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Window Management on the BeOS

 

When you start to use the BeOS regularly, you probably find yourself with a bunch of windows from different applications open. A couple of NetPositive windows, a couple of Tracker windows, an e-mail message or two, a couple of HTML files open in Pe -- pretty soon your screen is a mess!

You probably already know that the Deskbar gives you the ability to manage your windows a little bit. Every running application is listed in the Deskbar, and every open window is listed in a submenu under the application that owns it. So you can simply choose the window you need from the Deskbar to bring it to the front:

Choosing a Tracker window from the Deskbar

You'll note that you can also hide, show, and close all of an application's windows from this submenu.

Here's a couple of useful shortcuts you might not know about. Both use the mouse, but they're still helpful:

  • Double-clicking a window's title bar hides it (meaning you'll need to make a trip to the Deskbar to see it again). This lets you hide a single window, rather than all of an application's windows.

  • Right-clicking a window's title bar sends it to the back of all the open windows. Extremely useful for cycling through your open windows.

In the future, the BeOS will include new functionality that will let you rotate between running applications, and the windows in each of those applications, from the keyboard. Coming no later than Release 4!


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