attachment:SwitcherLogos.png |
The Switcher, Ring and Shift referred to as Advanced Application Switchers allow you to filp between your windows using your keyboard, with some nice 3D effects. Note that these are three completely separate plugins, which essentially perform the same functionality, which is why these three plugins have been merged into one article.
attachment:Switcher.png |
Switcher
The Application Switcher provides the same functionality as the traditional GNOME and KDE <Alt>+Tab switcher, but uses live window thumbnails to show it's previews.
Usage
You can use the Application Switcher to switch between windows of different contexts with different keybindings.
To flip to the next window, press <Alt>+Tab
To flip to the previous window, press <Shift><Alt>+Tab
To flip to the next window in all workspaces, press <Ctrl><Alt>+Tab
To flip to the previous window in all workspaces, press <Shift><Ctrl><Alt>+Tab
Finally, you can choose whether to overlay an icon on the window's thumbnail. "Show minimized" will show the minimized application's icon in the switcher.
Appearance
You can also edit a few cosmetic things such as the speed and switcher flips between windows and how much the desktop zooms out. You can also configure these attributes of inactive windows
- Saturation
- Brightness
- Opacity
attachment:Ring.png |
Ring Switcher
The Ring Switcher plugin allows you to flip through your windows in a ring. This has advantages over the normal switcher as you can see more windows at once.
This plugin requires the text plugin to be enabled if you want to draw text.
Usage
The keybindings are essentially the same as the normal Application Switcher plugin, except that <Alt> is replaced with <Super>
To flip to the next window, press <Super>+Tab
To flip to the previous window, press <Shift><Super>+Tab
To flip to the next window in all workspaces, press <Ctrl><Super>+Tab
To flip to the previous window in all workspaces, press <Shift><Ctrl><Super>+Tab
Because the plugin is based on the ["Scale"] plugin you can also select windows with the mouse. To do this, enable 'Mouse Selection' under 'Misc Options'
You can also choose to overlay an icon on the window thumbnails, or to show minimized windows with an icon.
Appearance
The Ring Switcher also provides a number of appearance options. You can change
- The speed of the switcher flip animation
- Inactive window opacity
- How much darker windows get the 'further away' they are
- How much smaller windows get the 'further away' they are
- How big the thumbnails are in Width / Height
- How much of the screen the ring spans.
Text
Finally, you can choose whether to show Cairo drawn text on your screen, telling you what the title of the selected window is. To do this, make sure that the [:Plugins/Text:Text] plugin is enabled, and you can change things like the font size and the text placement on the screen.
attachment:Shift.png |
Shift
The Shift Switcher provides the same window switching functionality, but with some neater effects, Flip and Cover.'
The keybindings are essentially the same as the normal Application Switcher plugin, except that <Alt> is replaced with <Super> To flip to the next window, press <Super>+Tab To flip to the previous window, press <Shift><Super>+Tab To flip to the next window in all workspaces, press <Ctrl><Super>+Tab To flip to the previous window in all workspaces, press <Shift><Ctrl><Super>+Tab To 'initiate' shift mode, so that you can select windows by scrolling, press <Shift><Super>+s You can also set the icon overlay to be big, a small icon, or none as well as showing an icon for minimized windows.
You can set appearance for all shift modes. Here are some of the options that let you do this:
The Flip mode allows you to filp between your windows in a Microsoft Windows Vista Flip3D style. The 'Flip angle' option allows you to configure what angle the windows are facing when flip mode is initiated The Cover mode allows you to flip between your windows in a Apple CoverFlow style. The 'Cover Offset' option allows you to configure what angle the active window is facing and which 'stack' it is closest to.
The Shift Switcher plugin also allows you to have text to show the window title of the active window. To enable it, the text plugin must be enabled. You can configure things like: The size and color of the text This plugin requires the text plugin to be enabled to draw text. Usage
Appearance
Modes
Text