Using Brightside in Ubuntu

A simple little app today, Brightside. What this does is to allow you to traverse your desktops in Ubuntu Edgy by mouse, so that you can use the mouse to scroll from one virtual desktop to the next. A colleague introduced me to this years ago on a Linux install, and I couldn’t find it on any others since, until today. I’m now back to the setup I had then, where I have 4 desktops in a square shape, and move around them by mouse. It also allows you to define custom actions for moving the mouse into corners of the screen, so now if I move the mouse to the top left the screensaver starts, if I move it to bottom left it mutes what is playing. Very nice features. Simple install:

sudo apt-get install brightside

Once it is installed, go to System > Preferences > Screen Actions to set up as you wish.

source: http://graemehunter.co.uk/2007/02/using-brightside-in-ubuntu/

Using Brightside to invoke screen actions

To use Brightside, follow these steps:

• Install Brightside by issuing the following command: sudo apt-get install brightside
• After installation completes enter brightside-properties at the terminal.
• The following window appears. Enable screen actions as you like. You can create actions for all for corners and screen edges as well. You can mute volume, start screensaver, prevent screensaver from starting, enter DPSM standby, suspend or off mode, toggle show desktop.

There is one last thing that you can do that alone makes Brightside a killer. It’s the ability to run custom commands on any of the corners. This opens up a wide variety of possibilities. You can connect and disconnect internet connections, shutdown, restart, open terminals and what not. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination here!