There are many ways to keep yourself organized. I’ve seen writers keep spreadsheets, use tools like Basket or OneNote, scratch notes on pieces of paper, or you can take the Anne Rice approach and plaster your house with Post It Notes. I prefer a much simpler task that add a simple panel applet that allows me to add files to keep track of everything I am working on at the moment. This tool? Top Shelf. In this article I am going to introduce you to this tool, how to install it, and how it works.

What is it?

Top shelf is like a combination of the Recent Documents menu and the Favorites menu, only you get to quickly determine what it contains at any given time. It lives on your GNOME panel and allows you quick and easy access to a list of files and/or their containing folders you have added. I like to use this for one project (it works best for larger projects) at a time. As the project grows, so to will the file list grow. It doesn’t matter if each file is contained in a different folder on your machine, you can add it. You can even add a shared folder from another computer if necessary (so long as you have access to that file). And, best of all, Top Shelf is very unobtrusive. You won’t even notice it until you need it.

Installation

As you probably have grown to expect, the installation of Top Shelf is simple. But Top Shelf is currently only available in binary form for Ubuntu. For other distributions you will have to install from source. To install in Ubuntu follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “top shelf” (no quotes).
3. Mark Top Shelf for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it. Now, if you are using a different distribution you will need to follow these steps:

1. Download the source from the main page.
2. Open a terminal window.
3. Change to the directory housing the download.
4. Issue the command tar xfzf topshelf-XXX.tar.gz (where XXX is the release number).
5. Change into the newly created directory with the command cd topshelf-XXX (Where XXX is the release number).
6. Change to the root user.
7. Issue the command make install

That’s it. You are now ready to add the Applet.

Adding the applet

This is as simple as adding any other applet. Right click your GNOME panel and select Add To Panel. In the new window scroll down until you see Top Shelf, select Top Shelf, and click Add. You will now see the Top Shelf Icon on your panel.

Using Top Shelf

Figure 1

If you click the Top Shelf icon the Top Shelf window will appear (see Figure 1). In this new window you can add/remove files, open any of the currently listed files, open a files’ containing folder, and change the order in which the files are listed. To open a file simply double click on the file you want to open. To open a containing folder right-click the file and select Open Folder.

Final thoughts

That is all there is to Top Shelf. As simple as this application is, you will be amazed at how much it will help you keep your current working project organized and give you quick access to those files.

All of this comes in a tiny panel applet that is simple to install and simple to use. How easy is Deskbar to install and use? Let’s find out…

Getting and installing

The Deskbar applet will be found in your distributions’ repositories most likely. So all you will have to do is either fire up your Add/Remove software utility or a terminal window. If you opt for the GUI tool you will install like so:

1. Open up the Add/Remove software utility (such as Synaptic or gpk-application).
2. Search for “deskbar-applet” (no quotes).
3. Select the resulting deskbar-applet entry.
4. Click Apply to install.

If you opt for the command line you can open up a terminal window and enter a command such as:

apt-get install deskbar-applet

or

yum install deskbar-applet

You will see no visible sign that Deskbar has been installed because you hav to add it to your panel.

Adding Deskbar to your panel

Figure 1

If you right click your GNOME panel a menu will open contining the entry “Add To Panel”. Selecting that menu entry will open up the Add To Panel window where you will select the Deskbar entry and click the Add button. When the Deskbar applet is added you will see the icon as shown in Figure 1 (the panel icon on the far right.)

Configuring Deskbar

There isn’t too many options to configure with Deskbar. The most important options will be to enable the various plugins you want to use as well as add your Twitter username/password (should you want to use Deskbar to post to Twitter.) To do this right click the Deskbar icon and select Preferences from the menu.

Figure 2

From the Preferences window you will see three tabs and a few buttons (see Figure 2). The first thing you will want to do is scroll through the list of Extensions and decide if you want to enable or disable any of them. To enable an Extension just click the checkbox so the checkmark appears. To disable an Extension click the checkbox so the checkmark disappears.

You can also move an Extension up or down the list so that a particular extension gets priority for searching or action. And finally you can configure an extension by selecting it and click the More button. For example, in order to configure your username/password for Twitter you will need to select the Twitter extension and press the More button. In this new window you will enter the credentials for your Twitter account. The More button only appears on Extensions that have configurable options.

Using Deskbar

Figure 3

This is where it gets simple. Say I want to search my machine for the sting “linux”. Click on the Desbar icon and the text area will open up for you to enter your search. As you enter your search string the Deskbar window will expand to reveal various options (see Figure 3.)

As you can see there are a number of options available:

• I can execute a command
• Search for “linux” with Beagle
• Lookup “linux” in my dictionary
• Post “linux” on Twitter.

Depending upon what Extensions I have enabled there will be more or less entries.

Final thoughts

Deskbar will quickly become your best friend on your GNOME desktop. Making use of this handy app will help to make your desktop life much more effient and simpler. My only hopes is that other desktops (such as Enlightenment) will follow suit and create simillar apps.