i have a simple question,
i search the exact name of the window manager for Windows.
For Unix : X Window System
Mac : Quartz
Windows : ?
Thanks you.
In the sense of the linked article, Windows does not have a discrete window manager. The windowing system is responsible for drawing the windows, and "the shell" - typically explorer - is responsible for displaying a task bar and any icons on the desktop.
The appearance of a window manager however is an emergent property in Microsoft Windows: All windows have a WindowProc that handles messages - and all messages not handled by the application code must get passed to a function called DefWindowProc. DefWindowProc handles the clicks in the non client areas of the windows to perform the tasks typical of window managers - sizing, moving, maximizing and so on.
Because all window's WindowProcs get to choose how to handle messages, they can choose to not implement the typical window manager behaviors by handling the message them self and not calling DefWindowProc.
The taskbar - provided by explorer - provides buttons to manipulate windows but ultimately (a) Its just a regular window itself, and (b) It sends messages to the windows to get them to maximize, minimize, restore etc. themselves, so again, any particular window could choose to not act like the other windows.
DefWindowProc is implemented in user32.dll - so really that is the window manager.
It's got a really original name - It's called the "Desktop Window Manager". You can see they thought long and hard about how to get that one exactly right.
(This obviously had absolutely nothing to do with the Microsoft marketing department, otherwise it would have been called something crazy and unrelated like silverstuff or aero.)
Its called "Windows Explorer"
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_manager
The thing that does the drawing of lines and pixels on the screen has traditionally been GDI (gdi32.dll), or now WDDM (for Win7) - Windows Display Driver Model, which has another layert on top of that, DWM - Desktop Window Manager.
On top of all that, you have Aero and then Windows Explorer that display and manipulates windows.
Oh yes, I nearly forgot about Direct2D which is another rendering layer that fits in there somewhere. I suppose they'll come up with a final technology one day that'll form the basis of graphics and windowing for the next 25 years.
Related
I have a few windows on my linux machine using the xfce4 desktop enviorment.
I wish to have a grid-like view where i can see only the part of each window im intrested in.
An example for the general vision:
see a script running without the window borders on terminal across the header
see work status of F#H client out of the advenced client view in the middle left
see only the turrents status list of qBittorrent at middle right
have another terminal at footer (again without header/borders)
My best way to describe it shortly is to generate a view from selective parts of windows.
Added a picture for illustration
Is there any way of doing such thing in a practical way? Am i missing out on a great software?
There are several tiling helpers for Xfce.
Perhaps try xpytile , which is a tiling add-on for Xfce. It offers
automatic tiling, manual tiling and can simulaneously resize side-by-side windows (like AeroSnap for MS-Windows).
Pressing +G in Windows 10 causes the Xbox Game Bar to open - it overlays the current application, regardless of if it's a game or not (though Windows maintains its own database of games as a hint to show the bar automatically on process startup or not)
I wondered how this is possible - I don't have any Windows 10 Xbox App-related processes running on my computer.
Process Explorer shows that when WinKey+G is pressed, the following happens:
An svchost.exe instance (which is hosting the BrokerInfrastructure, DcomLaunch, LSM, PlugPlay Power, and SystemEventsBroker services) invokes "%windir%\System32\bcastdvr.exe" -ServerName:Windows.Media.Capture.Internal.BroadcastDVRServer
bcastdvr.exe then invokes "C:\Windows\System32\GamePanel.exe {hexString} /eventType=8 (where {hexString} is a 16-hex digit (8 byte) string, presumably a window handle or equivalent).
GamePanel.exe then creates the window.
But the overlay window itself is special - it doesn't seem to be a normal hWnd - for example, I observe that my mouse cursor loses its drop-shadow and the "sonar pulse" effect (when I tap the Ctrl key to show my cursor location) stays in-place where my mouse cursor was when I opened the Game bar. I also noticed how smooth and fluid the game-bar's animations are - quite unlike a typical Win32 window. Is it using the XAML UI framework? If so, how is it doing it outside of the Windows UWP Sandbox?
Curiously, the game-bar is also able to target elevated windows too.
I tried - and failed - to inspect the windows using Spy++ because it disappears as soon as another window gets focus - but when I elected to start recording a window (so you get the recording overlay, which always remains on-screen), the overlay disappeared as soon as I used Spy++'s "Find Window" tool. How is the GameBar Recording Overlay doing this?
