Why RSS Feeds and alternatives to Google Reader

When reading about Google Reader closing down on 1. July, I was in panic because to stay on top of the news (mostly IT specific news in my case), I was depending on Google Reader. I was depending on Google Reader because I am depending on RSS feeds.

Google writes (in the article linked above):

"While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader."

I would never have imagined a decline of use in RSS (and I assume that the decline of Google Reader usage also means a decline in using RSS in general because it is very hard to find good alternatives for Google Reader). And therefore before diving into the alternatives I want to - no, I need to - go into the advantages of using RSS feeds first. And although there are plenty of articles about Google Reader alternatives out there, it was very hard for me to find the proper substitute and this is the reason why I decided to write yet another article about this topic.

The reasons why I am depending on RSS:

• Knowledge is power
  Information overflow is a problem these days. Recently I was asked (again) why one should - in these days - foster information overflow even more by opening even more channels where the too much of information rushes in.
  Information (as long it is not misleading or wrong) can be a life changer. You want samples? Think of a company investing in technology that is about to be obsolete (like Adobe flash) loosing a lot of time and money investing into the wrong product, think of a friend who found his spouse over the internet, think of going on a cheap vacation not knowing about risk of war in the appropriate country. Oh and another example I have experienced already several times: I get informed by RSS feed about food that gets withdrawn from market because polluted or containing toxic bacteria and strangely I sometimes see them on sale in the supermarket the day after I've read the article. Who has the knowledge has the edge over the others!
  The problem is not the information, the challenge is the appropriate filtering of information! And RSS feeds help!
   
  
• Time and information
  I do not have the time to visit each single website or blog providing (probably) interesting information. Many sites and blogs do publish very important or very interesting information - from time to time.
   
• More efficient scrolling through articles
  Many sites do publish a lot of information, but I am interested only in a few articles, so searching through many articles to find one or two interesting ones is annoying. An RSS reader (be it through the web or a local application) allows more efficient scrolling through articles.
   
• Different user interfaces of websites and blogs
  Different sites have different GUI (graphical user interface) and different layout. Visiting the sites one by one also implies being familiar with many different user interface styles. Many of them are not very efficient or it is difficult to find the information.
   
• Ads, bulk and other time and space wasters
  Even if you use an ad blocker in your browser often big graphics already consume a third of your screen distracting from the core information. Not only because of big graphics, but also because of many third-party service-sites (like Disqus, Facebook, Twitter, Adthis, Sharebar, ...) that are integrated on websites/blogs those sites take longer to load and having you to wait for the content that ... maybe then isn't so interesting today (while tomorrow may show a very interesting story that makes it worth waiting).

The reasons why I was using Google Reader (= the 5 core requirements of the substitute):

1. In-Sync-View on the Laptop/Web and on the mobile device (so what I've already seen on my mobile phone did not get presented when reading news on my laptop - one of the most important features for me).
2. List view option for feeds - I hate the hyped square interface. I want to read from top to bottom - that's it.
3. Simple and efficient user interface for dealing with the news fast.
4. Fast and reliable feed loading.
5. Nearly identical user interfaces on the web and on the mobile device - or at least not lacking core functionality. (Mobile device in my case is Android, Mac and iPhone users, when reading this article, Apple-only alternatives are left out here).

Reasons 1 and 2 are a must have  for me, but found that not having 3 and 4 can also drive me mad in minutes. So, now you are understanding the focus I had while choosing the alternative, here are my proposals:

• Feedly
  Feedly was the first alternative I got aware of and I observed it was the first alternative where the masses took refuge. However, I wondered if it will continue to work after Google Reader shutdown as it seemed to be just a front-end for Google Reader. Indeed they were (or are still while writing this) relying on Google Reader but developed a new backend on their own - see comments here. Not sure if the transition will work flawlessly and if the performance can be kept due to massive increase in amount of users. While I also find it one of the best alternatives, I am not as convinced as most of the others.
  Pros: Many features, mobile app (for Android, iOS, Kindle), similar GUI, laptop stays in sync with mobile app.
  Cons: Needs a plugin for Firefox (why the hack?), No mobile interface via browser only, even no https connection, Don't see how many articles still left to scroll through (no scrollbar) on mobile app. When I want to share an article link via K-9 mail (or other mail app than GMail) from within Feedly it does not transfer the article title as email-subject which is quite annoying. Further it restarts accidentally when returning from another app back to feedly (e.g. browser view - does not happen always) which is even more annoying.
   
