File Menu Applet for GNOME's panel -- 0.5

Description

File Menu Applet is a small GNOME panel application which creates a file manager. File Menu Applet is not designed to replace your existing file manager, but instead work with it. It supports standard drag and drop, GNOME file types, and Nautilus icons. I use it for small tasks such a easily attaching files to emails in Evolution by dragging them out of File Menu Applet into the Evolution composer window. It's also excellent for selecting songs to play from your MP3 or OGG collection.

Screenshots

Click a screenshot for a full sized version.

(June 1, 2002)
This is a screenshot of File Menu Applet displaying the directory where I stored all the files having to do with planning my wedding. I've right clicked on an Excel spreadsheet to show some of the file operations which are possible. Notice that File Menu Applet is now respecting my Nautilus theme.

(December 28, 2001)
This is a screenshot of the File Menu Applet displaying /usr/share/doc and /usr/share/doc/HTML on my Red Hat 7.1 system. I have right clicked on header_logo.gif and you can see that there are many options to choose from. You can see in this screenshot that File Menu Applet has scrolled menus when directories get too big.

Download

CVS
File Menu Applet can be found in GNOME CVS. You should be somewhat familiar with compiling GNOME applications out of CVS to try this. However, the CVS version should be the most recent. To get it run:

cvs -d ':pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome' login
cvs -d ':pserver:anonymous@anoncvs.gnome.org:/cvs/gnome' co file_menu_applet
cd file_menu_applet
./autogen `gnome-config --prefix` `gnome-config --sysconfdir`
make
make install

Tar File
file_menu_applet-0.5.tar.gz (June 1, 2002)
file_menu_applet-0.4.tar.gz (March 27, 2002)
file_menu_applet-0.3.tar.gz (December 27, 2001)
file_menu_applet-0.2.tar.gz (December 12, 2001)

To compile the tar files, should should be somewhat familiar with compiling GNOME applications. However, a quick run through might look something like this:

./configure `gnome-config --prefix` `gnome-config --sysconfdir`
make
make install

Packages
file_menu_applet-0.5-ximian.1.i386.rpm -- Compiled for Red Hat 7.1.
file_menu_applet-0.4-ximian.1.i386.rpm -- Compiled for Red Hat 7.1.
file_menu_applet-0.3-ximian.1.i386.rpm -- Compiled for Red Hat 7.1.
file_menu_applet-0.5-ximian.1.src.rpm -- Uses /usr and /etc as prefixes.
DEBs are available in Debian using apt-get install filemenu_applet

Features

Small screen footprint
Resides in the GNOME panel
Can watch any directory, even remote sites
Supports Drag and Drop with most applications
Rarely feels blocked
Works WITH your existing file manager
Spring Loaded Menus when using Drag and Drop
Detects and uses your Nautilus icon theme
Dragging a directory will perform a file operation on all the files in that directory (Requested by Chris Lahey: He wants to drag music directories to XMMS.)

Known Bugs and the TODO list

Dragging a file from File Menu Applet back onto File Menu Applet doesn't work.
File Menu Applet will index any size directory, sometimes causing too much CPU.
On remote directories, (ie: ftp sites) file menu applet appears to die
Memory leaks, I'll bet.
Image thumbnails would be nice.
If the user is using large menus, File Menu Applet should too.
File Menu Applet should respect hidden file, directory first sorting, random sorting, and hidden file viewing preferences from Nautilus.
Dragging a file ON to File Menu Applet should perform a file operation.
Dragging a file ON to File Menu Applet in a deep directory which causes menu overlapping should focus the top most menu.
The scroll menu thing should (sometimes) be edge to edge and sometimes not.
It should be possible to have multiple File Menu Applets watching different directories at the same time.
Each File Menu Applet should be able to watch multiple directories.
File Menu Applet should recognize .desktop files as a real type.
File Menu Applet should allow the user to change the sort order of a directory.
Sorting large directories is weird looking as files appear in random places.

xkahn at zoned dot net

Last modified: Sat Jun 1 01:00:56 EST 2002 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Fri, 12 Mar 2010 00:59:28 GMT Server: Apache Content-Length: 0 Connection: close Content-Type: text/plain