User Interface

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. If Only enable close button on current tab is enabled, the close buttons on non-active tabs will be made insensitive, to prevent you from accidentally clicking them.

The Open popups in tabs option causes popup windows opened by pages (through either JavaScript or the link's "target" attribute) 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 at the end of the tab listing. The Always show tabs option causes the tab listing to be shown even when only one tab exists in the window. The Tabs appear along dropdown list allows selection of the location where the tab listing will appear.

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.

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.

This controls what elements are displayed by default in Galeon windows. You can choose default layouts for both windowed and fullscreen mode.

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.

Here, you can control which docked items are displayed when a new window is opened.

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.

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.

The style of icons that are used for the toolbar buttons can be selected here. To get more themes, visit http://galeon.sourceforge.net/themes.

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.

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, to go back in the history, to perform gestures, or to do nothing.

The right mouse button will usually display the context menu. If you select the Performs gestures, displaying menu on button release option, Galeon will begin watching for a gesture as soon as you depress the right mouse button. When the button is released, the context menu will be shown if the mouse wasn't moved far enough for a gesture to be recognized.

By default, the mouse wheel scrolls by 1 line. This can be customized within the range of 1 to 100 lines.