• netvibes (= Bloglines - same GUI, same login)
  Pros: Clean, simple and compact web interface, additional widgets in addition to rss feeds. Also looks ok and is usable on mobile device in browser being very, very similar to Google Reader - but only with default browser and Dolphin (Firefox and Opera Mini displayed it totally different and it was total crap). Videos are displayed directly in the article detail view.
  Cons: No dedicated mobile client and using some browsers (in particular Firefox and Opera Mini) you get complete crap. Due to mobile app missing, it does not offer any enhanced features via menu button (normal browser menu displayed). Limited share options given (Mail, even multiple clients plus Twitter and Facebook).
   
• RSSly
  Seems to use Tiny-Tiny-RSS (which you can also install on your own server, if you have enough permissions there - see below).
  Pros: Many features, mobile app, similar GUI on laptop and mobile phone, laptop stays in sync with mobile app, display in browser on mobile device is also very good (Dolphin and Firefox - which is seldom - see below), many features including list of not responding feeds or feeds that seem abandoned as well as filter settings to filter out spam posts.
  Cons: It took me a good while to find out, how articles are marked as read on the mobile device. It does not work automatically, but when you do it manually it had unexpected effects until I found out, that doing it on the first page marks the first 30 entries as read and on the last page it marks the complete feed as read. On the mobile device I have cannot switch between show all articles or only unread of a feed. And RSSly seems to load feeds respond to article clicks a little slower than Feedly. I could also not get it to display article title only without abstract on mobile device.
   
• Fever°
  This is not free and no hosted service. You can buy it for about 30$/23€ and host it on your webserver. I took the risk and bought it. Installation was very easy. I only had to temporarily disable PHP securiy settings on admin interface on my hosters website for my page (for the time of installation and activation).
  Pros: This is then yours, no risk of the next RSS service closing down. Clean interface, some extra features (kindling and sparks) to make your RSS experience even more efficient.
  Cons: You need a web server with PHP support for it. If you don't have a web host with your domain then you cannot use this. Mobile client meltdown for Android still missing some features and available only for Android 4.0 and later. Refresh of feeds is not done in background (you can cron it but in my hosting case I can only cron it once in the night) and I experienced it also to be slow.
   
• The Old Reader
  Pros: HTTPS connection supported. Simple - no other clutter than plain RSS feeds. Few but clean settings, you will be familiar with it fast.
  Cons: No mobile client (yet). When importing my feeds it queued me up after 12 other users. This makes me worry if they have enough servers to have my feeds stay on top of the news. Although they say that their mobile web interface is good, I had already troubles logging in from my smaller phone (small screen) and categories were completely missing and similar issues here when using Firefox or Opera Mini (complete crap is the result).

What I also looked at but excluded from closer investigation and why:

• Pulse
  Pulse has a mobile client but no simple list view of the news feeds - they always use the squares or rectangulars and I am never sure about the direction into which to read. Also I could not find a button to set a feed to completely read. So this lacks a lot of important switches in my opinion.
   
• NewsBlur
  Free version has limits which I already exceed when importing my current feeds from Google Reader.
   
• Mocharoll (=former Blogroll)
  Failed importing my RSS feeds from Google Reader (took a very long time and I then gave up first. Looking back later it had imported my feeds but I had no chance to switch to list mode instead of the square view. And in general configuration options are not really existing. Also refreshing problems - so didn't look either how it behaves on the mobile device.
   
