The screenshots below are all shown reduced in size. To see larger
view right click and view image, if using firefox, or do the
equivalent to view image in your browser. Even after looking at the
larger view the fonts will not look very good, because I slightly
reduced the size of the images to save space and time.
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This is my preferred 'minimalist' default layout -- very little
clutter: no icons for minimised windows, no file manager etc.,
mainly because I use the 'ls' command in xterm windows. But you can
invoke 'pcmanfm' from a menu, a keyboard combination or a command if
you want a file manager.
I like a uniform pale gray background so as not have distractions,
and also to make it easy to see the mouse cursor. (Sometimes I would
prefer a bolder cursor than the simple arrow.)
The screenshot shows the digital clock ('xclock') with seconds and
date, and 'xdaliclock' without seconds, for quick checks, and
'xload' showing CPU load on my PC.
To see this enlarged use 'view image' in your browser.
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A desktop with one xterm window logged through (via an intermediate
linux server) from my home to the linux desktop PC in my office in
the School of computer science, using ssh (secure shell).
The digital clock beeps
gently on the hour and half-hour.
To see enlarged use 'view image'.
In the 'CLO' theme mentioned in here I
changed the default left, right and bottom border width of windows
from 0 to 4 pixels, for easier grabbing to re-size. It's easy to
make them narrower or thicker, as desired, by changing settings in
the themerc file.
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It is possible to add a panel showing all the desktops, applications
in current desktop and some shortcuts to various useful things, e.g.
console terminal, firefox, etc.
One way to do that is to use 'fbpanel'. It is highly configurable
using the file ~/.fbpanel/default. For an example
look here.
My default configuration produces the following at the bottom of the
screen, though it disappears shortly after the mouse leaves it, so I
go back to a nice uncluttered desktop, though even when it is
visible it is quite thin. (I have not found a way to make 'xv' grab
the whole screen when 'temporary' objects are visible.)
To see enlarged use 'view image'.
Mostly I don't have a panel. I thought I would use it a lot, but I
didn't, so I don't run it by default.
But it can be invoked either by giving the command
'fbpanel' or using the openbox Desktop menu to start it up.
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If you click on the 'f' at the left of fbpanel it brings up this
menu, which provides a useful tool for configuring fbpanel and many
sub-menus.
To see enlarged use 'view image'.
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Clicking on the 'System' button on the fbpanel menu brings up this
menu next to it. Apparently when fbpanel starts up it looks to see
what you have installed e.g. in /usr/bin and compiles sorted lists
of things it recognizes.
To see enlarged use 'view image'.
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This shows part of the 'Desktop' menu brought up by middle click on
root window.
Each Desktop is shown with its contents (including minimised
contents that would not be visible).
You can go to a desktop and
one of its applications by clicking on the name.
(Use 'view image' to see full size.)
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This is the rest of the menu, which comes up for the remaining
desktops if you click on the 'more' at the bottom of the
previous display.
Window D10 contains many firefox windows, each of which has several
tabs.
This menu panel and the one above are shown side by side, but 'xv'
is not able to grab both at once. (Use 'view image' to see full
size.)
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This shows an Openbox desktop containing on left an xterm window in
which a text editor (Ved, the Poplog editor) is being used to edit a
latex file for a presentation. I have used Ved in split-window mode,
so the output of latex is shown in the upper window, and the input
file below.
On the right of the screen 'xdvi' is being used to display the
preview.
To see enlarged use 'view image'.
I generally prefer to have only one thing on a desktop,
using large enough fonts for easy reading, and large enough windows
to minimise the amount of scrolling required.
So normally I would put the preview display on the next desktop and
switch between the two using CTRL+Right and CTRL+Left -- very much
better than sliding things round and raising and lowering them to
make things visible (one of the reasons I hate having to use
Microsoft Windows, as explained
here).
Using tiny fonts to get multiple windows visible on one desktop is
not an option at my age!
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This shows the Desktop on which I normally keep several firefox
windows going, each with several tabs. This acts as an extension to
my short and medium term memory, reminding me of various things I
have been looking at and some I still have to do (in addition to use
of calendar in thunderbird, to give me reminders when I have to
start doing something).
The picture below shows this file displayed in firefox, before I
added the firefox screenshot!
To see enlarged use 'view image'.
If you are viewing this using
firefox the resulting display may be very confusing.
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I do sometimes need a cluttered desktop. Here is an xterm window in
which a demo is being run built on the
SimAgent
toolkit (using
Poplog.
To see enlarged use 'view image'.
When the demo runs it opens a graphical control panel top left, a
graphical panel top right showing a plan view of a world in which
two simple agents (red and blue) move towards their desired targets
(of the same colour) sometimes encountering obstacles or each other
before getting to the target. Their "emotional" states are shown by
the changing face pictures on right, and text generated in the xterm
window gives a running commentary on everything going on. The
picture also shows the 'xv' control panel, used to grab screenshots,
on the bottom right.
On that occasion I forgot to set it to disappear while grabbing.
