This is old updated link is at bottom of the page
The Ultimately logically desktop experience that works from both the keyboard and mouse equally well.
It been a long time coming but I think I have my desktop finally sorted. As anyone in #dragora will know after a few hours of me typing and correcting my typing I'm a raving dyslexic. I miss words out swap letters around, fail to see some words and generally give my fellow dragorians a hard time trying to understand me and me struggling with their uber geek talk.
The upshot of this is I need a desktop that works via actions and will never live in a terminal though after file managers and browsers the terminal is probably my most used application.
With this in mind I set about fixing all the issues I have with conventional desktop trying to reduce the wasted actions through addressing each issue logically.
Issues:
I have netbooks and real-estate is in demand. So I wanted a solution that worked across all my computers
Solutions:
Run applications maximised, all of them. Then I can alt-tab through them or scroll via the mouse on the panel or keyboard.
Issues:
I need some way of knowing where my open applications are in relation to other open applications without any action bar looking at my screen.
Solution:
Run tint2 panel in such a way that each desktop looks like a tab then the icon for each running application lets you know via a glance where it is. To that end I don't auto hide my panel. I need to be able to SEE time, date, CPU, Net, Battery with no other interaction. I have 8 desktops by default with some applications set to load on desktops 1 and 8 as this improves the speed to check what's open. The active desktop has a different colour border to hight-light it and the active application has a higher brightness, again so no interaction apart from looking lets you know which application on what desktop is active.
At all times all running applications are displayed. You can cycle between all open application via alt-tab and cycle between all open applications on a specific desktop with ctl+F8
Groups: I tend to group
Usually 2/4 items per desktop and them if I need to view more than one application at a time I tile. split vertically, split horizontally, split all.
I don't iconify
I don't have icons on the desktop
How much time is wasted moving windows to find a file?) I use a file manager to manage files. One click in the top left corner opens rox ~/ via fittstool or a right click opens spacefm (with numerous tabs open) or I click in a blank area on tint and I have access to obbrowser and live scrolling to the file I want ~/ downward And my rox-bookmarks in the openbox menu to navigate elsewhere.
Starting applications: fittstool, is used to launch all my most used applications like file-managers, libre-office, browsers etc, and do common tasks like volume control, lock screen, brightness, log-out,
Run dialog: I use bashrun2, started via tint2, fittstool, or openbox keyboard short cut.
Software needed for this set-up:
openbox
tint2
oobrowser
obmenu-generator
fittstool
rox-filer
spacefm
more to come as it's not quite done cpu and net in tint2 ...
Also added desktop indicator with a view to adding add and remove desktop by adding run commands to the numeric icon
Done: adding and removing desktops by left or right clicking on the desktop number
refinements and more detail here including video link:
http://oswaldkelso.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/the-best-desktop-in-world-tbdtitw.html