• Feederator
  Looked similar to netvibes or TheOldReader, but could not find a method for importing opml files or my Google Reader feeds.
   
• Good Noows
  Looked nice on my laptop, but mobile view again awful (does not wrap around text. On the laptop I also had problems getting a complete feed beeing set to read. At least it supports https connection (not all of the online services do).
   
• Tiny-Tiny-RSS
  As for Fever, TT-RSS is not a hosted server. It is free, but you have to install it on your own server. I could not test it because it said that it requires open_basedir turned on which seems to be disabled by my host.
   
• CommaFeed
  Looks simple but already on Dolphin sucks in display (too small but when you zoom into it, display gets mangeled.
   
• Flipboard
  Mobile app only - no sync-view between mobile app and laptop.
   
• Feed2Imap
  Self-hosted solution, so requires your own server and then forwards RSS news items as mails into an IMAP account. I am not sure, if my hoster supports ruby and I did not want to introduce another protocol (RSS->Mail) where again something can go wrong.
   
• feeder.co
  For what I need, I would need the variant that costs monthly fee.
   
• FeedBooster
  Online-Reader only with https capability but no specific mobile device/browser adapted display.
   
• Flud
  Seems to have a web plus mobile client but people reporting stability problems of the mobile app and pricing is not completely clear to me (maybe because this is not 100% RSS focused) so I refused testing this.
   
• news360
  Web and mobile app but no possiblity to add your own RSS feeds - just what you get from them.
   
• More alternatives here...
  I skipped everything in testing that obviously
  - syncs with Google Reader (and hence die with it)
  - does not have any sync option
  - does not have a mobile app or at least a useful mobile web stylesheet in use to show an adapted GUI for small screens
  - costs money on a monthly basis
  - does not have a list view for articles

So despite this long list of alternatives (Feed2Imap apart, I have listed only those I have also tested), in reality there are 4 which are fairly useful for me: Feedly, RSSly, netvibes and Fever. All the others had too many (for me important) flaws. I have Fever up and running and I feel good with it - as it is mine (nobody can shut down the RSS-service). However, best efficiency is given by Feedly and netvibes. Reading this (Feedly gets Unity webapp integration in Ubuntu) was one reason to go with Feedly for the next weeks. I still feel bad about it's desire to read my Google profile but I hope that will be gone when they synchronize with their own alternative but with Google Reader - currently Feedly still remains in sync with Google Reader. I can work around the mailing issue with the subject by first opening it in the external browser (there is an option for this in the advanced settings) and send the link from there. What I find more alarming: Feedly already thinks of asking money for the service. They already created a survey for that. Anyway, I have 3 other alternatives now I can immediately switch to and this gives me some feeling of safety.

Related post: Efficiently following web news with RSS.

Proof of Concept

More and more companies tend to set up proof of concept projects before they buy software or IT solutions.

Apart from the fact that there is nothing wrong with that, I can see that companies do believe less and less of the stuff they get told by sales. And I think, they are right. Be it economic crisis or greed, to get a deal, salesman simply lie. When they lie they often the don't really lie explicitely, they often just choose words and phrases that can be easily missunderstood or lead to high or wrong expectations. Then of course there is usually the technical part of the story that salesman mostly don't understand well - and they guess or are just happy with the positive attitude.

Well, this is business as usual, you might argue - and you might be right.
But the product features/limits/facts and expectations of the people in the project are a crucial part not only during the evaluation period.

Who suffers?

• The IT administrators at the customer.
• The consultants doing the installation and configuration stuff.
• The final end-users (some of them - they key-users - are nowadays often involved, even if often too late).

All those people are often not involved during the early project phase, although they are very relevant for the final project success.

What is worse than having few work only and a tiny amount of new customers only? When you have your consultants blocked working in projects which are always short before escalation or at high risk that customer wants unwinding the contract!

