Monday, January 24 2005 @ 05:43 PM EST Contributed by: glosser
This article is for those of you who LOVE to customize your desktop. The NewsForge takes us on a tour of several programs that can add special features to your desktop experience.
When you have 20 or more windows open across nine virtual desktops, the complexity of window management can become overwhelming. A number of new tools are now available to facilitate effective window management.
When Metacity became the default window manager of the GNOME desktop environment, I was befuddled. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to replace something as versatile and flexible as Sawfish with a virtually featureless window manager that isn't even extensible by scripting. But after studying the architecture of Metacity, the rationale became more apparent. Metacity was designed to be light and simple. The functionality can be extended via C plug-ins that utilize Metacity's extensive window management library, and the configuration settings are accessible to all GNOME programs via the gconf utility. While Metacity does not provide the same degree of flexibility as a fully scriptable window manager, it is much less intimidating and much less resource-intensive, and consequently it is much more appealing to the majority of GNOME users. Metacity can be incrementally enhanced in a modular and maintainable fashion to efficiently support the needs of users with varying skill levels.
One feature that many Metacity users have clamored for is window matching, which allows users to establish a set of rules that automatically alter properties of windows that match the rules as the windows are being created. With a window matching tool you can make a certain program always start maximized on a particular virtual desktop, or automatically make all your chat conversation windows sticky. Some window managers, such as Sawfish, have built-in window matching systems. For other window mangers, you can utilize a stand-alone window matching utility like Devil's Pie.
The latest version of Mac OS X introduced a powerful window management mechanism called Exposé that increases the efficiency of window switching by providing a scaled overview of all available windows. Since its release, several applications have managed to bring similar functionality to Linux. Expocity is a Metacity patch that adds a scaled window overview. There are several window overview utilities that do not rely on any particular window manager. I was particularly impressed with the performance of Skippy, a window overview utility that is compatible with NetWM- and gnome-wm-compliant window managers. Skippy comes in regular and XD flavors. Regular Skippy cannot display thumbnails of obscured or minimized windows. SkippyXD utilizes the XDamage and XComposite features of XOrg (FreeDesktop.org's X server) to present the scaled window thumbnails of all windows, including those that are obscured or minimized, in real-time. Komposé is a KDE-native window overview utility that can optionally organize your windows by virtual desktop, and act as a virtual desktop switcher. The latest version of Komposé also uses the XComposite and XDamage extensions of XOrg to do on-the-fly rendering. Both Komposé and Skippy have excellent keyboard support. You can use the arrow keys to navigate between windows within the scaled overview mode.
