Deskbar-Applet 2.24 preview

We are in UI freeze already and string freeze starts today. It’s time to show the world what’s new in Deskbar-Applet in 2.24.

There’s only one major UI change in the new version. History is not in the main search window anymore but in a separate window as it was in 2.18 and earlier. New is that you can delete the selected item from history if you press the delete key.

(I wasn’t able to take a screenshot when history was displayed. I can’t even take a screenshot if I open any right-click menu.)

The biggest changes regard modules. We have 7 new modules and improved existing modules.

Let’s start with the calculator module which originally was written by Callum McKenzie, Johannes Buchner and Michael Hofmann. The usage is simple, just type in want you want to calculate and it will tell you the result..

We supported Google search a while back already, but it has been removed because Google stopped providing the API. Now a new API is available and so is the module. You’ll need the simplejson Python module installed to use it, though.

Speaking of Google, another new module is the Google Code Search module. You can type in the name of function or package and it will return a list of packages that include that term.

Not only you can use Google to search the internet, but Yahoo!, too. You can now search for specific file formats only. Type in “format:<format> my query” to search for documents of the specified format only. <format> can be one of html, msword, pdf, ppt, rss, txt or xls.

Another addition is the Yahoo! Suggestions module. It suggests search terms based on your query.

Talking of suggestions the same works for Wikipedia articles, too.

The programs module now recognizes all programs that are in $PATH and start with the term you entered.

Mikkel contributed two new modules to post to Twitter and identi.ca. Check out his blog post for more details.

If you think that all those modules aren’t enough you can now easily install new modules form the internet using Capuchin.

If you want to have your module added to Deskbar’s Capuchin repository, I’ll post instructions soon.

In addition, Wikipedia suggest, Google search and Yahoo! search modules support various languages, too. The correct language should be detected automatically, but can be configured in preferences, too. Needless to say, a lot of bugs have been fixed, too.

Now, please download Deskbar-Applet 2.23.91 and have fun with all the new modules and report any bugs you may encounter.

Update: Added screenshot of new history menu. Thanks for the hints.