Windowlab

Windowlab

Image

Windowlab screenshot.

URL

http://www.nickgravgaard.com/windowlab/

Version

I used 1.15. Version 1.16 came out in October 2003. The number sounds reassuring, but I believe this is still very much in development.

Documentation

The web page. That's about it.

Themes

No.

Discussion

Windowlab uses aewm as a code base, and borrows some of its behaviour (most notably the window resizing) from 9wm. Fortunately, the author chose to add a title bar and window buttons, which I find much easier to deal with than 9wm's methods. However, the three buttons are unmarked - some mnemonic markings would be helpful. Resizing a window requires you drag the pointer from the new upper left to the new lower right corners exactly as 9wm does it. There are no workspaces. The focus and raise methods are weird: standard ClickToFocus, but no RaiseOnFocus - you have to click on the taskbar window title to raise the window. The menu (such as it is - no submenus) shares the same screen space (top edge of the screen) with the taskbar. If you right-click on the desktop, the taskbar, or a window titlebar, the taskbar changes to the menu. I thought this was quite clever, sharing the space, since you never need both the menu and the taskbar at once. Windows cannot be pushed off the sides of the screen, but they can slide off the bottom of the screen. This suggests that the window manager is preventing any part of the titlebar from leaving the screen.

I like this one, but the objectionable resize, the lack of workspaces, and the bizarre focus behaviour left me a little disenchanted. Unlabeled buttons don't help either.

Pros

Light weight. Looks okay despite utter lack of themeability. Clever menu/taskbar system.

Cons

No workspaces. Unlabeled window frame buttons. Lousy resize method. Poor focus behaviour.

Community

Don't think so.