5. Customizing fluxbox

5.1. Customizing Menu

The menu that will be displayed when you right click on a root window is /usr/share/fluxbox/menu.ja_JP but you can customize the menu as you like by specifying another file.

  • First, open ~/.fluxbox/init with an editor while fluxbox isn't working and edit it like the following:

    session.menuFile:       /home/kourin/.fluxbox/menu.ja_JP
    

  • Next, copy /usr/share/fluxbox/menu.ja_JP (or menu) under ~/.fluxbox/ as

    % cp /usr/share/fluxbox/menu.ja_JP ~/.fluxbox/
    
  • Now you can do the following tasks while fluxbox is on. Edit the copied file with an editor. Perhaps you can see it once you actually take a look at the contents but

    [exec](rxvt) {rxvt}
    

    (rxvt) would be characters to be displayed in the menu and the following in {} is the command to be executed. So then, a line like below

    [exec] (w3m-img) {Eterm --trans -e w3m-img ~/.w3m/bookmark.html}
    

    will have "w3m-img" added to your menu.

5.2. fluxconf

With the current specification , fluxbox reads in ~/.fluxbox/init when starting up and saves the configuration in the memory to ~/.fluxbox/init. "refonfig" seems to only re-read ~/.fluxbox/keys. It has been rather inconvenient as you need to turn off fluxbox to edit /.fluxbox/init.

A convenient tool to configure fluxconf is being released at fluxconf. It is not included in the iso images of Kondara MNU/Linux 2.1 but is in the project's cvs tree. It is planned to be released as an errata package. For those who would like to customize fluxbox, I recommend using fluxconf.

5.3. Keyboard Operation

Similar to many other window managers, fluxbox can be operated from a keyboard.

Defalut setting is shown below. Alt+Tab moves focus to next window.

Mod1 Tab :NextWindow
Mod1 Shift Tab :PrevWindow
Mod1 F1 :Workspace1
Mod1 F2 :Workspace2
Mod1 F3 :Workspace3
Mod1 F4 :Workspace4
Mod1 F5 :Workspace5
Mod1 F6 :Workspace6
Mod1 F7 :Workspace7
Mod1 F8 :Workspace8
Mod1 F9 :Workspace9
Mod1 F10 :Workspace10
Mod1 F11 :Workspace11
Mod1 F12 :Workspace12

Other than these, Ctrl key, cursor keys(Up, Down, Left, Right) and other character keys can be used in combinations.

Also, here is a itemized list of possible configuration setting.

Additionally, things like

Mod1 P :ExecCommand xmms -p
Mod1 F :ExecCommand xmms -f
None F1 :ExecCommand galeon
assign keys to start a particular application. As seen in the third example, F1 key alone can start an application galeon.

To customize, edit ~/.fluxbox/keys directly, or use fluxkeys included in fluxconf.