Previous: A NeXT Computer Emulator

Nostalgia aside (I was lucky enough to attend a real NeXT demonstration in 1994/1995) WindowMaker has been literally a life saver over 20 years ago when I had to build a desktop for ~50 remote points of sale in which the operator could only perform a few tasks, and setting up it as a locked "kiosk on steroids" with a fixed dock that could open only the 4-5 needed apps allowed them to do their jobs without distractions or exposing the unnecessary/dangerous parts of the system.

https://www.windowmaker.org/

https://github.com/window-maker/wmaker

The turbo cube dimension had dual monitors (one colour one bw) in 1989 which was cool. Myself I just run a turbocolour station.

This is an issue with how said applications seem to expect the window manager to handle some stuff as they do things that normally is up to the window manager, but Window Maker doesn't.

Right now there isn't much you can do aside from having these applications let Window Maker do the window management itself instead of doing it themselves. Some of them, like Firefox, have an option for that (right click somewhere in the Firefox toolbar and select "Customize toolbar" and then from the bottom left corner click "Title bar").

Some applications do not have such an option (e.g. Steam), so for them you need to force it: middle click in the empty space between windows, locate the window you want to have a titlebar for and right click on it while keeping the right button down (the menu disappears if you move it). From the menu select "Attributes" and using the choice box at the top of the window that appears select "Advanced options". Finally check the "Ignore decoration changes" checkbox and press Save. Then restart the application and it should have a titlebar by Window Maker.

Sadly for the latter it'll be on top of whatever titlebar the program has, but IMO it beans not working at all - and as a bonus you have all the additional window management commands available that pretty much no "i'll make my own title bars" program provides, like shading.

> other questions: sometimes right-click for context menu requires a click and hold, other times it doesn't. configurable?

It isn't a matter of configuration (AFAIK anyway), they are different menu types:

"popup" menus appear only while the mouse button is down (note that it doesn't matter what button you click, e.g. choice boxes show popup menus with the left mouse button).

"application" menus can stay on screen. You can also show them like in popup menus by pushing down the mouse button and dragging the mouse and they'll disappear if you release the button, but normally stay on screen until they are hidden to show another menu (you can keep them on screen by clicking and dragging the title - in that case an X button appears so you can close them later). There is one exception to this and is if you try show the same menu twice, the second instance will disappear as if it was a popup menu when you release the mouse button (e.g. if you middle click to show the windows menu and then keep it on screen by dragging it a bit to make it permanent and then middle click again somewhere else to show the windows menu again, a second instance of the menu will appear that will disappear once you release the button).

You can distinguish the latter from the former by the fact that the latter have a title.

I think OP is wrong and the logo is better with the same lowercase "e" as the original NeXT logo, even though it's in a different place in the logo, but different strokes for different folks.

How would you start it in this emulator?

That was exactly my point when I said:

> It doesn't even say anywhere on the page that it's Mac-limited

It says nothing about the OS it runs on, which IMHO is lame.

(If I have to write a nix file to build it, that's fine as long as it's a fairly standard build process.)

https://github.com/itomato/NeXTROM

I can see though why long time Mac users would hate it though, it’s a massive change and it moved everything.

I really just couldn't care less about the change in the settings app. I usually typed something into the Spotlight search area to find what I wanted in the old version, and I do the same thing now. I just didn't have to change settings enough to have remembered their old locations.

Mostly, though, I'm just happy that they're dog-fooding SwiftUI with it. I look forward to WWDC this year.

That said, despite being able to hack lots about the system, it would definitely be nice to have deeper modifications allowed. Alternate kinds of menus, pointers and windows would be nice, where users could experiment with new UI concepts, etc.

I personally really miss NeXTSTEP’s tear off menus, which were in early OS X builds until Aqua got rid of them.