. Most users will probably never need to bother with the plugins, but, briefly, you can use the plugin settings here to disable searches that you don’t want the Dash to use. For example, you can tell it not to search in your Chromium bookmarks by default, by clicking the Chromium bookmarks plugin and selecting Disable.
Now let’s look at some of the handier Unity keyboard shortcuts. If the mouse isn’t working, or you just prefer the keyboard, Alt – F1 will put you into keyboard mode in the Launcher. The top application will highlight and you can use the arrow keys to move up and down, then hit Enter to activate the highlighted application. You can similarly navigate by holding down the Super key and repeatedly hitting Tab or Shift-Tab. Super - T opens the Trash. When tapped, the Alt key opens the HUD (which I personally don’t find all that useful). When held, the Alt key activates the menus of the active application, so tapping the coinciding letter (e.g., F for File) will activate that menu. That can be a real time-saver and aggravation-fighter if you are a good typist and dislike moving your fingers from mouse to keyboard and back any more than necessary. You may find yourself sometimes wanting a screenshot of the entire screen or the active window. For the screen, use the PrtSc key. To get just the active window, use Alt – PrtSc. This will allow you to save the screenshot, or to put the screenshot on the clipboard where it can be pasted as desired. I use these shortcuts every month in putting this column together, pasting the screenshots into the GIMP for further processing (shown bottom left)
Alt-Tab switches between applications that are open (same as in Windows), and Alt-Q quits the currently active application. Ctrl-Super-Up (or Down) maximizes or minimizes the current window. Ctrl-Super-D displays the Desktop by minimizing all open applications at once. Alt-F4 closes the current window (also the same as in Windows). Another important aspect of the Unity desktop is the Notification area, defaulting to the top-right part of the screen (shown above) From left to right, these icons represent Updates, WiFi, Keyboard language and settings, Email status, Battery power available, Speaker(s), Date/time, and the System menu. Most will show options if you left-click or right-click them. Adjusting the notifications area icons displayed, icon size, and other customizations, are not directly supported in Unity. Most users will probably do fine with the default options, but if you want to modify them, you’ll need to install dconf-tools from the software center. Search (google) for ‘notification area ubuntu unity’ - to get more information on how to use the dconf-tools to modify the notification area.
When you’re not using the Dash, you will usually use the Launcher to launch programs, or desktop shortcuts. The Launcher defaults to the left side of the screen: To put applications on the Launcher, find them in the Dash and just drag and drop to the Launcher. Icons on the Launcher can also be re-ordered by simply dragging and dropping. Open applications will show up in the Launcher, and can be switched to by clicking on them. To remove icons from the Launcher, right-click them and select ‘Unlock from Launcher’. To move the Launcher, you’ll need to install the ‘dconf-tools’ as mentioned for customizing the Notification area; this function is also not supported by default in the Unity interface. We covered another aspect of the Unity interface – how to set up Unity desktop shortcuts – in FCM#133’s Everyday Ubuntu column, so if you have questions on that, refer back to that issue (the section on desktop shortcuts is at the very end of the column). Next month: As promised previously - Retro Gaming (part 1)!