I just completed my"second" icewm theme. It's called Korstro since it's based on the kore, vostro, and oxygen-small themes. Here is the link:


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I hope you enjoy it.

john

P.S. I had to change my name since someone at freshmeat is already using OU812 - so I figured I may as well be consistent. ShakeysPizza was the sponsor of my hockey team when I was a kid.

Here is another theme. It is built around lxice and uses the menu and taskbar from icehybrid. I was trying to capture the original look of lxde.


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john

This is a post that will hopefully help you to create your own theme. What that really means is that you get to play Dr. Frankenstein. Just find some icons, a window border, a panel, and a menu and you can create a theme. My two favorite places to find icewm themes are:


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Once you've found the components for your theme, you're ready to start.

1. Create a folder for your theme in ~/.icewm/themes/.

2. Copy the parts for the window border into your folder. These are usually every *.xpm image except for the two mentioned below that are used for the"start" menu. Also, you may notice that some images are named with an"A" and others with an"I." These are for the active and inactive window decorations.

3. Copy the menu parts that you want into your theme folder. Usually they are the menubg.xpm and menusel.xpm files.

4. Create folders for your icons: icons, taskbar, mailbox, and ledclock (or just copy and paste these folders from other themes). The main icons to have in your"icons" folder are terminal and folder icons. The main icons to include in your taskbar folder are the start button, show desktop button, and window list button. (The icons should be used automatically by icewm. If you don't have these icons, then icewm will use the default icons found in /usr/share/icewm. Finally, you can control some of the taskbar icons by editing the file ~/.icewm/toolbar)

5. Copy the taskbar (panel) components into your taskbar folder. These include any *.xpm images for the taskbar background, taskbar buttons, and toolbar buttons (they should be pretty easy to find in your borrowed theme's taskbar folder).

6. Now copy and paste a"default.theme" file into your theme's main folder. I suggest using the one from the icewm theme you're borrowing your taskbar from. The reason for this is that it has been customized for the clock, tooltips, cpu graph, fonts, etc.

7. Now comes the first tricky part. Load the file from step 6 into a tabbed editor. Now open the default.theme file from each of your borrowed themes into your editor. I suggest doing this because you need to end up with a file that represents a blending of each of the borrowed themes. Study the menu, taskbar, and window sections from each of the borrowed themes. You will probably end up pasting these sections into the default.theme file of your project. Here are some common edits that I have made:

a. To display the taskbar icons in buttons, use"Look=metal". If you'd prefer them without buttons, use"Look=flat". (This definition is usually found at the top of the file.)
b. If the window borders don't look right, you'll need to edit these values. For the proper values you'll need to study the default.theme file from the window theme you're using. Just use those values (found near the top of the file) in your theme.
c. If you want to edit the fonts, look at the bottom of your file and change the fonts to any that you like.
d. Sometimes parts of a theme have gradients, especially menus. These definitions are usually all found in a single line of code at the top or bottom of a file. I usually add the entire line of code to the top of my file.

8. Now comes the second tricky part: adust your symlinks (they don't seem to respond well to copy and paste). Window components and taskbar components are usually symlinked the most often. Here's what I usually do to recreate the proper symlinks:

a. Have my file browser and a terminal open.
b. In the terminal, cd to the folder of my theme with the symlinks.
c. Find the symlinks by entering"ls -l" in the terminal and study how the links are set up.
d. Use your file browser to delete one of the symlinks.
e. Recreate the symlink using the terminal.

For example, let's say I wanted to use the window frame to highlight a menu entry instead of using the default image. Then I would enter in a terminal (after renaming or deleting the original *xpm in my file browser):

ln -s titleAT.xpm menusel.xpm

9. Be patient and persistent. Also, keep testing your work with each step. Go to start > logout > restart icewm often. This will refresh icewm so you can see your changes.

Good luck and have fun.

john

P.S. Here is a theme I created by blending n-icedesert blue and eiskristall together:

Here's a cool little script I found for converting fluxbox menus to icewm menus.


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john

Have you ever added an app to your startup file - an app that has a tray icon - only to have it"detached" when the desktop is loaded (like a tiny window sitting in the top-left corner of your screen)? From what I've read, this is more of a timing issue than anything else. Let's say for example you're having trouble with the wicd tray icon becoming detached. Then try using this line in your startup file:
This should help eliminate the problem. i.e., this should allow enough time for the panel to launch before wicd attempts to dock its tray icon.

john

Sometimes you find themes you like, but perhaps you don't like some of the taskbar icons or the theme does not include custom icons and uses the default icewm ones instead. Here's 3 ways of adding your own:

1. Make two subfolders (if they don't already exist) in the theme's directory: icons and taskbar. Copy the"start menu" (named either"icewm.xpm" or"linux.xpm") and"show desktop" (usually named"desktop.xpm") icons to the taskbar subfolder. Copy your folder (usually named"folder_16x16.xpm") icon and terminal (usually named"xterm_16x16.xpm") icon to the icons subfolder.

2. The above solution works well for individual themes, but there are quite a few themes without default icons such as desktop and folder. So you have two ways of dealing with it:
a. Add these icons to the folders /usr/share/icewm/taskbar/ and /usr/share/icewm/icons/ as described above.
b. Add these icons to the folders ~/.icewm/taskbar/ and ~/.icewm/icons/ (you will need to create these first).

