Explore Your World: Install Wbar In Ubuntu Jaunty (9.04)

Wbar is a quick-launch bar (not a dock) that has an appearance similar to Avant Window Manager and Cairo Dock. It is GTK (Gnome) based but can work in all desktop environments. It does not require a compositing manager to be installed and is therefore quicker and more suitable for low-end hardware systems. It is the default in the Google gOS desktop and is available as a .deb package from Google. Download and install (from the command-line Terminal):

$ wget http://wbar.googlecode.com/files/wbar_1.3.3_i386.deb

$ sudo dpkg -i wbar_1.3.3_i386.deb

Start wbar with custom start options (e.g. by pressing alt+F2). Here is an example:

$ wbar -isize 48 -j 1 -p bottom -balfa 40 -bpress -nanim 3 -z 2.5 -above-desk

Here is another example:

$ wbar -above-desk -pos bottom -isize 60 -nanim 1 -bpress -jumpf 0.0 -zoomf 1.5

For a full list of command-line startup options, see:

$ wbar --help

Tip: If you want the "wave" effect just increase the -nanim value. I like the icons to just pop up so I don't use it, but with 9 icons 5 there is a nice "wave" effect.

Obviously, you could create a menu item with the command line options (similar to the examples above), or a batch file that can be automatically started at system startup (as a cron event or startup session).

You can also change wbar startup options by editing the configuration file:

$ sudo gedit /usr/share/wbar/dot.wbar

See this example configuration file. However, not all options are able to be set from the configuration file and must be run from the command line. For more info see this wbar guide.

wbarconf

A simple wbar configuration utility can be downloaded as a .deb package and installed: