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WindowMaker

WindowMaker is a window manager designed to emulate the `look and feel' of the NeXTSTEP(tm) GUI. It is quite elegant, and comes with a graphical configuration tool to help you customise it. There are also `themes' available which you can use to quickly change WindowMaker's appearance. It is relatively fast, looks good, and easy to configure and use.

There are items in the Applications menu unique to WindowMaker which allow you to test window managers as well as adjust the appearance of your screen. It also comes with `themes' installed which you can experiment with.

You can customise how WindowMaker looks by using the `Appearance' submenu where, among other things, all the colors of the titlebar and window borders can be changed. WindowMaker has a special tool that allows you to configure the behaviour of the window manager with several options. Double-click on the `Preferences Utility' icon to bring this up (the square icon with a circular image inside). Your configuration files are stored the in your GNUstep/Defaults directory. You can directly edit these files to customise WindowMaker. You can also change your background picture from this menu and any background images should be put into your GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/Backgrounds directory.

When you are working, chances are that you are going to have more windows than can comfortably fit on the screen. Using WindowMaker, you can `hide' windows, cycle through a clutter of windows and have several virtual desktops on which to arrange your windows. The default number of desktops is four but this is easily changed to suit your needs.

You can find more complete and up-to-date information on WindowMaker by visiting the website. The address is http://www.windowmaker.org.

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Next: KDE Up: The Window Manager Previous: Twm   Contents