Freely rotate windows. New plugin I found

Posted on October 22, 2007 by smspillaz

I found this great new plugin which allows you to freely rotate windows in any direction that you want. It is called ‘freewins’

Google it for more info. I will try to write some metadata, compatibility with 0.6.0 and some screenshots later.

Here is a youtube video:

And a screenshot

freewins.png

Some basic usage:

Use Ctrl-Click anywhere near the edges to rotate from side-to-side.

Use Ctrl-Click anywhere near there center to freely rotate the window on the y and z axes.

To reset windows, just disable the plugin and then restart Compiz.

Limitations:

Currently, most things work such as animations and wobbly. Plugins such as scale will return the window to it’s normal shape temporarily.

If using Cube or Expo, you might notice that the windows are drawn incorrectly.

Also Note that you can’t interact with windows properly due to the lack of input redirection in the current X server (And the fact that working versions of the plugin and compiz have not implemented it)

Also, it currently only works in git master, not 0.6.0 (I’ll have a look at this soon)

Download

Get it from http://www.warlockshome.com.ar/compiz/ . Untar it and compile it with make and make install (installs locally)

More info in this forum thread : http://forum.compiz-fusion.org/showthread.php?t=4804

A compatibility patch version of the plugin is attached here . This should work with compiz-0.6 (If you are using it) (It doesn’t like patches ;-) ) Just rename it to freewins.c

- Sam

Filed under: Uncategorized

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23 Responses

  1. zeco, on October 22nd, 2007 at 7:43 am Said:

    this is a video of freewins in action
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16Qz_Ov3FuU

    input redirection might be a bit tricky to implement, but it should be done some time anyway to enable further similar plugins.

    Reply
  2. Peppe, on October 22nd, 2007 at 9:14 am Said:

    Input redirection it’s “work in progress” by X.Org team. It’s expected for the next version

    Reply
  3. Vincent, on October 22nd, 2007 at 9:44 am Said:

    Cool, I can see some use for this :)
    (Think screenshots of websites for example, those’ll look awesome!)

    Reply
  4. Fusion: freewins plugin « Tecnologia e non solo, on October 22nd, 2007 at 12:44 pm Said:

    [...] Maggiori info e video qui. Il sorgente qui. [...]

    Reply
  5. warlock, on October 22nd, 2007 at 1:03 pm Said:

    Hi there, its good to see my work apreciated :D

    Reply
  6. Paul Anderson, on October 22nd, 2007 at 1:19 pm Said:

    Hi…. it’s a lovely plugin…but it seems to burn CPU… even when doing nothing….. bring up top and ccsm and turn the plugin on and off to see the effect…

    Reply
  7. Vadim P., on October 22nd, 2007 at 3:29 pm Said:

    Sounds awesome, except for the “To reset windows, just disable the plugin and then restart Compiz.”. I’ll wait ’till there’s a faster way… :)

    Reply
  8. Erlend, on October 23rd, 2007 at 10:15 am Said:

    I see this more as a “proof of concept”… am I wrong?

    What will it be useful for?

    Reply
  9. Davim, on October 24th, 2007 at 12:46 pm Said:

    This looks really cool :) I hope it is continued and that imput redirection comes soon :)

    Reply
  10. LuNa, on October 24th, 2007 at 4:30 pm Said:

    great plugin !!
    patch won’t work .. anyway :)

    Reply
  12. Oded, on October 26th, 2007 at 1:00 pm Said:

    ‎This transformation is not so useful standalone (except for demoing itself – who has the patience to go around rotating windows during work), but it can be really interesting to set it up with some automatic actions, for example – instead of minimizing a window you can click a button and the window tilts to the side of the screen, a-la looking glass (I always liked that feature in looking glass). Doing this is better then minimize because you can still see what happens in the window w/o it taking its usual screen footprint.

    Reply
  13. Chegou o FreeWins, howto de como instalá-lo no compiz. « Padoca Virtual, on October 26th, 2007 at 10:04 pm Said:

    [...] Outubro 2007 Finalmente saiu o freewins (janelas rotacionáveis) no compiz fusion, explico aqui como instalá-lo no seu [...]

    Reply
  14. John R, on October 27th, 2007 at 9:17 am Said:

    @Oded:

    Absolutely! I always felt that that being able to manipulate the windows you work with would be a powerful tool in Compiz, such as your idea instead of minimise, almost like a desktop book.

    Also, wouldn’t it be great if you could scale a window larger/smaller and still interact with it? Would make using multiple windows on a single screen much more manageable!

    I think if input redirection is implemented well, we can look forward to similar implementations that do what we’re talking about now, and a great deal more!

    Reply
  15. bloggingIT - FreeWins - Live Windows Rotation in Compiz!, on October 27th, 2007 at 9:34 am Said:

    [...] that a new plugin has been developed that allows live manipulation of desktop windows. Over on SmSpillaz’s blog, he’s got some links to YouTube as well as a nice screenshot of the [...]

    Reply
  16. Erlend, on October 28th, 2007 at 1:24 pm Said:

    “some automatic actions, for example – instead of minimizing a window you can click a button and the window tilts to the side of the screen”

    Actually yeah, having a show-desktop plugin which just turns the windows on edge could be useful. I can also see it being good with Dodge, and screensavers.

    Reply
  17. Seddi, on October 28th, 2007 at 11:43 pm Said:

    Hi @all,

    just did some small modifications to the 0.6 patch/sourcecode. CTRL-Klick will be replaced with CTRL+SHIFT+Left Click, so you dont get in conflict with the cube plugin (CTRL+ALT+Click) and other plugins. Also you can reset a single window with CTRL+SHIFT+Right Click to the normal view and you can use CTRL+SHIFT+Middle mouse Button to rotate the window to the left or the right side, which depends on the position of your mouse arrow. I dont like patches too, so I will link the complete .c source ;)

    http://www.tuxfrodo.de/download/freewins.c

    Reply
  18. Guillermo, on October 30th, 2007 at 12:40 am Said:

    Hi, I have published a freak video maybe giving a new idea for a new Compiz Fusion plugin. It’s about moving your desktop windows just with head movements…
    Here is the URL:
    HacheMuda.com – Mover las ventanas a cabezazos.
    Hope you like it, :)

    Reply
  20. ¡Compiz Fusion se convierte en un escritorio 3D real!, on November 2nd, 2007 at 6:22 pm Said:

    [...] Vía | CyberOrg Vía | Smspillaz [...]

    Reply
  22. ~, on July 27th, 2008 at 9:59 pm Said:

    make for multi-touch :) useing TUIO input parser

    Reply
  23. Anonymous, on October 8th, 2008 at 2:03 pm Said:

    as cool as useless

    Reply

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