Openbox
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 Screenshot of Openbox with Mozilla Firefox, Exaile and Obconf open and Thunar rolled up. |
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| Developed by | Dana Jansens[1] |
|---|---|
| Latest release | 3.4.7.2 / April 23, 2008 |
| Operating system | Unix-like |
| Type | Window Manager |
| License | GPL |
| Website | www.icculus.org/openbox/ |
Openbox is a free window manager for the X Window System, licensed under the GNU General Public License. Openbox was originally derived from Blackbox 0.65.0, but has been totally rewritten in the C programming language and since version 3.0 is not based upon any code from Blackbox.[2]
Openbox is designed to be small, fast, and fully compliant with the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) and Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH). It supports many features such as menus by which the user can control applications or which display various dynamic information. Openbox is the standard window manager in LXDE[3] and CrunchBang Linux[4].
The primary author of Openbox is Dana Jansens of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.[1]
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[edit] Using Openbox
Openbox allows a right-click (or any other bind) "root menu" on the desktop, and allows users to configure the way windows are managed. When a window is minimized it becomes invisible. To bring windows up again most use Alt+Tab or the Desktop menu, accessible from the right-click (or, again, any other bind the user wants) menu. Extending Openbox with other small programs that add icons, taskbars, launchers, eyecandy and others is common.
[edit] Configuration
There are only two configuration files located in ~/.config/openbox. They are named menu.xml and rc.xml. If users do not want to edit them by hand, they can do most of the configuration with ObConf, an easy-to-use tool.[5]
All mouse and keyboard bindings can be configured. For example, a user can set a window to go to desktop 3 when the close button is clicked with the middle mouse button or when scrolling on an icon to move to the next/previous desktop and raise or not raise when clicking/moving a window, is also fully configurable.
[edit] Unique features
Openbox's menu system has a method for using dynamic menus. This is done by accepting the output of a script and using that output as the source for a menu. Each time the user points his or her mouse at the sub-menu, the script is re-run and the menu is regenerated. This capability allows users and software developers more flexibility than the standard static menus found in most other window managers.
For instance, two developers wrote a script in Python that lists a user's new Gmail messages in a sub-menu.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Jansens, Dana (November 2007). "User:DanaJansens". http://icculus.org/openbox/index.php/User:DanaJansens. Retrieved on 2008-04-07.
- ^ GentooWiki (March 2008). "HOWTO Openbox". http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Openbox. Retrieved on 2008-04-07.
- ^ LXDEWiki (September 2008). "LXDE Wiki". http://wiki.lxde.org. Retrieved on 2008-09-28.
- ^ CrunchBang Linux (December 2008). "CrunchBang Linux". http://crunchbanglinux.org. Retrieved on 2008-12-29.
- ^ Openbox project (June 2007). "ObConf:About". http://icculus.org/openbox/index.php/ObConf:About. Retrieved on 2008-04-07.
[edit] External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Openbox |
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