| Expose'-like navigation comes to Linux desktops |
Mar. 02, 2006
Kompose', a full-screen window navigator for KDE that acts similar to Mac OS X's Expose', is now available for free download. Like the OS X tool, Kompose' generates thumbnails of open windows and tiles them in groups by current workspace or all workspaces.
The conventional way to navigate among windows in KDE is with the taskbar, or by means of Alt-Tab or Alt-Shift-Tab. But for high-intensity users who might have 10 to 20 windows open at a time, such manual shifting can get tedious. Kompose' creates a full-screen view in which every window is represented by a scaled-down screenshot of its own and is easy to access.
A Kompose' screenshot
(Click to enlarge)
"Thanks to the KDE framework, it is possible to create those screenshots 'on the fly' while you are working without much overhead," a Kompose' team member wrote on the project's website. "The image scaling is done through the high performance image library Imlib2."
When Kompose' is installed, users can simply press Win-Tab to view thumbnails of all the windows on the desktop and quickly select the window they want to use, rather than having to tab through them or search among numerous taskbar items. When using Kompose', the mouse is used to select the desired window.
"Since version 0.5 support for the Composite and Damage extensions has been added, it allows us to display window contents without grabbing screenshots," the project said. "However, with the current state of graphics drivers, XOrg may be awfully slow (or even crash sometimes) when enabling the Composite extension."
Requirements
Kompose' needs at least Qt 3.2 and KDE 3.2, the project said. In addition, Imlib2 is required for image operations; the team asks users to make sure it's compiled with mmx and sse support for faster scaling.
The overall performance of Kompose' depends heavily on your CPU, the project said. "On my 2.4GHz machine, I don't notice any delay when it shows up; delay may however occur on slower CPUs," a project developer wrote on the Kompose' website.
Kompose' was developed on SourceForge.com by BerliOS project, whose website includes forums, bug tracking, a tech support manager, a feature request page, and other items.
Kompose' is released under the GNU GPL.
Further infomation about Kompose' is available here. The software can be downloaded here.
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