Lately it has become a very painful experience for many people (according to forums/articles/open tickets) to add new launchers to Avant Window Navigator. I have taken a look at it and figured out a rather hacky approach to make it work.
First I will manually create a "desktop" launcher.
( If you already have one, open it with any text editor (vi, gedit, etc..) and make sure it follows the structure of my "desktop" launcher )
In order to create the launcher, I have to know two things:
– the path to the file we would like to launch
– the path to the icon we would like to use
In this example, I am going to create a launcher to some program called Aptana, in your case it may be any other program. I know that Aptana executable file is located here: "/opt/aptana/Aptana". I also found an icon I would like to use for it, and put it here: "/home/user/icons/aptana_48x48.png".
Now by knowing two these things, I can open my favorite text editor (vi, gedit, your favorite.. ) and type the following:
[Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Terminal=false Name[en_US]=aptana Exec=/opt/aptana/Aptana Comment[en_US]=+ RadRails Icon[en_US]=/home/user/icons/aptana_48x48.png Name=aptana Comment=+ RadRails Icon=/home/user/icons/aptana_48x48.png
Notice the Exec and Icon parameters are populated with those two things. Name and Comment can be whichever you’d like them to be, in this case I just like them to make sense.
Now I will save the file (you can save it on your desktop, or anywhere you want your launchers to live) as "aptana.desktop" (permissions could be "-rw-r–r–", or you can make it less restrictive if you like).
And.. I am ready for the final step "drag & drop" (!). For this I go to the directory where I saved the "aptana.desktop" file using Nautilus/Konqueror/Other GUI browser, click on the file, drag it to Avant’s launcher bar, and drop it there. Tam tam tam – it is there -> I am done! So do you!
Make sure your "desktop" file is the format shown above, since it is tested and works.
Avant had so many problems on my Feisty, that I just uninstalled it a couple months ago
Will try your suggestion, whenever I am ready t go back to it.
wow, dude – you rock!!! at last I can add an icon to my AWN!
Thank you!!!!
I found it on DIGG, and it did not work for me. Still unable to add a launcher
are you sure, you set it up the way it is described here?
Because it worked for me without any problems.
Ok, I fond the problem I had an extra tag “Mode”, once I removed that I am able to add my launcher.
Thank you Keil!