Shantz XWinWrap: The "Moving" Wallpaper Fun Continues
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XWinWrap is a small utility written a loooong time ago that allowed you to stick most of the apps to your desktop background (Thanks to fsckin for introducing me to it). What this meant was you could use an animated screensaver (like glmatrix, electric sheep, etc) or even a movie, and use it as your wallpaper. But only one version of this app was released, and it had a few problems, like it wasn’t exactly “sticking” to the background and geometry option didn’t work as well.
Seeing no-one picking it up, I decided to give it a bit of polish last weekend by fixing the above problems and also add a few features. And here it is, in its new avatar “Shantz XWinWrap“.(Hit the link for downloads, usage details, feature requests and a video that shows a couple of its features)
I hope to continue on the good work that was done by the original author and provide an even better xwinwrap to you all. Pour in those ideas about what features you’d like to see in this.
© Shantanu Goel | Shantz XWinWrap: The "Moving" Wallpaper Fun Continues
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This post has 3 comments
September 17th, 2008
I for one was amazed at what a big deal some people made of Vista’s animated backgrounds when all you need do is mplayer -rootwin. I usually use a screensaver as a background (xflame looks good).
Does this program do anything other than what -root/-rootwin already do?
September 17th, 2008
Todd: I think the difference is that if you use -rootwin, you won’t actually see anything because mplayer then becomes a child of the root window and appears “below” the desktop window. The applicable option to use with mplayer would be -wid, where we can tell it what window should it stick to, then xwinwrap comes into play by
1) telling it what window id to stick to (the desktop window)
2) setting mplayer window options, e.g. removing borders, decorations, making it sticky, making it not appear in taskbar, pager, etc etcThese things then make it work like a true animated wallpaper.
3) Edit: Forgot to mention that apart from fixing the “sticking” thing (so that it never minimizes) my version also lets you create “shaped” windows
September 19th, 2008
Ah, I see the difference now I believe. Regarding the “not seeing anything” issue – that’s only if you run some kind of desktop environment or desktop window (as you imply). The reason I didn’t think of it is that I’ve never run one
I just use a window manager (fluxbox, openbox, pekwm etc).
Even without a desktop environment one (or more) feature is still valid – the ability to have shaped windows for example. Nice