So I try not to feed high expectations and I prefer overdelivering over underdelivering. In the long run this brings more satisfied customers getting back to you for further projects.

Related post: The truth about software.

Firefox and RSS feeds in Google Reader

Update: Google Reader will be closed down at July 2013 so this article is quite obsolete - read the newer article "Why RSS Feeds and alternatives to Google Reader".

However, here is the old story:

Lately I explained RSS feeds to someone and wondered why Firefox is not behaving the same way as on my machine when subscribing to RSS feeds. I did not remember what I exactly did on my machine to get it to work because it is so long ago that I created my profile for new that I first started searching the internet. Interestingly I could not get it to work so - back home - I investigated my own settings. Interestingly they do not match what I found on the net so I think it could be worth writing this article.

Preamble: Google Reader is an online RSS news reader that is also available for Android phones which is very fine when you (as I do) use your phone a lot to read news (for example while on the bus or waiting for it). What you read on your phone is synchronized with what you see when you are back on your laptop or PC. What I show here is how to get subscriptions with Firefox:

1. Newer Firefox versions do not show the RSS feed symbol by default any more. - Right click next to your tabs or somewhere between your toolbars and choose "Customize...". Look for the "Subscribe..." button and drag it onto your toolbar (I have it next to the refresh and abort button).
    
2. Type "about:config" into your url location bar and search for "feeds".
    
3. Change "browser.feeds.handler" to "reader"
4. Change "browser.feeds.handler.default" to "web"
5. Change "browser.feeds.handlers.webservice" to "http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=%s"
6. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.auto.application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed" to "http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=%s"
7. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.types.0.title" to "Google"
8. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.types.0.type" to "application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed"
9. You might also need to change "browser.contentHandlers.types.0.uri" to "http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=%s"

Now when you are on a site that offers RSS feeds the "Subscribe" button should be active (sometimes, when there are many different RSS feeds available on a site they are available through separate links on the site while the main RSS subscribe button is inactive so you might need to dig a little for the RSS  subscription link) - however in both cases you should get the option to put the RSS feed onto your iGoogle page or subscribe with Google Reader then.

Related post: Efficiently following web news with RSS, Why RSS Feeds and alternatives to Google Reader.

The truth about software

To summarize the software-troubles:

• Too many bugs
• Too difficult to use
• Too much administration and maintenance work

As you might already know, as it seems obvious for you - or maybe, if you are listening to your inner voice, you only hear it from somewhere burried deep down in your mind: software is full of bugs. There is no bugfree software.

Since I started programming, I could see the IT world complexity growing and growing. In the beginning there was one processor and one process running at a time - no other software to integrate with. Everything was easier. When I think back to times of Commodore C-64 or when I was using the MS DOS Borland Turbo Pascal or C compilers - they were all extremely robust and when there was something not working as desired, I could be to 99 % sure that it's my fault. So at least the core system and the development platform were rock-solid and stable. That did not always apply to my programs... ;-)

Nowadays, operating systems and their core services as well as development environments - and in addition to that a bunch of third-party libraries all have their issues. So the software developer doesn't even start on a rock-solid base as it happened to be back in the early eightees (at least according to my experience - YMMV). In addition to that: If you want to produce cars, toys or whatever other physical stuff, in most cases you need a factory and a lot of money before you can start. For producing software, all you need is a computer and download some tutorial from the net and even a fool can get started - and unfortunately a lot of fools do...

But the low entrance barrier is only one reason for the lot of issues around. In my opinion the complexity is the worst thing here. Even with the honest strong desire to get everything right, you can't - apart from the fact that IT world has grown far too big to be completely covered by a single person.

But the growing IT world did not bring only troubles - we do have far more possibilities since computers were invented. Software development is far easier than in the beginning of computers. We can build software with far more features in much shorter time now. The problem: The software can often do far more than the users can handle.

