So it’s time for another update on our gmusicbrowser-poject. Since we recently were featured on webup8.org we thought it’s about time we properly present our work.

So here you go, the project page has been updated and nice shiny screenshots have been added.

We’re really working hard on the stability of each release – even though they come out freshly baked from our git-repository (which is in sync with gmusicbrowser’s main development repository), however if you encounter bugs, please report them on launchpad.

We’re open for your suggestions, ideas and feedback – join us at #shimmer on irc.freenode.net!

PPA for gmusicbrowser and new layouts

gmusicbrowser is a music player written in Perl. We think its most important feature is its configurability in terms of layouts, and pretty much everything else as well. We’ve been building a good-looking layout, polishing the overall look, adding new icon themes and even drawn new logo for our own little branch. In the following weeks we continue working on the #1 layout, but also creating some new ones for different purposes.

You can try out the stuff we done in Ubuntu by installing gmusicbrowser by adding the PPA of Shimmer Project to your system and upgrading/installing the package gmusicbrowser. Any feedback on the theme is welcome on both #shimmer and #gmusicbrowser at Freenode.

Shortlist of themes

We really think xfce-look.org is too cluttered and full of not-that-beautiful, definitely-not-polished themes (and other stuff). Some of the themes are even just some bad ripoffs of some other GTK+ and only promote theirselves with good-looking wallpapers. Shame on you.

This project fights against disorganization. We’re practically going to test loads of existing Xfce (xfwm as well as GTK+ and icon) themes and making a shortlist on the finest ones we found.

How does Shimmerlist sound for its name?

Just a quick note to say that Albatross has finally been released in a 1.0.0 version (downloads on the project page). We’ve been waiting for some feedback and for checking the theme’s compatibility with Murrine 0.90.3. Also, we wrote a .Xdefaults file meant to be used with the theme for XScreenSaver users.

I would like to thank James Schriver for taking the time to go through the theme and fix a few quirks, and Pasi Lallinaho for forcing me to do my work at least today. If, for any reason, you want a signature of the release tarball, it will be here in little time (we will probably hack this into our projects page so it gets nicely presented to you there). You can email me in the meanwhile.

The most nasty of our visitors will have noticed a lazy ass promised a beta of something for March 1st. Well, this is canceled due to an unfortunate lack of time. I don’t intend to work on anything FOSS related within the next months, to tell the truth (apart from minor maintenance work, of course). I am truly sorry for that, but we all have our priorities, and at the moment mine is what happens in real life.

Shimmer Project itself is in Launchpad also. The best way to see new projects added to Launchpad for bug tracking or other uses is to check the teams page. For now, the team is open for developers only.

Edit

Steve has just pushed the theme on our Mercurial repository. You can find a link to it on Albatross’s project page. Once the Albatross logo is drawn, and once the Xscreensaver theme is pushed, we will be able to make a first release of the theme.

Albatross 0.2, which will mostly fix some smaller glitches as well as polish the overall look, is going to be released at 1st of March. This leaves time for developers who want to use Albatross to do so for their next release. We of course have in mind our main downstream, Xubuntu, whose User Interface freeze is on 4th of March. We don’t exclude other downstreams, and anyone willing to use Albatross is more than welcome.

If nothing goes wrong, work should also begin on a project that has not been announced yet. If Steve’s school projects don’t take too much of his time, a mockup should be published on 1st of February, and a beta on 1st of March. This and other future projects will be announced later.

Work on Simon’s Trayicons project will also start off properly in the first quarter. As for now, there is no plans for the Exaile Clutter GUI development.

Happy new year!

Albatross is our first bigger project, which started as the default theme for Xubuntu 9.10. Exaile Clutter GUI is an effort to design an alternative user interface for Exaile, that is both beautiful and intuitive.

As of today, I’m glad to announce the official birth of the Shimmer Project. The team I’ll start leading consists of me, Steve Dodier (SiDi), James Schriver (dashua) and Simon Steinbeiß (ochosi). We want to make various things look good or work better. We will not be tied with any particular project even if we work with them. You could think us of as freelancers of the Open Source world with the exception that we don’t ask for any money but only work for the projects and things we have passion for.

For the first few months our main focus will be on creating a solid theme for Xfce with beautiful artwork, a bugfree GTK+ theme and all the other bits you need to have an astonishing Xfce desktop experience.