10:58 PM
HUD was added by default in Ubuntu 12.04, but only for Unity 3D (with Compiz) and since feature freeze has passed, it seemed HUD wasn't going to be available for Unity 2D. But a feature freeze
exception was made and Unity 2D now includes HUD.
HUD for Unity 2D is not yet available in the official Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin repositories yet, but if you want to test it, you can use the Unity Team PPA (there was an
announcement a couple of days ago, but HUD for Unity 2D didn't work until a few minutes ago):
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-team/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
(HUD for Unity 2D is also available in the Unity Staging PPA)Update: Unity 2D with HUD is now available in the official Precise repositories.Once installed, log out and log back in, then open an application and tap ALT to invoke HUD.
Remember to report any bugs you may find @
Launchpad.
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11:06 PM
Back when Mark Shuttleworth announced
HUD (Head-Up Display), a new smart menu for Unity, it wasn't sure if it will be added by default in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin. Well,
Unity 5.4.0 has just been uploaded to the Ubuntu 12.04 repositories and it comes with HUD by default. However, HUD doesn't replace the global menu so it you're not forced to use it!
There's also a
new default video lens which can search for both local and online videos (Vimeo, YouTube, Amazon, TED, BBC iPlayer, etc.):
The latest Unity 5.4.0 also includes many bug fixes and minor tweaks, like:- better looking quicklists:
- the Ubuntu button, mounted devices, workspace switcher and trash icon now follow the Dash "chameleon" style:
Update -> There's an interesting change I forgot to add:
NotifyOSD now uses the same median colour and blur used for Dash (which depends on the colour of your wallpaper). We've talked about this a while back, but it wasn't available in Ubuntu 12.04 until today: If you're using Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, you should get Unity 5.4.0 as an update in a few minutes.
To use HUD, tap ALT, then type your query. The key can be changed from CompizConfig Settings Manager.
Unfortunately there's no official list of changes for Unity 5.4.0 because there's a bug in the
changelog (it's almost identical to
5.2.0).
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6:59 PM
A while back, Alex Fiestas has implemented something very similar to
HUD, Unity's new smart menu, for KDE. The initial implementation only worked for KDE applications and only if the menu was shown in the application window.
After seeing HUD in action, he was motivated to continue his project, so he implemented this into KRunner.The new AppMenu Runner implementation uses the same technology as HUD, so it works with GTK and Qt applications too and Alejandro hopes it will be available in KDE Plasma Workspace 4.9 "if the Plasma teams like it".
Here's a video recorded by Alex, in which he talks about the new AppMenu Runner as well as the initial implementation:
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10:24 PM
Mark Shuttleworth has announced HUD, or Head-Up Display, an alternative to application menus especially designed for Unity, which should solve many issues with existing menus "by connecting users directly to what they want": Say hello to the Head-Up Display, or HUD, which will ultimately replace menus in Unity applications. [...] The HUD concept has been the driver for all the work we’ve done in unifying menu systems across Gtk, Qt and other toolkit apps in the past two years. So far, that’s shown up as the global menu. In 12.04, it also gives us the first cut of the HUD.
- Mark Shuttleworth
HUD works everywhere the appmenu (global menu) works and lets you search through the application and system menus. It uses a smart search so it can learn what you do to prioritize various items. Further more, HUD lets you interact with both the focused window as well as the whole application (for instance, you can perform various actions for an IM chat window but also set the status, through the same menu).
Mark is even speaking about integrating voice recognition into HUD, but that will take a while to implement:
Searching is fast and familiar, especially once we integrate voice recognition, gesture and touch. We want to make it easy to talk to any application, and for any application to respond to your voice. The full integration of voice into applications will take some time. But even without voice input, the HUD is faster than mousing through a menu, and easier to use than hotkeys since you just have to know what you want, not remember a specific key combination
In a comment to his blog post, Mark also said that HUD "may be default, but optional", so it will not replace the regular menus, at least not for now. Also, I'm not sure how this will work in the future, but for the moment, regular menus aren't removed and they are still displayed on the top panel, so HUD is only an alternate way of using the menus.
Here's a video introduction to HUD, recorded by the Ubuntu developers:
More about HUD @
http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/939Install HUD in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin
According to Mark's blog post, it's not yet known if HUD will be available by default in Ubuntu 12.04, but it's already available to test via PPA (for Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin only): sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-team/staging
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Then log out and log back in.
To invoke the HUD, tap ALT.
Please note that
HUD is currently available as a prototype, for testing only and has some missing features. Installing it will replace your current Unity version!
To remove Unity with HUD and go back to the original Unity from the Ubuntu repositories, use the commands below:
sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:unity-team/staging
What do you think?
» read more....