And last but not least: I remember times when the "installation" of a program was just copying it to the machine and run it. Today it requires dependency checks and sometimes complex installation procedures. Although still possible - only a very few programs that run fine when you just copy them. Nowadays many software products have a bunch of required preconditions and a lot of integration options that need configuration. Highly integrated software means more maintenance work regarding updates (of any of the involved components). Another reason for increased maintenance work are the customization options that most software comes with.

A normal user nowadays is working with a lot of different software products and often there are some software products that are used very seldom only. I have seen users dealing with software they need to touch only once a month. From one month to the other they need to re-find all needed menu items again because from one month to the other they always forgot.

The challenge these days is:

• To reduce complexity (of the problem and feature set) as far as possible (while maintaining flexibility).
• To make using the software easier - software must be intuitive to use (only a very few people do read documentation or help file text).
• And to make configuration obvious and simple.

Related posts: IT fallout and buddhism, New user experience, Proof of concept.

The truth about hardware support

Since the time I first started using Linux at home I know that one must be careful when choosing hardware to avoid pain when installing Linux.

When people say that Windows supports more hardware than Linux I always confirmed from my own experience.

But: Linux - out-of-the-box supports more hardware than Windows does (out-of-the-box)! Microsoft "outsourced" most hardware support to the vendors and when you buy new hardware with Windows preinstalled, vendors did the job in getting everything to work!

Lately I wanted to help out a new co-worker reinstalling Windows on his work laptop (HP Pavilion g6). There was an extra partition prepared by the vendor which probably contained possible required drivers. However, somehow it was inaccessible so we couldn't get drivers from there. After a clean Windows 7 installation: No WLAN, no sound and no ethernet either! After long search on the net (from another machine of course), my co-worker found the most important download (ethernet driver) on a separate site from HP for businesses (after finally also identifying the exact sub-model of the g6) - more than 100 MB download - for a freakin' ethernet card!

After that I was so frustrated loosing so much time just to get the normal ethernet to work (let alone WLAN and the rest), that I left the rest up to him. Later in the evening he called me about activating Windows and Office and I could not get to the Microsoft action pack site because somehow the login did not work any more.

The next day he arrived at the office with Ubuntu installed on the HP Pavilion g6 - everything worked out-of-the-box - no single extra driver required and of course fully usable (without the need of activating any software)!

But this is not always the case. There are plenty of vendors that do not write drivers for Linux and many even do not publish the specifications so that somebody else could write the driver. If there is an open source driver - or at least a free driver available, Linux already contains it, where on Windows you need to get separate driver setups or CDs from the appropriate box or vendor site.

There are currently software updates running on a Dell Latitude E6530 next to me. As usual, all I need to tell Dell: I need a laptop and I don't pay the Microsoft tax, I will install Ubuntu on it and the hardware must support it. I don't want and don't need to search forums for possible problems, I can rely on Dell shipping fully supported hardware - everything out-of-the-box - also no additional drivers required.

My recommendation: Even if you don't plan yet to use Linux, tell your vendor when buying a new PC or laptop that you want the hardware to be Windows AND Linux compatible. If you plan to use Windows: Hope that you don't need to reinstall yourself grabbing all the required drivers from the internet!

Related posts: Ubuntu compatible hardware, About Dell, The hardware.

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise Pangolin - Optimized

Preamble:
If you are a recent Linux convert, just new to Linux or only a casual computer user, you don't have to worry: Whatever of the main Linux desktop distributions you are choosing (be it Ubuntu, Zorin OS, Linux Mint, Fedora, ... - whatever flavor of those) to use or try out - you are ok. The following is for power users who want to save clicks and mouse-miles to the absolute minimum required.

This article partly applies also for other distributions that offer compiz.