The nice thing about creating the folders in your home directory (part b as opposed to part a) is that they take precedence over the ones in the root directory. This makes it easier to change icons.

john

Hi everybody, i just installed M8, this is one hell of an icewm thread :)

This is my contribution:


#.icewm/preferences


OpaqueMove=0
OpaqueResize=0
SmartPlacement=1
MenuMouseTracking=1
ModSuperIsCtrlAlt=1
UseMouseWheel=1
QuickSwitch=1
AutoReloadMenus=1
ShowProgramsMenu=1
ShowThemesMenu=1
ShowHelp=1
TerminalCommand="urxvt"
ShutdownCommand="sudo halt"
RebootCommand="sudo reboot"
WorkspaceNames=" 1"," 2"
LockCommand="xlock -mode blank"


ShowTaskBar=1
TaskBarAutoHide=0
TaskBarShowClock=1
TaskBarShowAPMStatus=0
TaskBarAtTop=1
TaskBarShowAPMStatus=0
TaskBarShowAPMTime=0
TaskBarShowMailboxStatus=1
TaskBarShowWindows=1
TaskBarShowShowDesktopButton=0
TaskBarShowTray=1
TaskBarShowWindowIcons=0
TaskBarShowCPUStatus=0
TaskBarShowNetStatus=0
TaskBarShowCollapseButton=0
TaskBarWorkspacesLeft=1
TimeFormat="%a %d %b %R"
TaskBarShowShowDesktopButton=1
TaskBarShowWindowListMenu=0
TaskBarShowMailboxStatus=0
TaskBarMailboxStatusBeepOnNewMail=0
NormalTaskBarFontName="-*-sans-medium-r-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-*- *"
NormalTaskBarFontNameXft="sans-serif:size=10"
ActiveTaskBarFontName="-*-sans-r-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-*-*"
ActiveTaskBarFontNameXft="sans-serif:size=10"


# .icewm/keys
key"Super+c" urxvt
key"Super+e" xfe
key"Super+m" sylpheed
key"Super+f" iceweasel
key"Super+u" xchat
key"Super+q" gqview
key"Super+l" xlock -mode blank
key"Super+Pause" sudo halt
key"Print" rxvt -e scrot -cd 10

Super = Windows key

I can close the machine with the win key + the Pause key, pretty fast, of course you to configure sudo at /etc/sudoers.


# .icewm/winoptions

urxvt.startMaximized: 1
sylpheed.startMaximized: 1
xchat.startMaximized: 1
gqview.startMaximized: 1
iceweasel.startMaximized: 1
xfe.startMaximized: 1
xmms.tray: Exclusive


I like my apps maximized a la ratpoison...

# .icewm/prefoverride

KeyWinClose="Super+k"
KeyWinMaximize="F12"


this way i close apps with the win key +k and maximize with F12, the idea is to keep my hands on the kbd and away from the mouse and icons.

I deleted the title bar, a waste of real estate on my old crt :)
Just go to your /usr/share/icewm/themes/name_of_theme/default.theme,
and change the titlebar Height to zero. save/exit/restart icewm.


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Thanks for the tips (again).

I notice you have Spanish in the /grub/menu.lst.
Did you install using the Spanish language installer and is Spanish working ok?

Nice screenie

Yes, i installed in Spanish and it worked ok __{{emoticon}}__

A few observations from the newbie point of view:

1. I think the website should emphasize the fact that antiX is capable of showing videos, youtube, etc right out of the box. This is helpful for people who has never used antiX.

2. There should be a link in the front page, some kind of packages database listing the apps that come with antiX, in plain view, so the reader can check out right away what apps come with antiX.

3. I think the following apps should be taken in consideration for the next version as default:

numlockx
unclutter
preload

there are tiny and very useful __{{emoticon}}__

Sometimes, i need less distraction and more space, so i toggle off the taskbar with:

Windows key + h

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When i'm thru, i toogle the taskbar back with the same keybindings __{{emoticon}}__

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Xfce has a panel plug-in that acts as a quick launch - a button that allows you to group similar apps. For example, you can have a quick launch button for system tools and another for desktop settings. It turns out that icewm has a similar capability. Just edit the toolbar file with something along the lines of:
Just copy and paste this code into ~/.icewm/toolbar and place it where you would want the button to appear in your taskbar (look for the arrow in the screenshot below). Of course you should edit it to include your favorite icons and apps. It's not quite xfce, but it's a wonderful thing.

john

Special thanks to the folks at PuppyLinux for including this in their latest release 4.2.

thanks OU812. this tip will make the toolbar a lot smaller with a lot of apps in it.

Excellent tip John!

You could also use this idea to replace the quit button on the taskbar as well. This way you get a menu with logout options instead of waiting for the window to open. You could also set the icewm menu logout option to open the antix logout window so you will still have access to that. But that's in my next post.

john

P.S. The above suggestion is going to be my default icewm setup.

Hello. If you would like to have the logout option from the icewm menu point to a custom logout script such as exitantix.sh, then follow these instructions:

1. open the file ~./icewm/preferences from the antix control center

2. edit this line as follows:
3. edit this line as follows:
Or use the exitantix-##.sh language of your choice.

4. use the the menu to restart icewm

You should now be able to use the custom script.

john