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Complete Idiot's Guide to Linux
(Publisher: Macmillan Computer Publishing)
Author(s): Manuel Ricart
ISBN: 078971826x
Publication Date: 12/22/98

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Chapter 2
Working with Windows

In This Chapter

  Working with windows
  Opening and closing windows
  Iconifying and maximizing windows
  Sticking windows to the desktop

Under Linux, you can work in your choice of interface: One is the console (a text-based interface generated by one of several shell programs); the other is with a graphical user interface (GUI) such as the X Window System, more commonly known as X Windows. In the GUI, windows represent applications and documents. Even if the window is just a fancy interface to the console, a windowed environment makes you more productive because you are able to interact with multiple applications and programs at the same time.


Techno Talk:  
Unlike other operating systems, X Windows, the windowing environment on UNIX and UNIX-like environments like Linux, allows you to choose your interface. In X Windows terms, the look and feel of your windows are provided by a window manager.

The window manager defines what the user interface looks and feels like. KDE is a window manager with many additional and desirable features, but you can substitute it with others. Some are already built into your system.


Windows and Panels

KDE windows behave similar to their counterparts in other operating systems. Windows typically fall into two categories:

  Standard application windows
  Dialogs and panels

A standard application window is where you do your work in an application. If you are writing a letter, for example, you typically do so on a standard window like the one pictured in the next figure. Each application presents different functionality on a window. A Web browser displays a Web page in a window. A file manager, where you manage your files and folders, also works in a window.


KEdit, a text editor, offers a good illustration of an application window and its elements.

Windows have a title bar at the top that shows the window’s name. Typically, this name will be the name of the application or the document you are working on. Other times, a dialog might display some other informative message in this area. KDE title bars that are too small for their title display an interesting animation: The title bounces back and forth in a frenetic ping-pong dance.

Windows also typically have scrollbars, slider-type controls along the right side and bottom of a window, to move around the view of your document. Scrollbars appear when your document is larger than the window can display.

Dialog boxes and panels are windows that let you enter information to tell the application what to do. You typically see them in response to issuing a menu command or by activating some application functionality that requires your confirmation, such as quitting the application, saving a file, and so on.

Other panels allow you to enter additional information needed by the command. For example, the Find panel in the KEdit application requires information about the text you want to find.

Some panels, called dialogs, ask you a question and provide buttons for you to supply an answer. Other dialogs just inform you of some event taking place and require your acknowledgment to dismiss the box.


A panel can have text fields, in which you supply additional text information to a command, and controls, in which you specify additional options to the command.


Some panels just provide buttons for you to select from among a multiple options.


Some dialog boxes simply require you to acknowledge them to dismiss them.

Window Controls

Windows provide several manipulation controls. Many of these controls are displayed on the window’s title bar area.


The title bar area of a KDE window has several buttons.

The window button displays a menu with window manipulation commands. Most of the commands you see there are also accessible through other buttons in the title bar. Sometimes this button is displayed as a small icon representing the application. In this case, the little icon is the window button.
The Stick or Pin button will “stick” a window so that the window is available from any virtual desktop.
The Iconify button collapses a window into the taskbar. Clicking its task button on the taskbar will make the window reappear on the desktop.
The Maximize/Restore button expands the window to its maximum size possible in your screen. Clicking it a second time restores it to its previous size.
The Close button closes the window and terminates the application.


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