Avant Window Navigator 0.4 Final Released (Dock Taskbar And Launcher For Linux)

Avant Window Navigator is a dock for the Free Desktop which shows your launchers and open applications. It also contains support for extensions, via plugins for third-party applications, which communicate with the dock with DBus, and via applets, which allows for workspace switchers, system trays, clocks, etc., to be embedded in the dock. These applets can be written in Vala, Python or C.

A lot of people have been using AWN (Avant Window Navigator) 0.4 for quite some time, but that was a beta version.

Today the stable version of AWN 0.4 has been released, after 14 months since the last Avant Window Navigator release.

Among the new AWN 0.4 features (since 0.3.2):

• Awn can be finally positioned on any edge of the screen.
• You can now pick among these background styles: Flat, Edgy, 3D, Curved, Floaty.
• Expanded mode (Awn will cover whole screen width).
• Autohide was completely revamped and Awn now supports Intellihide and Window Dodge modes.

Avant Window Navigator 0.4 default installation also comes with 4 default themes:

Lots of changes have been made to the applets too.

-Quit Applet: clicking can now either lock the screen, log you out, or shut down the system:




-File browser launcher can display multiple icons:



To use this behavior, add the Quick Launcher Applet (via Filetools applets category), right click it and select "Preferences", then select "One icon with docklet" - which will turn AWN into multiple file browser icons when clicking the applet or "multiple icons" to always show the file browser icons.


-Media Control: displays album art if available and can be run in docklet mode:





Here is a video with Avant Window Navigator 0.4 in action:

You can read a lot more about AWN 0.4 (as well as more screenshots) in our initial post on Avant Window Navigator 0.4 and the official announcement.

Install Avant Window Navigator (AWN) 0.4 in Ubuntu

Avant Window Navigator 0.4 final has been added to the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx official repositories just a few minutes ago, so install it using the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator awn-extras-applets

Unfortunately, the latest version is not yet available for Ubuntu Karmic and lower, but you can of course install a daily build which is almost 0.4, from the following PPA repository:

-Ubuntu Karmic:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:awn-testing

-Ubuntu Intrepid and Jaunty:

sudo bash -c "echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/awn-testing/ppa/ubuntu ubuntu_version main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list"
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys BF810CD5

(replace "ubuntu_version" with intrepid or jaunty)

Then install Avant Window Navigator (and extras):

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install avant-window-navigator-trunk python-awn-trunk python-awn-extras-trunk awn-applets-python-extras-trunk awn-applets-c-extras-trunk

I'm not sure if the 0.4 final version will be released in the above PPA or this stable AWN PPA, so be sure to also check the stable PPA if only want stable versions (but for now the stable PPA still has AWN 0.3.2).

In case you don't know how to set up AWN Edgy mode, see THIS post.

Due to having limited computer access today, 2 screenshots (thanks!) (as well as the news) are via: mhr3