full rendering of a wallpaper in nautilus

[larryfroot]

....I am a tragic case of eye candy sucker. And this is a pretty tragic point for me. Because when you read the rest of this post, I'm sure that you will allow it to sink to the depths that unreplied threads go to when they die. But it has been bugging me since Hardy, and we are nearly in Jackalope. And its about nautilus and well...eye candy.

Once upon a happy time in ubuntu orchards, there was an especially nice froot of nautilus - the ability to open up edit --> backgrounds and emblems, and instead of choosing a tiled pattern, navigate to a wallpaper, add it to the patterns panel, and use it instead of one of the patterns.

Last time this really super thing (well it is to me, I am an eye candy freak) worked properly was on Gutsy - or faun can't remember which. These days when I try it, the wallpaper only renders to the size of the opened nautilus window. Maximise the window, and there is only black around the part of the image that rendered only in the visible space of the window before it was maximised.

Its a real shame as the eye candy appeal and extra customisation it offered really helped in creating a beautiful desktop.

If anyone has any idea on how to achieve a full rendering of a wallpaper in nautilus, regardless of its size when the wallpaper is dragged onto its background from the background and emblems panel then I would love to hear from you! Lets put a really cool thing back into the desktop!

And of course, thanks for any help rendered. (Pun not intended, honest). LF

But I know...its hardly necessary...

[scutiform]

I love getting eye-candy for my wallpapers as well. There is so much really great, inspired stuff out there. Go to System > Preferences > Appearance. select the Wallpaper tab. All the wallpapers available should show as thumbnails. The Style spinner gives a selection of ways to display the wallpaper. Just Experiment to get the best result. You can also change the background colour from the default black to antyhing you like.

If Appearance is missing from the menu, you will find it by going to System > Preferences > Main menu and tick the box to get it back.

[larryfroot]

Thank you scutiform!

Unfortunately I am trying to add a wallpaper to nautilus background, not the desktop background. It used to be possible a couple of releases ago, but these days there is a glitch in the way nautilus deals with its own background elements which means that only part of the wallpaper is rendered, instead of all of it. A carefully chosen wallpaper for nautilus to complement the one chosen for the desktop background really made things look pretty damn cool. Not that Linux doesn't already look pretty damn cool. So even more cool, then!

And thanks for your reply. Every few weeks or so I will start this thread somewhere and you are the only person to have shown an interest! Fair warmed the cockles of me heart! I think I should have a word with the nautilus devs...y' never know!

[blinky]

In nautilaus
Menu->Edit ->Backgrounds and emblems

1. You get a popup dialog click "Add new pattern" button

2. You get anther dialog "Select File", find the file you want to use press the "open" button"

3. You have "Select a image file ...." dialog with the name of your selected file. click "OK" button.

Leaves you with dialog (1). scroll to bottom and drag the newly (is that a valid word) pattern to the nautilas pane (the right had pane)

Should work, tried it on nautliaus 2.20.0 ( I did it in Fedora 8 ), but not sure that's what you meant.

As a side note up need to get away from the eye candy (unless your demo'ing to windows/mac losers), it does'n make the system any more usable

[larryfroot]

Yep, been doing that blinky, and it seems to work, but the wallpaper image chosen gets truncated when the nautilus window is resized. If I drag the wallpaper out onto a maximised nautilus window, then minimise, resize et all it works well, all of the wallpaper is rendered and re-rendered nicely. But when I close the nautilus window, then re-open it and it opens unmaximised, then when I do maximise it, the background wallpaper rendering screws up again.

God, is this obscure or what? I think I'll mow the lawn just to actually achieve something a little more worthwhile! But thanks for the heads up; for a non-eye-candy bod that represents something akin to a charitable act towards someone politely inflicted with a mental disorder.

[scutiform]

I'm sorry I got mixed up between Nautilus and the Desktop, but at least it got some movement. by the way, have you looked at Cairo-Dock? You have to go to it's web site, and the first pages are in French, but it does some fantastic themes.

[scutiform]

Another thought, report it as a bug. You might get some help straight from the horses mouth.

[larryfroot]

Hi scutiform...yep, after another trawl I went to launchpad and poked around. Its reported as a bug, and more relevantly, its reported as a bug in intrepid rather than hardy. (It went flaky with hardy first).

Yes, cairo dock is fab...seems to have become a lot more stable (for me at least) than it once was. One day soon I am going to declare desktop eye candy day and just tweak everything visual to my satisfaction. Have you come across gnome color chooser, its in the repo's, gives you a bit more leeway.I used it to change font colours with more selectivity than the appearance panel allows. Useful if you want a light coloured font for panel applets and darker fonts elsewhere (one example amongst many).

As far as the nautilus thing goes - see what happens in Jackalope. And now back to a very big grindstone called web design. Cheers!