Clever Shortcuts In Fluxbox
Fluxbox has been my window manager of choice for the last 18 months after switching from Window Maker and last week I discovered some great shortcuts by looking through the ~/.fluxbox/keys file. I haven’t seen these shortcuts discussed anywhere and because they make the most common window tasks extremely fast and easy, I thought I should share them.
Moving and resizing windows
- Moving a window – A window can be dragged around that screen by holding Mod1 (Alt key) and left clicking anywhere on the window. This avoids moving the mouse to the title bar each time.
- Resizing a window – You can resize a window by pressing Mod1 (Alt key) and right clicking on the window to resize that window. The resizing occurs from the nearest corner from where you clicked.
Tabs in windows
The windows also allow tabs. By middle clicking the title bar, you can drag the title bar of one window into the title bar of another window, creating a tab. You can move between the tabs by either clicking on the tab or by holding Mod4 (Windows key) and pressing a number on the keyboard. Eg. 1 for the first tab, 2 for the second, etc…
Example of window tabs in Fluxbox
Extra: Switching between workspaces
I remap my keys file so that I can easily switch between my four workspaces. By modifying the config like below (in ~/.fluxbox/keys) I can now press Mod1 (Alt)+1 to goto workspace 1 and Mod1 (Alt)+2 to goto workspace 2.
# move to a specific workspace Mod1 1 :Workspace 1 Mod1 2 :Workspace 2 Mod1 3 :Workspace 3 Mod1 4 :Workspace 4
Windows can be moved to other workspaces by left clicking on the window (dragging the window slightly) and moving to a new workspace. The window will move with you.