Introduction:
Since Ubuntu 11.04 which first introduced the new Unity interface for the main desktop instead of Gnome, I was testing many different Linux desktop alternatives because I worried about the future of the Ubuntu desktop. After testing several distributions (see preamble above) and all the main desktop environments including XFCE, LXDE, KDE, Gnome3+AWN, Gnome3+Cairo Dock I came back and settled with Unity on the current Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) production work desktop. I do consider myself as a Linux Desktop power user on a daily basis at home and work and I focus on usability, efficiency and stability. On 10.04 I was experimenting with Gnome 2 plus AWN or Cairo Dock finding a more efficient desktop configuration. Basically I ended up with something similar to Unity. Except: I was doing hard work on configuration ending up with several small but annoying problems (including crashes of particular applets now and then).

Honestly, I find Unity on Ubuntu 12.04 (not so in the versions before) very stable and useful out-of-the box. There are still a few very first actions, but anyway far less post-install-configuration work than everywhere else (not to talk about Windows which is the OS with the most-post-install work ever existed).

First actions after install (applies to debian based distributions such as Ubuntu, Mint or Zorin OS):

1. Click Settings/Power Icon in the right upper corner, then "System Settings"->"Appearance"->reduce "Launcher icon size" to 32. Default size is just too big to get most icons fully displayed that I need on a daily basis (ok this first one is only for Ubuntu users with Unity).
    
2. Start Nautilus (Windows/Ubuntu/Super key + 1), move mouse to top of screen (new way to get to the active application's menu) and choose "Edit"->"Preferences" and change "default view" to "List View".
   And in tab "Display" I also change the date format to ISO (yyyy-mm-dd) - you might want to keep the default.
    
3. Start Firefox and under "View"->"Toolbars" check "Bookmarks Toolbar".
    
4. On the commandline (open a terminal):
   sudo apt-get install synaptic
   I now, there is a nice app store now - pretty fine for the normal user and even for me if I want to look around for interesting stuff. But I still like to see the original package names, have overview and full control about the repositories and the like. therefore I still like synaptic - in addition to what comes with Ubuntu.
    
5. On the commandline (if on Ubuntu or other distribution with Desktop environment that offers/works with compiz):
   sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager compiz-plugins-extra
   That's for configuring my desktop to get the best usability and efficiency.
    
6. Enable partner repositories:Press ALT+F2 and type synaptic then press Enter.
   In the menu select Settings->Repositories.
   Enable the partner and independent repositories.
   Close the sources dialog and on the synaptic main window click on the reload button (this is the same as the commandline "sudo apt-get update" - without the quotes).
    
7. Managing passwords:
   It is always recommended to use different passwords on different sites where you register and login. After several registrations nobody can remember all the passwords. Therefore it is helpful to use a password manager. My current favorite is keepass2. It can be installed this way:
   sudo apt-add-repository -y ppa:jtaylor/keepass
   sudo apt-get update
   sudo apt-get install keepass2
    
8. And then I install a lot of other tools - such as (on the commandline again - this is all one line):
   sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras ubuntu-restricted-addons adobe-flashplugin ffmpeg vim cups-pdf gnome-utils thunderbird k3b p7zip-full gufw libdvdcss2 xdotool gthumb vlc shutter gtk-recordmydesktop openjdk-6-jre icedtea-plugin openjdk-7-jre grsync galternatives soundconverter winff asunder ogmrip thoggen k9copy google-talkplugin skype pidgin emesene mc htop traceroute secure-delete pdftk imagemagick rar unrar jhead what-utils ttf-linux-libertine ttf-isabella ttf-dejavu-extra ttf-inconsolata ttf-sil-gentium ttf-junicode ttf-rufscript ttf-radisnoir remmina remmina-plugin-gnome remmina-plugin-xdmcp remmina-plugin-nx freerdp-x11rem chmsee jxplorer mdbtools-gmdb nautilus-filename-repairer smbclient clamav clamav-freshclam clamtk libmotif4 curl network-manager-openconnect-gnome network-manager-openvpn-gnome network-manager-vpnc-gnome openconnect ttf-mscorefonts-installer acroread
   Note: You need to enable a few repositories before:
   #Adding medibuntu (all the next on one line)
   wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && apt-get --quiet update && apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && apt-get --quiet update
   
