Desk Guide Applet Manual


Table of Contents
Desk Guide Applet

Desk Guide Applet

Desk Guide applet, shown in Figure 1, is an applet that allows you to visually navigate your virtual desktops. To add this applet to a Panel, right-click on the panel and choose Applets->Utility->Desk Guide.

Usage

Desk Guide applet helps you navigate all of the virtual desktops available on your system. The X Window system, working in hand with a piece of software called a "window manager", allows you to create more than one virtual desktop to organize your work, with different applications running on each desktop. Each desktop can also be subdivided by the window manager into rows and columns of working space, called "desk areas". Desk Guide applet is a navigational tool to get around the various desktops and desk areas, providing a miniature road map in the GNOME panel showing all your virtual desktops (also known as workspaces) and desk areas, and allowing you to switch easily between them.

Desk Guide applet works hand-in-hand with the window manager, the piece of software such as Sawfish or Enlightenment that handles the look, feel and performance of your windows. The window manager lays down borders, resizes windows, places and moves them. The window manager is in charge of the various desktops. Desk Guide applet handles the navigation.

Desk Guide applet displays miniature versions of all your available desktops, including outlined boxes representing the applications running in each desktop window. The desktop currently in use is highlighted. Mouse-click on a representation of a desktop in Desk Guide applet to switch to display a different virtual desktop on your monitor.

Click and hold with your middle mouse button on any window image in Desk Guide applet to drag the window around your virtual desktops.

NoteNote
 

Different window managers use different jargon to describe virtual desktops and the subdivided workspaces within them. Enlightenment divides your working area into "desktops," and then subdivides those into "screens." Sawfish, formerly known as Sawmill divides your working area into "workspaces" and then subdivides those into columns and rows. Desk Guide applet calls the workspaces "desktops" and the areas within them "viewports". See your window manager's documentation for more informaton on setting up and managing your virtual workspaces.

Mouse-clicking on the arrow on the left side of Desk Guide applet brings up the Task List window, shown in Figure 2.

The window lists the various applications running on your computer. Left-clicking on any of the applications listed in the Task List window shifts focus to that application, i.e. this window rises to the foreground and all your keyboard input will be sent to the application running in this window.

Right-Click Pop-Up Menu Items

In addition to the standard menu items (see the Section called Standard Pop-Up Items), the right-click pop-up menu has the following item:

  • Properties... — This menu item opens the Properties dialog (see the Section called Properties) which allows you to customize the appearance and behavior of this applet.

Properties

You can configure Desk Guide applet by right-clicking on the applet and choosing the Properties... menu item. This will open the Properties dialog, with four different tabbed pages giving you access to various configuration options - display, tasks geometry, advanced.

Authors

Desk Guide applet was written by Tim Janik (). Please send all comments, suggestions, and bug reports to the GNOME bug tracking database. (Instructions for submitting bug reports can be found on-line. If you are using GNOME 1.1 or later, you can also use Bug Report Tool (bug-buddy), available in the Utilities submenu of Main Menu, for submitting bug reports.

This manual was written by John Fleck (). Please send all comments and suggestions regarding this manual to the GNOME Documentation Project by sending an email to . You can also submit comments online by using the GNOME Documentation Status Table.

License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

A copy of the GNU General Public License is included with the GNOME documentation. You also may obtain a copy from the Free Software Foundation by visiting their Web site or by writing to

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