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The desktop is the area of the screen where your windows and
applications are displayed. On most PC's and Mac's, this is
limited to the size of your screen. A Virtual Desktop allows
you to have a desktop greater than the physical size of your
screen. The best way to think about it is having a large
square area for your desktop, but you can only see a smaller
portion of it at a time (which is the size of your
screen).
Navigating Multiple
Desktops
The default FVWM setup in the WAM labs have two
Virtual Desktops, each with a size set to two times the size
of your screen. The two desktops available are called
"Main" and "Misc.". You can use the Pager module to keep
track of your
Virtual Desktops. The Pager displays an icon representation
of each of your desktops. The Pager, by default, is
automatically loaded and placed in your button-bar at the
bottom of your screen. You can switch between desktops by
simply clicking on the one you want off the button-bar.
If you take a
closer look at the pager on the button-bar, you'll see that
each desktop is divided into four sections (one for each
quadrant of the desktop that can be displayed). Click on one
of the sections to move your screen to that area of the
desktop. If you take an even closer look, you will
notice that there are small boxes to represent the placement
of your windows on the desktop. The current window is always
highlighted. On the image of the button bar you can see that
my current window is the upper left quadrant of my Main
desktop. In addition, XView
is in the upper left quadrant of my Main desktop, and one Xterm
window is in the upper left quadrant of the Main desktop.
Paging
Paging in another method that allows you to navigate around
your virtual desktop. Paging allows you to move to different
quadrants of the screen by just moving your mouse off the
side of the screen. By default, paging is turned off. You can
turn paging on by going to the Paging Options menu off the
utilities menu (click the first mouse button with the cursor
anywhere on the desktop). There are five options. Full
Paging ON turns on paging. Paging OFF turns off
all paging (the default mode). Horizontal Paging
Only and Vertical Paging Only do just that,
only let you scroll horizontally or Vertically. Partial
Paging only moves the viewable area half a screen at a
time, instead of a full screen.
Sticky Windows
If you remember the Window Operations menu earlier had an
item to make a window "Sticky" or
"Unsticky." A "Sticky" window stays in view all the
time, even when you move around in your virtual desktop. Say,
for example, you were using xclock, and you wanted to always
be able to see the clock. Of course, you could run xclock
four times, and have a separate one displayed in each window,
but that's a waste of system resources! If you make it
"sticky," it will stay with you wherever you move around the
desktop. Making a window "Unsticky" removes this. To change a
window's Sticky properties, select "(Un)Stick" for
the Window Operations menu and click on the window you wish
to make sticky, or click on a stick window you wish to
unstick. The buttonbar that is loaded when you login is an
example of a sticky window (even though it doesn't have a
titlebar!) Like any other window, if you don't want the
buttonbar following you around, you can make it
unsticky.
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