Openbox
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Openbox | |
| Latest release: | 3.3.1 / September 7, 2006 |
|---|---|
| OS: | Unix-like |
| Use: | 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. It is designed to be small and fast. Though this may sacrifice some features present in other window managers, such as menu icons and round window borders, it does support many other features, such as menus by which the user can control applications or which display various dynamic information.
Openbox is fully ICCCM- and EWMH-compliant.
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[edit] Using Openbox
Openbox allows the user to have a right-click (or any other bind) "root menu" on the desktop, and allows one to configure the way your windows are managed. When a window is minimized it becomes invisible, some ways to bring it up again is to use Alt+Tab , or the Desktop menu, accessible from the right-click (or, again, any other bind the user wants) menu. That's about all. Most people extend Openbox with other small programs that add icons, taskbars, launchers, eyecandy and such.
[edit] Configuration
There are only two configuration files. They are located in ~/.config/openbox. They are named menu.xml and rc.xml. If one doesn't want to edit them by hand, they can do most of the configuration with an easy-to-use tool called obconf. All mouse and keyboard bindings can be configured. For example if it's wanted that a window to go to desktop 3 when the close button is clicked with the middle mouse button, the user can do this trivially. Scrolling on the icon to move to the next/previous desktop, raising or not raising when clicking/moving a window is 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 [1].
