User Interface

Tabs

Tabbed Browsing

Galeon operates in a "hybrid" browsing mode. Each browser window contains a notebook which itself can display multiple pages. You can find more information about this feature in the section called Tabbed Browsing in the chapter called The Browser Window.

The Open in tabs by default option causes middle-clicked links to open in new tabs, rather than new windows. The Jump to new tabs automatically option causes Galeon to automatically switch to newly created tabs. The Display close buttons on tabs option controls whether small "X" buttons allowing you to quickly close each tab should be displayed. The Always show tab labels option causes the tab listing to be shown even when only one tab exists in the window.

The Open popups in tabs option causes popup windows opened by pages to appear in tabs, rather than in new windows. The Insert new tabs after current tab option causes new tabs to appear after the current tab in the tab listing, rather than before. The Insensitive close buttons option controls whether the close buttons on non-active tabs should be made insensitive, to prevent you from accidentally clicking them. The Tabs appear along dropdown list allows selection of the location where the tabs will be listed.

Tab Names

Use the Shorten names to target length spinbutton to set the maximum tab name length, in characters. Alternately, the Shorten names to fixed width spinbutton can be used to set a fixed size for the width of each tab.

By default, Galeon will simply drop words from the end of the page title if it is too long to fit in the desired space. There are also several other (currently English-centric) title shortening strategies available.

You can choose to shorten names by looking for common separators, dropping vowels, or dropping common prefixes. The first option will look for a separator such as -, :, etc. and drop anything after that. The second option will compress words by removing vowels from them. For example, Slashdot might become Slshdt. This allows much more of the title to fit within the tab, while still remaining readable most of the time. The last option searches for common prefixes like Welcome to or My and drops them from the title.

Tab Colors

Here, you can select the colors that will be used for the text on tabs whose pages are still being loaded, and on tabs that have finished loading but have not yet been viewed.

Windows

Windows

The titlebar of the browser window can be configured to display any message you desire. Type your message into the "Title" entry or click on the arrow button to select a default message from a list. The %s variable represents the page title.

Fullscreen

When switching into fullscreen mode, you can choose to leave the menubar, control and bookmarks toolbars, and statusbar on by default by selecting the appropriate checkbox.

If the Keep fullscreen window above all other windows checkbox is activated, in fullscreen mode the browser window will be raised above all other windows on your desktop, including the GNOME panel. If this checkbox is deactivated, in fullscreen mode other applications will be able to cover the browser window.

Default Window Layout

This controls what elements are displayed when a new window is opened.

Toolbars

Toolbar Appearance

The toolbar buttons can also be shown as icons, as text, or as both, in configurations with the text under or to the right of the icons. The location entry bar can be shown on same toolbar as the navigation buttons or it can be shown on its own separate toolbar.

Toolbar Controls

Here, you can control which items are contained in Galeon's toolbar, and the order in which they are displayed. The list on the left, Current Controls, lists the items in the toolbar, while the one on the right, Available Controls, lists items not in the toolbar. To move an item into the toolbar, select it in the Available Controls list and click the button containing a left arrow, or double-click it. To remove an item from the toolbar, select it in the Current Controls list and click the button containing a right arrow, or double-click it. Items in the Current Controls list can be reordered, either by dragging them to a new position or by selecting one and clicking the buttons with up or down arrows. The various toolbar controls are described in the section called The Main Toolbar in the chapter called The Browser Window.

Toolbar Theme

The style of icons that are used for the toolbar buttons can be selected here.

Spinner

A graphical list of all spinners installed on your system is displayed. Click on an icon to select it as the spinner you wish to have displayed on your main toolbar. If you'd like to browse to a spinner animation that is in a different location on your system than the default, you can browse to its folder.

Mouse

Context menus

Context menus are displayed when you right click in the document. Each context menu has a Back and Forward button. If the Right click on back/forward activates history popup button is checked, right clicking on these items will display the history list of sites visited in the browser, rather than activating the menu item.

Mouse buttons

When you click on a link with the middle mouse button, the link will be opened in a new window or tab. Middle-button clicks elsewhere in the browser window, though, can be configured to show a menu containing all your bookmarks, to load a URL contained in the clipboard, or to do nothing. The second option allows you to highlight a URL in, for example, a terminal window and then simply middle click in the browser window to load the URL.

The right mouse button can be configured to show the context menu immediately when the mouse button is pressed, or only after the mouse is moved while the button is pressed. If the latter option is selected, you can go back by holding the right mouse button down and then clicking the left mouse button.

Mouse wheel

Mouse wheel actions are configurable. Pressing a modifier key while spinning the mouse wheel up or down can execute a number of different actions.

These are the possible choices:

  • Scroll by one step: the mouse wheel will scroll by the desired number of lines, or the system defined step size if the "Use system default step size" option is checked.

  • Scroll by one page: the mouse wheel will scroll the page as if you had pressed the page up or page down key.

  • Move in the browsing history: the mouse wheel will move through the browsing history as if you had pressed the forward or back button. Mouse wheel down will take go back while mouse wheel up will take go forward.

  • Zoom: the mouse wheel will zoom in or out of the page. Mouse wheel up will zoom out (make the font smaller) while mouse wheel down will zoom in (make the font larger).