LinuxPlanet: From the Desktop: W is for WindowMaker and West Coast

“Right from the start, WindowMaker is one fine looking graphical
interface. You can see that a lot of care has been taken on the
aesthetic properties of this X window manager. Aficionados of
window managers will also note its similarity to NeXTSTEP’s
interface. The similarity is planned, of course, as there is no
such thing as coincidence in an open source environment. But
there’s a lot more going on here than just another NeXTSTEP
clone.”

“WindowMaker (or Wmaker for short) is a menu-driven interface,
with pop-up menus rather than a Taskbar control. Menus are
dynamically created, and can be configured to pick out any number
of files and submenus. Submenus can be detached from the parent
menu and pinned to the desktop, should you need to….”

“Perhaps it is because I never used NeXTSTEP, and only dabbled
with AfterStep, but Wmaker’s functionality did not leap out at me
when I first started to use it. This does not mean that this is a
poorly designed interface–far from it. It is so well put-together
and integrated, it leaves new users feeling like they just stepped
into a movie about 10 minutes after it started. The movie looks
good, but clearly some catch up is needed to full enjoy the rest of
the experience.”

Complete
Story