Xfce Forum

evrenesat

Member

Registered: 2013-06-05

Posts: 4

[Solved] xfdesktop + brightside = Exposé (mission control)

Hello,

As a long time Linux user, I've recently migrated from LXDE and very liked the current state of XFCE4. Thank you for this fast, enoughly polished and comfortable desktop environment.

Although I'm generally stay away from desktop effects, I see OS X's exposé effect (Compiz/Scale, KDE/Present Windows) as big productivity enhancer. So, I'm constantly in a search of a lightweight counterpart of these tools and when I saw the "Icon type: Minimized application icons" option in xfdesktop settings I was very happy. I've configured brightside to show desktop for a top-left screen edge and increased the icon size of desktop and voila, my very own exposé was ready to use. While I'm already happy and satisfied with what I got(*), I've some feature requests from xfdesktop team to make it awesome.

- Search as you type filtering for desktop icons.
- Middle click to close an app.
- Remembering of icon positions
- Drop shadowed icon labels with editable colors (for better readability)

Thank you again for your priceless efforts on this awesome desktop environment.

* My current desktop:

demosthenese

Member

From: Liverpool, UK

Registered: 2009-05-04

Posts: 71

Re: [Solved] xfdesktop + brightside = Exposé (mission control)

I use skippy-xd to produce an expose style task selector. Unfortunately skippy-xd has a bug that it does not include minimized windows, so I wrote a wrapper to get round this.

You can install skippy-xd from

http://code.google.com/p/skippy-xd/

The wrapper is

#!/bin/bash

#
# skippy-wrapper - B. Murphy
#
# a work around for the bug in skippy-xd that prevents minimized
# windows being included in the selection screen.
#
# dependency: xdotool
#

#
# prelim -- check not already running
# 0. get desktop
# 1. get list of all windows
# 2. get list of visible windows
# 3  generate list of hidden windows 
# 4. raise hidden windows
# 5. run skippy-xd
# 6. get active window = SkippySelected
# 7. minimize hidden windows unless selected
#

#prelim
if [[ "`pidof -x $(basename $0) -o %PPID`" ]]; then exit; fi

#0.
dtop=`xdotool get_desktop`

#1.
any=`xdotool search --desktop $dtop "" 2> /dev/null`

#2.
visible=`xdotool search --desktop $dtop --onlyvisible "" 2> /dev/null`

#3.
hidden=$any
for item in $visible; do
    hidden=`echo ${hidden/$item/''}`
done

#4.
for item in $hidden; do
  xdotool windowmap $item
done

#5.
skippy-xd &> /dev/null

#6.
SkippySelected=`xdotool getactivewindow`

#7.
hidden=`echo ${hidden/$SkippySelected/''}`
for item in $hidden; do
  xdotool windowminimize $item
done

Note  the dependency on xdotool.

Save the script somewhere and attach it to a keystroke, I use F12.

Last edited by demosthenese (2013-06-05 19:21:46)

evrenesat

Member

Registered: 2013-06-05

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] xfdesktop + brightside = Exposé (mission control)

Skippy-xd was very buggy and constantly crashing last time I've tried. Is it working ok for you?

demosthenese

Member

From: Liverpool, UK

Registered: 2009-05-04

Posts: 71

Re: [Solved] xfdesktop + brightside = Exposé (mission control)

I don't run it as a daemon. The bug reports indicate that the daemon is crash-prone.

evrenesat

Member

Registered: 2013-06-05

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] xfdesktop + brightside = Exposé (mission control)

Thank you, I'll try it again with your recipe.

evrenesat

Member

Registered: 2013-06-05

Posts: 4

Re: [Solved] xfdesktop + brightside = Exposé (mission control)

Thank you for informing me about non-daemon mode of skippy-xd, it's working without any problem. Since I don't minimise any windows, I don't use the wrapper script which makes it noticeably faster to show up.