Mar 14

Compiz Fusion Adds Cylinder Effect

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on April 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

compiz fusion cylinder

Compiz Fusion is quickly becoming an important part of many Linux distributions, and I don’t think that anyone would argue that the cube effect for switching between desktops is one of the most hyped features. Well, the cube could very well be on its way to retirement thanks to the cylinder effect that was just added.

As seen in the screenshot above the cylinder effect provides a pretty sweet looking way to switch between each of your virtual desktops. The thing that I’m left wondering is whether Compiz Fusion is becoming a little overwhelming? There’s just so much that you can do, and so many different effects that I fear it could be verging on bloated. Maybe I’m wrong, but the last time I actually used Compiz Fusion there were so many features and settings that it was intimidating. But I guess power users want the ability to control every aspect of features like this.

What do you think of Compiz Fusion? For those of you running Linux: is Compiz Fusion something you use often, or do you only have it to show off to your friends? Personally I fall into that latter category, which is disappointing since it took some extra work for me to get it functional in Ubuntu.

I’ve embedded a video below of the new cylinder effect in action. The video starts out demonstrating the cube, and then moves into the cylinder after about 1 minute and 45 seconds:

Compiz Fusion [via Digg]

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Dec 30

Dexpot 1.6: Mac Exposé and Spaces Brought to Windows in Style

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on July 31, 2012 by CyberNet.

Dexpot expose spaces

Over a month ago I wrote about a Beta version of Dexpot that was packed with some very polished features that emulated the Spaces and Exposé features from the Mac OS. The developers have since put the finishing touches on the app, and have pushed it out the door after 3-years of development. The Spaces clone, pictured above, provides an interactive way to manage multiple virtual desktops. When you first enter this view, called the “Full-Screen Preview”, you’ll see all of your virtual desktops in a grid layout. Just start dragging windows between desktops to see how well Dexpot handles itself.

When in the Full-Screen Preview you can also tile the windows on any of the desktops by right-clicking on a particular desktop. Alternatively if you right-click in the space separating the desktops it will tile the windows in all of the desktops. If you find yourself tiling the windows every time you open the virtual desktop manager there’s a handy little trick to have that automatically happen. All you have to do is assign a keyboard shortcut to the “Window Catalog (all desktops)” option in the settings, and then use that shortcut for pulling up your virtual desktops. This is where you’ll find the setting:

Windows virtual desktops spaces settings

While in the settings you should also check out the plugins section of Dexpot. I enabled the MouseEvents plugin which lets me specify actions to be performed when my mouse travels to the corners of my monitor. For example, I can have it execute the “Window Catalog (all desktops)” action that I mentioned above any time I move my mouse to the upper-left corn of the screen.

Aside from the virtual desktop management Dexpot also has a great Exposé clone built in. They call the feature a “Window Catalog” which may not make it immediately obvious what it does, but it’s basically the best Exposé clone I’ve ever used on Windows. If you’ve been itching for an alternate way to switch between applications Dexpot probably just became even more valuable to you.

Dexpot Homepage (Windows only; Free for Personal Use)

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