So it turns out that after some research, I found out that the gamebar is a .exe file located in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.XboxGamingOverlay_5.120.4062.0_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe that is opened with the Win-G shortcut (which can be changed). From what I've seen, when opened, you will not be able to see the gamebar in the apps page of task manager, but rather the background processes page where it is grouped with the runtime broker which makes me believe that it is a program that is loaded by default on boot and built in to the ram of the OS of the device. You can find the properties of the gamebar when you expand the gamebar section in the background processes section then right click the "Xbox Game Bar" and then clicking properties. I think that the transition into the gamebar are smooth because of it potentially being an app built in the RAM and offloaded as a background process by default. The SYSTEM account also has full control of the file which furthers supports the possibility that the Xbox Game Bar is a feature that is pinned on windows ram.
I want to implement a simple specialized window manager for presentations (not user-controllable) that supports only the following operations:
Moving and resizing of windows
Switching desktops
Starting applications not on current desktop (in background) without disrupting current image.
I don't need any user input, button/titles, ...
What existing window manager should I use as example? There are many little "hello world" window managers, but they usually does not support desktop switching.
You don't need to reimplement the wheel.
openbox will do everything you mention and more besides.
Simply edit the rc.xml to disable the root menu, and re-launch.
Openbox also allows per app setting so that certain applications can open on a particular desktop by default, or with a particular size, or open hidden.
It also supports wildcards in the window selection, so that settings can apply to all windows.
devilspie2 is a window matching utility that can perform actions whenever a window opens.
It is highly hackable and the code is available on github. It will match windows by name/class/etc when they open, and perform actions on them. (including matching all windows and moving them to a different desktop. It will work with most window managers.
Based on the original devilspie which does not have Lua scripting, but is configured using s-exprs instead.
xdotool will also allow you to perform complex actions on windows without hacking any code. It will even fake user input (mouse/kbd) if you need it.
There are a few window managers written in Python that could be good starting points. Qtile and whimsy both describe themselves as hackable.
I'm currently getting my feet wet with Win CE 5.0 to update some code on an existing platform. We're interested in deploying a custom shell/home screen/application launcher as well and I had a couple questions:
1) We're running the standard CE shell and I'm assuming it can be customized because the source code is made available with Platform Builder. I was wondering how "painful" it would be to completely replace it with something like a status bar at the top of the screen (think iPhone). I was thinking task switching could then be handled by shortcut keys exclusively. I have my doubts about this.
2) If it can't be removed, can the taskbar be resized and moved to the top of the screen? We're basically trying to find a way to reserve the first 20 or so pixel rows at the top of the screen for our own status bar and prevent maximized application windows from drawing over top of it.
Thanks very much for the help.
-ksudeadeye
I was happy and angry when I found the solution because it's more easy than I expect.
For 2) reserve space you need to do this:
RECT rc;
SetRect(&rc, 0, 25, GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN),GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN));
SystemParametersInfoW(SPI_SETWORKAREA, 0, (void*) &rc, SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
With this code you reserve 25 pixels in the top of the screen.
:D
If you have doubts maybe this can help you or this.
Good luck.
To hide the task bar is a simple registry change:
; Hide the windows tasbar by default.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell\AutoHide]
""=dword:1
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell\OnTop]
""=dword:0
As far as customizing, your own, that is a little more work, and not something I've attempted.
I have some experience with modifying the taskbar in CE 5.0. It is not an easy task, but the results can really add that personal touch to the device. I was tasked with adding a user mode second taskbar with a password dialog and a second type of shell notification to add icons to the user bar.
In the end, it is just standard Windows CE programming - the taskbar, notification tray, start button, etc. are just like any other windows in the CE environment.
You should start exploring here:
C:\WINCE500\PUBLIC\SHELL\OAK\HPC\EXPLORER\TASKBAR\taskbar.cpp
Be careful, clone your code, and be prepared for lots of debug cycles. This is more than 5000 lines of serious spaghetti code.
I am working on old Motif-based application for Linux. I want to be able to programmatically change the active window of our application. I can redirect the input by using XSetInputFocus() function and the keyboard input start to go there, but XReconfigureWMWindow() and XRaiseWindow() functions just don't work.
I've read that Window Managers try to stop this behaviour, so tried to disable configure redirection, but this doesn't work either. Any ideas how to make one of my own windows on top of the window stack?
There is a tiny program called wmctrl available (at least in Debian/Ubuntu it is in standard distribution) which is able to perform many operations on windows and desktops, and handles plenty of window managers. I'd suggest testing whether it works in your environment, and if so, peeking at its sources.
You may find the answer to this is dependent on the Window Manager the user is using, or even what settings they've given to the Window Manager. I like to set my Window Managers to do "focus follows mouse", which means you can't send the focus to a window that I haven't put my mouse on, unless you also warp the mouse there (is that function called XWarpMouse?).