Skippy is a window management tool for

X11 The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting wi ...

similar to

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

Exposé Expose, exposé, or exposed may refer to: News sources * Exposé (journalism), a form of investigative journalism * '' The Exposé'', a British conspiracist website Film and TV Film * ''Exposé'' (film), a 1976 thriller film * ''Exposed'' (1932 ...

feature. It is a fullscreen task switcher that allows a user to quickly see open windows by two different sets of criteria, or to hide all windows and show the desktop without the need to click through many windows to find a specific target. Skippy-XD is a branch that provides 'live' (and updating) snapshots of the windows.

Usage

Skippy (and Skippy-XD) usually needs to be compiled and installed from source, although binaries exist for some platforms (e.g.,

Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed mostly of free and open-source software. Ubuntu is officially released in three editions: '' Desktop'', ''Server'', and ''Core'' for Internet of things devices and robots. All ...

). After it is launched, the default

hotkey computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the operating system or ...

for activating it is F11. The user can next choose a window with either the keyboard (by using the up, down, left and right keys) or the mouse and activate it by pressing the left mouse button or the return or spacebar key. There are also two or three modifiers you can use with the hotkey: hold Control and Skippy (not used in Skippy-XD) will update the snapshots of all the windows. Hold Mod1 (aka the alt key) and skippy will only show the windows of the currently focused window's window group (like, all of gimp's windows, or all of kopete's windows), and if Skippy or Skippy-XD is compiled with

Xinerama Xinerama is an extension to the X Window System that enables X applications and window managers to use two or more physical displays as one large virtual display. Developed under the name ''PanoramiX'' by Madeline T. Asmus of the Digital Equipme ...

support and you have several heads, hold shift while pressing the hotkey to make it show the windows on all heads.

Clones

Projects with similar features are Komposé (an Exposé clone for

KDE3 K Desktop Environment 3 is the third series of releases of the K Desktop Environment (after that called ''KDE Software Compilation''). There are six major releases in this series. After the release of KDE 4, version 3.5 was forked into the Trinit ...

) and

Compiz Compiz () is a compositing window manager for the X Window System, using 3D graphics hardware to create fast compositing desktop effects for window management. Effects, such as a minimization animation or a cube workspace, are implemented as l ...

, the latter containing built-in Exposé-style functionality which can be activated by pressing F12.

External links

Skippy Home Page
(Currently down, as of Feb 2013.) *
Skippy on KDE-Look.org
*{{github, richardgv/skippy-xd, Skippy-XD - A slightly modified version of Skippy-XD
Skippy-XD PPA for Ubuntu
- Repository providing Ubuntu binaries of Skippy-XD Linux windowing system-related software

Usage

Clones

See also

External links