#BETTER WINDOW MANAGER FOR WINDOWS 7 HOW TO#

Before going on, I need to explain some terminology. We can open windows, use the dmenu launcher, and move between multiple open windows. That once again splits the screen in half, with the original terminal window on one half and a new window for the file manager on the other half, as shown here. If your screen split horizontally, then use Mod-UpArrow and Mod-DownArrow. If your screen is split vertically, as mine is, then Mod-LeftArrow and Mod-RightArrow moves between them. So the 'preferred' way is to use the Mod- key together with the arrow keys. but as I said above, for most i3 users one of the primary goals is not to have to take your hands off the keyboard. So we have already learned one i3 keyboard command - Mod-Enter to open a terminal window - and now that we have two of them, we get to learn another one, because having two windows isn't much use or fun if you can't move between them. That doesn't make sense for tiles on your floor, and i3 says that it doesn't make sense for tiles on your display. The alternative, as is implemented in the window managers for almost all of the common Linux desktops, is a stacking window manager, where windows can overlap and even completely cover each other. Think of it as being like a tiled floor - all of the tiles are arranged side-by-side in two dimensions. This means that it will arrange whatever windows you have open so that they are all entirely visible at all times, and together they entirely cover your display. Getting back to the concept that I started above, i3 is a tiling window manager. There's even a little bit of good news in the eye candy department, because now there is a very narrow border highlighting the active window. Ok, that's fine for one window, but what if there is more than one? Well, let's try it by simply pressing Mod-Enter again. That is what i3 is here to do, so - mission accomplished. It doesn't have a border, it doesn't have a title, it doesn't have controls or buttons to minimize/maximize/iconify, it is just a bare-bones window with a terminal emulator running inside. In this case, we currently have only one window so it covers the entire desktop.

#BETTER WINDOW MANAGER FOR WINDOWS 7 HOW TO#

It just figures out how to cover your desktop with them. It doesn't decorate them, add controls to them, stack them, or do anything else to them. It's task is to fill the entire surface of your display with whatever windows you create. The concept is that i3 is a window manager.

There is one very simple concept here, and as soon as you really grasp it, and accept it, the task of learning i3 becomes a lot easier - not to mention a lot more logical and even a bit of fun. Hang tough, things are gong to get better soon. The good news at this point is that in my experience, this is a scary as it gets. If your only experience until now has been with traditional GUI desktop managers (KDE, Gnome, Windows, Mac), this is probably looking pretty scary (or maybe pretty useless).

Better window manager for windows 7