Icewm and Program Bar:
Origionally copied from Windows 3.x Schemes featuring Makeover - Icewm and Program Bar. The links have been updated 8-15-2003, and if for whatever reason they do not work, don't blame me.
Icewm and Program Bar With this
look I was trying to emulate icewm (another X window manager) and
one of its themes called bluePlastic. This meant trying to create
buttons that looked like little plastic bubbles. Active windows
would have a lighter blue title bar which isn't seen here. Icewm
includes a taskbar so I went looking for one that worked well. A
year or so ago most of them weren't too great including an older
version of this one. Shown here is
ProgramBar 2.30. It has a good
number of options regarding how it functions and some are
changeable on the fly such as hiding or always shown. When the
taskbar is down maximized apps will adjust themselves accordingly
so their title bars aren't obscured. However some apps will open
up underneath the bar which isn't a problem. Just left click on
the taskbar and choose Hide and it will do so, allowing you to
pull the app down. The options to Always Hide or Show Flyby Hints
can be toggled easily with a single click on the bar. No need to
bring up the Configure window. Speaking of... the Configuration
Help file is very good as it uses graphic representations of the
Configure options with pop-up hints throughout. An example is
shown here.
One nice feature of ProgramBar is the ability to
have the taskbar pop-up either at the top or the bottom by
setting trigger points (also left and right of the desktop). So
when taskbar is hidden and you place the mouse cursor at the top
of the screen the taskbar will show up there or when placed at
the bottom it'll pop-up there. Nice feature as it reduces the
amount of mouse travel. Of course a maximized app will adjust
itself accordingly.
Another feature is virtual desktops. The
desktops can be switched by clicking on the squares shown near
the clock display (three shown but many more can be defined) or
via hotkeys. ProgramBar also has a Live Desktop feature similar
to the Window 95 desktop (and of course Calmira) where links or shortcuts can be placed on the desktop.
A pop-up menu is provided for desktop options. This feature,
however, has a drawback. When Live Desktop is enabled the desktop
belongs to ProgramBar so pop-up shells such as Plug-In and
New Menu For Windows will
not work. Disabling Live Desktop will restore
use of those programs but you also lose the ability to use
shortcuts/links on the desktop. This may not affect a program
like
Hajime (another pop-up/drop-down
menu program) as it always keeps a floating icon on the desktop
to access its menus.
The application on screen is Comic Collector (now discontinued) by AbleSoft. It was available for DOS (v1.0 and 2.0), Windows 3.x (v2.0), and Windows 95 (v3.0). It's no longer availabe and neither are the price updates. What's a comic collector to do? :-/
In the 4DOS window
is a directory display of icewm's themes directories on my Linux
partition. "Huh?" you ask, "...how's that
possible?" There's a utility set out there called EXT2
TOOLS or similar that allows for navigating Linux partitions
from DOS as well as copying files from Linux to DOS (but not the
other way around). A very useful set of programs.