Beyond the Sky

Tabs in Title bar

Click to enlarge and look at it precisely Fluxbox fans. Tabs in title bar, and the icons in tabs, clean, nice and efficient!

At the moment, I am using fluxbox 1.0rc3 svn 4840.

Fluxbox 1.0rc3

Click to view it in fullscreen.

This is the first request of mine that can't be fulfill by just edit the configuration file. I need to hack the source code, lucky my fluxbox is compiled myself, so that can be done easily.

What is my requirement?
I need to maximize the windows when I double click on the title bar of the windows. By default, it will be shaded instead of maximize.Asking around in the #fluxbox channel, people throw me this
http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php/Howto_Make_dblclick_titlebar_maximize

Simply How?
The source code is in src folder. Edit Windows.cc, search for

frame().setOnClickTitlebar(shade_cmd, 1,true); // doubleclick with button 1

and replace it to

frame().setOnClickTitlebar(maximize_cmd, 1,true); // doubleclick with button 1

Save the file, and you now can configure, make and make install.

Refers to http://my.opera.com/mysurface/blog/i-recompile-my-fluxbox-from-source for compilation.

Computer user usually beautify their desktop when they just install a new OS, having free time, discover new themes etc. With murrine gtk2 cairo engine installed, you can make your desktop looks nice, and it is light weight.

Murrine have ability to change:
1. Menubar style
2. ListHeader style
3. Menubar Items
4. Style of the Glaze
5. Scrollbar Colors
6. Contrast

Murrine support:
1. Square all the theme
2. Animations ( on progress bar)

Screenshot?

This is one of the sample Murrina Kent uses murrine engine.

Ok, what should I install?
If you are using ubuntu, you can do as bellow:

wget http://malteo.homelinux.net/B54820BC.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Add the lines bellow to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://malteo.homelinux.net edgy-malteo all
deb-src http://malteo.homelinux.net edgy-malteo all

# sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gtk2-engines-murrine

Ok, you need to download themes,
You can search around at http://gnome-look.org/ and http://xfce-look.org/ . Those themes uses murrine will usually have keyword murrina***

I find this nice too, but you need to do some modification, else it won't works.
(replace squaredstyle = 0 to roundness = 1)
http://www.kernow-webhosting.com/~bvc/theme/gtk/murrine/

Downloaded theme can extract at ~/.themes then to use apply the theme, can uses gnome-theme-manager. ( Simply goto system -> preference -> theme for gnome user.)

If you using fluxbox on top of ubuntu, add the line bellow to ~/.fluxbox/startup

gnome-settings-daemon &

What else?
You can modify the theme, its a text with options, edit the file gtkrc in the theme folder you have extract, search "murrine", and all the option can be configure easily. The author create a murrine configurator for easy configuration too, but some how the official murrine site cannot be access by my side. Thanks to linux toy, I able to download the murrine configurator at here

You wanna see all your results at once, with all the controls everything in one windows, use The Widget Factory.


Get it from http://linuxappfinder.com/package/thewidgetfactory

Have fun!

Fluxbox come with Ubuntu Edgy is the latest one, but it do not support imlib2 by default and it fails to display me information when i do

fluxbox -info

So I recompile the fluxbox and replace it. The fluxbox come with ubuntu edgy repo is installed at /usr/bin and /usr/lib. Fluxbox surce code configure by default is install in /usr/local/bin, do not support imlib2 too, no nls support either.

First I need X header and imlib dev stuff

apt-get install libimlib2-dev xlibs-dev libxrender-dev libxft2-dev

Then configure with nls and imlib support with correct prefix, so it will install at the same place when the current one.

./configure --enable-nls --enable-imlib2 --prefix=/usr

Observered the output of the configure, check whether nls and imlib2 is correct support, will appear at last few lines. Solves any dependencies if configure fail halfway.

Then? simple, make and sudo make install. Thats it!
Download here
Refers wiki here
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By the way, this is related but its another topic instead. I am just lazy to add another post, so I put it here.

If you like to edit your menu and key bindings in fluxbox with help of GUI, can check out this page
http://devaux.fabien.free.fr/flux/

It is helpful for beginners, but I prefer edit with vim myself, the key binding support control , alt and shift only, but fluxbox do not restrict you to use any key available on your keyboard.