   #For Google-Talk-Plugin (2 lines)
   wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -
   
   sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list'
   
    
9. On Ubuntu with Unity? - Then these help:
   sudo apt-get install classicmenu-indicator lo-menubar unsettings myunity indicator-weather
    
10. For the professional IT guys (continue on the commandline - again all one line):sudo apt-get install gparted dconf-tools gconf-editor gisomount bum vim-gnome gedit-plugins geany geany-plugins scite meld diffutils diffuse diffpdf gitg bless ghex build-essential xmlcopyeditor
     
11. For the developers or server guys more might be highly relevant (on the commandline one line again):
    sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client mysql-query-browser mysql-gui-tools-common mysql-admin pgadmin3 gsql
     

Enhanced usability:
Now - if you are on Unity or using a desktop environment with compiz - here are the tweaks to maximize usability:

1. Start ccsm (e.g. Press ALT+F2 and type ccsm and press Enter). This is the compizconfig-settings-manager.
    
2. Choose "Desktop Wall Plugin" under "Bindings" category and set "Move Left" to "Bottom Edge + Button 1" and "Move Right" to "Bottom Edge + Button 3. - That let you switch the desktop left and right easily with the mouse on the bottom edge.
    
3. Still in "Desktop Wall Plugin" go to "Edge Flipping" and uncheck "Edge flip move" as well as "Edge Flip DND".
    
4. Go back to main screen and select "Scale plugin". Go to "Bindings" and set the "Initiate Window picker" to "BottomRight" and/or "TopLeft".
    
5. Go back and switch to "Application Switcher" plugin. Under "Bindings" choose for "Next Window" the TopEdge+Button 1.
    
6. Set "Next Window (all Windows)" to "TopEdge+Button3".

Related posts: Locale configuration on Ubuntu, Firefox change default page format, OpenOffice and LibreOffice starts slow, Default paper size in Open Office, Normal.dot in OpenOffice or LibreOffice.

New user experience

Yesterday I made an experiment which for me is difficult to do: I showed Ubuntu 12.04 to a person (about 70 years old) completely new to computers (only used the mouse to click through a set of photos so far but that's it). I only know a very few people of this type (most already have used computers).

I have seen a lot of funny and interesting behaviour (like hit the key with the pipe character written on it instead of i ;-) - never thought of things like this). Don't want to go into detail - just share the most relevant results in very short:

1. Big icons are not only for people visually handicapped - also for people who are not familiar with a mouse (or relevant for touchscreens: have big fingers). A quadratic form is easier to click than a rectangular shape (text on websites is rectangular shape and more difficult to click than the Ubuntu Unity launchers for example).
    
2. Without explanations - whatever Operating System - a complete newbie person cannot learn only on his/her own. There needs to be a person that explains. Not to talk about administration. A newbie with low experience level will never administrate the computer on his/her own. There must be a person with higher experience level helping out and doing this for everyone who just wants to do a few things (or must do). This draws a very important conclusion for me - confirming my belly feeling somehow: The operating system must try to minimize the annoyance for that guy behind everything. The person that needs to help out the core family and a dozen of friends! - That usually are IT people or at least the very technical interested guy/girl. So companies or communities building an operating system need to focus more on the technical person than on the new user! If the guy/girl that needs to administrate, hates the OS he/she will install something else and the user needs to adapt. For the unexercised user efficiency differences of one or the other operating system are irrelevant - not so for the power user or IT guy! So those driving an operating system forward with their experience and with their desires for improving efficiency are the key group - they are the experts others will trust. Who would you rather ask which new car to buy - the flower lady at the corner or the taxi driver?
    
3. Most websites are far more complicated to use than the base operating system. Navigating those sites is far more hassle. Last but not least because they do not tend to look similar. Imagine, all websites would have a standardized menu so that whataver company site you are at, you find the link to the office hours at the same position.

Related post:  The truth about software.