[Cialug] favorite new compiz plugin

[Matthew Nuzum]

A few months ago I mentioned to some of the Ubuntu devs an idea I
thought would be good for a compiz fusion plugin. Basically, if you
have a terminal window or chat window or something that has constantly
flowing information that you want to keep a casual eye on you should
be able to shrink it to 30% of its original size or so. Big enough
that you can make out the text and yet small enough that you can still
have your web browser or e-mail client or whatever full sized.

Apparently I mentioned it to the right people because the idea got
passed on to someone who liked it enough to actually create it!

So, if you're using Ubuntu Hardy (I'm on alpha 5) you can enable the
"shelf" plugin. I can't remember the exact key combination because I
fiddled with mine, but I think it's either super (the windows key) + ]
or super + p. You hit it once and the window shrinks down to a small
but readable size, again and it shrinks down to a tiny, unreadable
size (but still useful to see if your build or whatever is still
working) and then again to bring it back to full size. (note: You may
have to install compiz-fusion-plugins-extra)

You can drag the shelved windows to move them around or you can still
give text entries the focus and type in them.

Here's a screenshot:
http://code.bearfruit.org/~matt/tmp/shelf-plugin.jpg it shows four
shelved windows. I should have shown an unshelved window but I wanted
to also show off the classy pre-beta wallpaper for hardy. (the
pre-beta period is used to show off exciting artwork and then for
release it goes to something more subdued)

I'm sure this plugin will be (or is already) available in other
distros, but it is necessary to be using a recent version of compiz.

P.S. A little googling shows that I was not the first to mention this
idea however it was created because of a bounty by Canonical, so maybe
I was the catalyst for getting things moving.
http://dev.compiz-fusion.org/~kristian/2007/12/12/shelf-plugin-preview/

-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode