What is Desktop?
Desktop is a bespoke file manager designed to access and work with Metview icons.
The user interface
Desktop's user interface is divided into six parts.
- Menubar:
- Toolbar: it contains a set of buttons/widgets to customise the view and navigate through the folders
- Folder view: this is the central part of the Desktop showing the contents of the currently selected folder. This area can contain multiple tabs each containing a different folder.
- Sidebar: it contains either the Bookmarks panel or the Create New Icon panel
- Drawers: drawers are a set of centrally accessible folders organised into tabs. The appear at the bottom of each Desktop window.
- Statusbar: it displays information about the icons and provides the buttons for changing the icon size
Folder navigation
Folders are represented by this icon in the user interface:
To enter a folder double-click or right-click Open on the icon. Folder navigation is based on the Back, Forward and Up arrows and on the breadcrumbs, which are all located in the toolbar.
Each visited folder is added to the folder history that can be accessed via the History menu (it can store at most 20 folders).
Metview root folder
Each Metview session defines a root folder (by default it is ~/metview). This folder is set as both the home and root folder for Desktop! This has two implications. First, the home icon in Desktop always means the Metview root folder (and not the UNIX home folder)! Second, we cannot directly access file outside this file system from within Desktop (but symbolic links have to be created).
Folder View
Tabs
Enter folder
Bookmarks
Drawers
Create new icons
Send email
Compress icons
Icon editors
History
Preferences
Log
Monitor