[olug] Setting window transparency with focus

Obi-Wan obiwan at jedi.com
Thu Jan 9 06:02:43 UTC 2014


Egad!  With as much as I overlap window, automatically bringing the 
focused window to the top would drive me insane.

Further research tells me that I could have installed compiz with XFCE 
in any Debian version prior to... but not including... wheezy.  Guess 
which distro we're running at work?  The compiz packages no longer exist 
in wheezy, and our sysadmin isn't about to start installing stuff from 
the unstable 'sid' distro.

On 01/08/2014 05:09 PM, Kevin wrote:
> How about the focus follows mouse and bringing the focused window to the
> top? That probably doesn't solve some use case, but I'm having a hard time
> thinking of what it is.
> On Jan 8, 2014 9:21 AM, "Obi-Wan" <obiwan at jedi.com> wrote:
>
>> At work, we recently switched from Ubuntu 10.04 running gnome 2 on our
>> desktop machines to Debian 7 running xfce.  In the old setup, I'd been
>> running compiz, and had it configured with focus-follows-mouse so that if a
>> any windows were in front of the actively focus window, those unfocused
>> windows would go transparent so I could see the focused window through
>> them.  They would not be transparent unless they were blocking the in-focus
>> window.
>>
>> I'd grown rather attached to that feature, but I can't find any way to
>> replicate it under xfce at work or even under Ubuntu 13.10's KDE at home.
>>   Both allow me to make out-of-focus windows transparent all the time, but
>> not only when occluding the in-focus window.
>>
>> I've been unable to find any solutions via google.  Do any of you have any
>> ideas on how to make this happen?  Are there aftermarket compositors that
>> provide this functionality and can be used in xfce or KDE?


-- 
*Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth* obiwan at jedi.com <mailto:obiwan at jedi.com> 
www.Jedi.com <http://www.jedi.com>
The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
promise that You will pull me through. /-- Rich Mullins/



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