shortcut me now
In my first year at university I read an article named “Escaping the mousetrap”. It was about how keyboard shortcuts can increase your productivity.
It contained a list of shortcuts for Windows 2000. It really changed my approach to computers: moving your hands off the keyboard to use the mouse is slow..
Since then i always try to learn keyboard shortcuts for the software I daily use.
Apps
- Gnome http://www.ghacks.net/2009/03/18/handy-gnome-keyboard-shortcuts/
- Eclipse http://eclipse-tools.sourceforge.net/Keyboard_shortcuts_(3.0).pdf
- Firefox http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Keyboard+shortcuts
- Chrome http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=95743
- Gimp http://www.gimpusers.com/gimp-hotkeys.php
- Bash http://www.ice2o.com/bash_quick_ref.html
- VI http://ungerhu.com/jxh/vi.html
- Firebug http://getfirebug.com/wiki/index.php/Keyboard_and_Mouse_Shortcuts
Web Apps
- Google Reader http://www.google.com/support/reader/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=69973
- Gmail http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6594
— update:
- Mac http://www.usingmac.com/2007/11/21/mac-os-x-leopard-200-productivity-booster-hotkeys thanks to fen0x
Screencasting @ Mashape
We are working hard in Mashape to allow, as soon as possible, more alpha users to play with our platform. One of our main focuses is the documentation.
Yeah, it could sound weird, but we need really good documentation. And it’s really hard to write it down. Harder than code.
But, one of the main bonus, of creating documentation vs writing source code, is that you can use different tools and create it in different formats. For example screencasts.
I’m just trying recordmydesktop to record screencasts:
michele@erakis:~$ recordmydesktop —no-sound —v_quality=50
The output is a file called out.ogv. Then I’ve encoded it using ffmpeg (video codec mpeg4 and avi container) just to upload it on Vimeo
michele@erakis:~$ ffmpeg -i out1.ogv -f avi -vcodec mpeg4 -an -b 2742k video.avi
Yes, I love the command line..
Gnome 3 and the importance of UX
User eXperience has a great importance in today’s software development. Just to clarify, the focus of this discipline is to enhance how a person feels about during his interaction with the system.
The reason why UX is growing in importance is that with social networks and mobile application, the software today has to be comfortably used by a bigger part of the market than in the past years.
The role of UX designer is something we (developers) needed. And I definitely think that also Gnome needed it.
I usually read Planet Gnome’s RSS and, in the last month, a lot of blog posts were concerning UX: the Gnome people decided to organize an event to talk about usability and User Experience: the Gnome 3 Usability Hackfest to bring the interaction with their desktop environment to the next level.
This is awesome. I’ve read every post published on the planet gnome and I often thought, watching a hand drawn diagram, “wow, it’s so simple and so effective” but I could have never done by myself something similar. And this is why I like to work with some UX designer (but sometimes it’s really hard, but that is another story): I’m a developer, and developers love to complicate everything.
by the way, I look forward to using Gnome 3!
