Working with the Skippy Screen Pager

WINDOW PREVIEWS

Article from Issue 52/2005
Author(s):

If your window manager is too boring or Spartan for your liking, why not add a touch of pep? Skippy is an imaginative screen pager with an integrated preview function.

Almost any window manager will

give you a window list, displaying

a menu with the active windows

when you click or press the right

key. If the programmer who developed

the window manager has a soft spot for

graphical gimmicks, the list might add

icons to the program names. But a window

chooser will not speed up the

process of switching between windows

if you are working with a selection of

different browsers and terminal windows.

Skippy [1] by Hyriand to the rescue:

instead of giving you a simple list,

Skippy displays the active application

windows graphically in full-screen

mode.

Sophisticated

Window managers have different

approaches to handling active windows,

and Skippy is choosy about the managers

it supports. To ensure that you will

be able to switch between GUI-based

programs, you need a Gnome- or

NetWM-compatible window manager,

such as Waimea. The homepage for the

window manager or a quick glance at

the Readme file supplied with the manager

should tell you if this is the case.

Also, the Skippy developers have a list of

window managers that Skippy supports

on the project homepage. Supported

managers include Fluxbox 0.9.9,

XFWM4 icewm and WindowMaker.

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