FAQ

From AWN Wiki

(Redirected from Notification Area Applet)

Please note that all of the following is intended to work for versions 0.4 and above.

1 What is Awn?
2 How do I start Awn?
3 How do I access the preferences for Awn?
4 How do I close Awn?
5 How do I add launchers to the bar?
6 How do I change the order of my launchers?
7 How do you add a place or location (home folder or a drive for example) to the dock?
8 How can I launch more than one instance of an application that I have a launcher for?
9 How can I make Awn run when my desktop starts up?
10 How do I make Awn look more like the LG3D or Leopard Dock?
11 Where do I get more applets?
12 How do I reset Awn's preferences?
13 How do I reposition Awn?
14 Why do some launchers make new tasks appear and some reuse the launcher?
15 Awn grabs the focus on a large piece of the screen in Openbox. How do I fix this?
16 Why doesn't Awn have the parabolic zoom effect that other docks have?
17 Why does Wine make Awn so slow on my Debian-based system?
18 How do I turn Awn into a launcher-only dock?
19 How do I permanently remove GNOME Panel from my GNOME session?
20 How do I set up GNOME session to start Awn instead of GNOME Panel?

[edit] What is Awn?

Avant Window Navigator, or Awn for short, is a dock-like application launcher that sits on your GNU/Linux Desktop.
It can be used for anything from the launching of simple programs to complex multi-tasking.
It compares to The Mac OS X dock in functionality, allowing the user to specify its position on the screen.
Awn is written in C (with some Vala parts) and should run on any platform which uses X window system.

[edit] How do I start Awn?

Find it in the Gnome/Xfce menus under "Accessories" (or the KDE menu under "Utilities") as "Avant Window Navigator", or run the following at the command prompt:

avant-window-navigator &

[edit] How do I access the preferences for Awn?

Right-click either end of the bar and choose "Dock Preferences", check the "Settings" or "Preferences" menu in your desktop's application menu for "Awn Settings", or run the following at the command prompt:

awn-settings &

[edit] How do I close Awn?

Right click on either end of the bar and choose "Close" or run the following at the command prompt:

killall avant-window-navigator

[edit] How do I add launchers to the bar?

There are two methods to add launchers:

Just drag and drop! It's safest to drag from the Applications menu into Awn.
Select "Add" in the "Launchers" section of Awn Settings. For power users, these user-created launchers are stored in the folder ~/.config/awn/launchers. Regular users can just use the "edit" button.

[edit] How do I change the order of my launchers?

Open Awn Settings. From there, select "Launchers" on the left hand pane. You can drag and drop the launchers to change their position on the dock. If you have the option "Drag and drop reordering" checked, you can just drag and drop.

[edit] How do you add a place or location (home folder or a drive for example) to the dock?

Note: This assumes that you are using the Gnome desktop environment. If you are not, please replace nautilus with the path to your file manager. For example, for Xfce, it would be Thunar.

If you want to add your home folder, create a new launcher on the dock using the command "nautilus" (without the quotes).

If you want to add a different location, use the command:

nautilus /path/to/your/location

[edit] How can I launch more than one instance of an application that I have a launcher for?

Middle-click the launcher. "Middle-click" is also known as "button 3".

[edit] How can I make Awn run when my desktop starts up?

Check the option "Start Awn automatically" in the Preferences section of Awn Settings.

For KDE you might need to do this: Open Konsole and issue the following commands:

cd ~/.kde/Autostart
ln -s `which avant-window-navigator`

Note: Those are grave accents (back-ticks), not apostrophes.

[edit] How do I make Awn look more like the LG3D or Leopard Dock?

Open Awn Settings. Pick 3D from the "Style" drop down menu.

You are, of course, free to play around to create your own custom look by changing the settings.

[edit] Where do I get more applets?

Awn ships with only the Launcher/Taskmanager, Expander, Separator and Preferences applet. Many other applets, such as the Main Menu, "Stacks", CPU meter, and GMail notifier applets can be found in Awn Extras. Once you have installed some applets, you can add them to the dock via Awn Settings, in the "Applets" section.

[edit] How do I reset Awn's preferences?

Resetting Awn's preferences can be useful when you wish to return to the dock's default appearance.

Usually it is sufficient to run Awn Settings and apply the default theme on the "Theme" tab.

[edit] How do I reposition Awn?

By default Awn sits centered on the bottom edge of the screen. If you have Preferences applet, you can just drag it to different edge of the screen and Awn will change its position. If you're not using this applet, you can run Awn Settings and look for "Orientation" drop down menu.

If you're feeling adventurous, you can also change the alignment of Awn, run Awn Settings and drag the "Position of the screen" slider.

