† Icewm and Program Bar: †

Origionally copied from Windows 3.x Schemes featuring Makeover - Icewm and Program Bar. The links have been updated 8-15-2003, and if for whatever reason they do not work, don't blame me.

Icewm and Program Bar With this look I was trying to emulate icewm (another X window manager) and one of its themes called bluePlastic. This meant trying to create buttons that looked like little plastic bubbles. Active windows would have a lighter blue title bar which isn't seen here. Icewm includes a taskbar so I went looking for one that worked well. A year or so ago most of them weren't too great including an older version of this one. Shown here is ProgramBar 2.30. It has a good number of options regarding how it functions and some are changeable on the fly such as hiding or always shown. When the taskbar is down maximized apps will adjust themselves accordingly so their title bars aren't obscured. However some apps will open up underneath the bar which isn't a problem. Just left click on the taskbar and choose Hide and it will do so, allowing you to pull the app down. The options to Always Hide or Show Flyby Hints can be toggled easily with a single click on the bar. No need to bring up the Configure window. Speaking of... the Configuration Help file is very good as it uses graphic representations of the Configure options with pop-up hints throughout. An example is shown here.

One nice feature of ProgramBar is the ability to have the taskbar pop-up either at the top or the bottom by setting trigger points (also left and right of the desktop). So when taskbar is hidden and you place the mouse cursor at the top of the screen the taskbar will show up there or when placed at the bottom it'll pop-up there. Nice feature as it reduces the amount of mouse travel. Of course a maximized app will adjust itself accordingly.

Another feature is virtual desktops. The desktops can be switched by clicking on the squares shown near the clock display (three shown but many more can be defined) or via hotkeys. ProgramBar also has a Live Desktop feature similar to the Window 95 desktop (and of course Calmira) where links or shortcuts can be placed on the desktop. A pop-up menu is provided for desktop options. This feature, however, has a drawback. When Live Desktop is enabled the desktop belongs to ProgramBar so pop-up shells such as Plug-In and New Menu For Windows will not work. Disabling Live Desktop will restore use of those programs but you also lose the ability to use shortcuts/links on the desktop. This may not affect a program like Hajime (another pop-up/drop-down menu program) as it always keeps a floating icon on the desktop to access its menus.

The application on screen is Comic Collector (now discontinued) by AbleSoft. It was available for DOS (v1.0 and 2.0), Windows 3.x (v2.0), and Windows 95 (v3.0). It's no longer availabe and neither are the price updates. What's a comic collector to do? :-/

In the 4DOS window is a directory display of icewm's themes directories on my Linux partition. "Huh?" you ask, "...how's that possible?" There's a utility set out there called EXT2 TOOLS or similar that allows for navigating Linux partitions from DOS as well as copying files from Linux to DOS (but not the other way around). A very useful set of programs.