6. Control The Look and Behavior Of Applications

This section is about how you can make windows appear on a certain workspace, have them displayed without a border or titlebar, or put them above or under other windows. All this can be accomplished using the winoptions preferences file, some of it even interactively.

6.1 Assign an option to a given application

Assigning a particular option (icon, default layer, default workspace, etc.) to a given application or application window can be done as follows:

First, you should acquire the "WM_CLASS" descriptor using xprop. Simply run

    xprop |grep WM_CLASS

in an XTerm. The first item is the window name and the second item it the window class. You can then add the desired options to your winoptions file. Entries in that file have one of the following formats:

    name.class.option: value
    class.option:      value
    name.option:       value

The "WM_CLASS" for a Netscape Navigator window is

    "Navigator", "Netscape"

To assign the icons "navigator_*.xpm" to the Netscape Navigator window, use this option:

    Navigator.Netscape.icon: navigator

The other options work according to roughly the same pattern. The list of winoptions you can find in IceWM manual chapter about Window Options.

6.2 How do I make a window stay on top?

There are two slightly different ways to do this. Use whatever suits your need. Option one: the window always stays on top of any other windows. Set the following option name.class.layer: onTop. Option two: the window sits in a rectangular zone of the desktop where no other windows can be placed: Use the doNotCover option: name.class.doNotCover: 1. By the way: this is how the taskbar or the GNOME panel work. It's a good idea to use this on gkrellm, your icq client, or other monitoring tools you'd always like to have in view.

6.3 Have windows iconified/maximized as soon they are mapped

There may be programs that you either want to start up iconified or maximized. Until now, there is no possible entry in your winoptions file that iconifies or maximizes a windows of a given name or class as it is mapped.

Fortunately some programs (like Netscape) have a command line option to be started iconic and most X program support "-geometry" to specify a default window size.

6.4 How to make windows appear on certain workspace?

Either use winoptions and define

xmms.workspace: 7
Mozilla.workspace: 9

This allways starts xmms on workspace 7 and Mozilla on workspace 9, keep in mind, IceWM starts counting at 0. IceWM will switch to the nominated workspace on every start of these programs.

Or you can use icesh:

icesh -class xeyes setWorkspace 0

This move xeyes to my workspace 0.