[edit] Why do some launchers make new tasks appear and some reuse the launcher?

This is because Awn matches processes to tasks by looking at the task name. Example: You have a launcher named "Terminal" in your dock. This launcher launches a program whose title (the text at the top of the window is "~ - Terminal"; Awn uses launcher as task icon. If you rename "Terminal" launcher to "Command Line", Awn does not use launcher as task icon, because "Command Line" is not part of the program's title. If you configure the terminal to have the title "~ - Command Line" (from its preferences), Awn uses launcher as task icon. If you rename you Bash Command Line launcher to "Terminal" or "Konsole" or whatever it has in the title, it will not launch a new instance. If you want the opposite behaviour, make sure the launcher name is not part of the window's title. Lastly, you can middle click to launch a new instance of a used launcher.

-- (Semi-)Quoted from: https://answers.launchpad.net/awn/+question/11017

[edit] Awn grabs the focus on a large piece of the screen in Openbox. How do I fix this?

Awn and Openbox interact strangely: Openbox seems to think that Awn has the focus over a very large area of the screen outside of the actual dock. The simple solution to this is to tell Openbox to place the Awn dock on the "always below" layer. This allows windows placed in the Awn area to grab the focus, while dock icons are still clickable if pointed to directly.

To enact this policy, add the following to .config/openbox/rc.xml, under the <applications> section:

<application name="avant-window-navigator">
 <layer>below</layer>
</application>

Reconfigure Openbox, and restart Awn for the changes in layering to take effect.

A similar solution may apply to other *box variants, but this has not been tested. Updates to this FAQ by people running those managers are welcome.

Note: This may be related, but I've seen Compiz interact somewhat strangely like this too. When moving a window around sometimes the bottom of a window 'auto attaches' to a non-existent edge a number of pixels above the Awn dock.

[edit] Why doesn't Awn have the parabolic zoom effect that other docks have?

Awn has a dock architecture that is different from most of the others, in that each applet runs in a separate process. They each have their own "window", and are shown on the dock via Gtk+'s GtkPlug mechanism. This approach was used so that applets would be easier to develop and so unstable applets would not crash the entire dock. The downside is that it is much more difficult to apply all of the graphical transformations necessary to perform the more advanced effects (such as parabolic zoom) on the applet windows, as opposed to a singular graphics surface (which other open source docks use). As always, patches to implement this effect are welcome on the bug tracker.

Another explanation can be found on the blog of one of the Awn developers: Why things are the way they are...

[edit] Why does Wine make Awn so slow on my Debian-based system?

Awn developers have received several reports with regards to Awn becoming noticeably slower when Wine is running on a Debian-based distribution and while using the Nvidia binary video drivers. Based on these reports, it has been confirmed that the combination of Wine 0.9.57 (or later) and version 169.12 of the Nvidia drivers (or later) fixes this performance issue.

[edit] How do I turn Awn into a launcher-only dock?

Open Awn Settings and check "Display launchers only" on the Taskmanager tab.

[edit] How do I permanently remove GNOME Panel from my GNOME session?

Warning: This will remove the GNOME Panel from GNOME session. If you want to change GNOME session's settings to start Awn instead of GNOME Panel, please read the next chapter.

Note: Depending on the version of GNOME installed, there are different instructions. Please pay attention to the bolded version numbers.

For versions of GNOME up to version 2.22, you need to Open the "Sessions Preferences" dialog, found at System → Preferences → Sessions. Click on the "Current Session" tab, select the "gnome-panel" entry, press the "Remove" button, and then press the "Apply" button. Then, to make sure that the session remembers not to start gnome-panel at startup again, close all of the programs that you do not wish to run at startup except the Sessions Preferences dialog, click on its "Session Options" tab, and press the "Remember Currently Running Applications" button.

For versions of GNOME after version 2.22 (for example, Ubuntu Intrepid and later, or Fedora 10 and later), there are two options.

If you have "Configuration Editor" (AKA gconf-editor) installed, run it and navigate to the key folder /desktop/gnome/session. Double-click on the key required_components_list in the right-hand pane to edit it, and remove the value "panel" by selecting it and pressing the "Remove" button, followed by the "OK" button.

Alternatively, you can run the following command from the terminal:

gconftool-2 --type=list --list-type=string --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components_list '[windowmanager,filemanager]'

With either method, for the changes to be applied, you need to log out and log back in.

[edit] How do I set up GNOME session to start Awn instead of GNOME Panel?

If you have "Configuration Editor" (AKA gconf-editor) installed, run it and navigate to the key folder /desktop/gnome/session/required_components. Double-click on the key panel in the right-hand pane to edit it, and change the value to "avant-window-navigator" followed by the "OK" button.