BloodyBlade

This tutorial is about setting up bbLean. There are many alternative shells to explorer but I find bbLean the easiest and most easy-to-use, customizable, and widespread.



What is bbLean? It is an alternate to window?s default shell, explorer. If you look in your process list at any given time you can see that explorer.exe at times can take up to 40mb of your precious memory, whereas bbLean only takes 2-10mb depending on your plug-ins. bbLean has a great amount of customizability. bbLean is a windows variation of the popular *nix window manager for the X Window System, blackbox. BB4Win was one of the first blackbox for windows shells but the project has been discontinued.



1)Setting up: http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/ is the official bbLean website. You can download bbLean 1.16 here: http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean...bbLean_116.zip. All you need to do is extract the zip file into your desired directory. First order of business is to set bbLean as your default shell. This will have bbLean start with windows rather than the default shell. First of all, open blackbox.exe in your bbLean root directory. Now, the desktop should have transformed. Right click on the desktop and it will bring up a menu, go to blackbox > install and click install. It will ask you if you would like to set blackbox as your default shell, select yes. Then, it will ask you to choose whether or not you would like to install it for all users or just the current user. After this restart or logoff to apply the change.



2)Starting Off: Some of the basic things to know are: ctrl + drag will move a plug-in or system bar, ctrl + right click brings up the menu for the item you clicked, and right click on the desktop or clock on the system bar will bring up the main bbLean menu. There are a few others but I feel those are the most important. Refer to the documentation for more hotkeys and commands. You will want to move and resize the primary system bar to your liking. I personally have it in the top right at 85% size. To change the position permanently ctrl + right click on your system bar and select placement, it will give you various options such as top-left, top-right, bottom-middle, etc. To resize your bar access the menu and go to configuration > width percent and set it to your liking.



3)Plug-ins: bbLean is nothing without plug-ins. One of the nearly ?required? plug-ins would be bbIconBox. It displays your desktop icons by default but it can also display the contents of a defined folder. bbIconBox v0.2: http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean...IconBox_02.zip After you download the file, unzip it into a directory; preferably the ?plugins? folder in your bbLean root directory. To enable the plug-in you simply right click on your desktop to access bbLean?s menu and add the plugin by blackbox > configuration > plug-ins and press add plug-in. Locate the .dll file and select it. Now, to enable/disable the plug-in you once again access the menu and configuration > plug-ins > load/unload and select the plug-in you want to disable/enable. A mark next to it means it is enabled, nothing next to it means it is disabled. You will want to leave bbKeys, bbSystemBar, and bbLeanSkin enabled unless you know what you are doing. Now that you have the plug-in installed and enabled your desktop icons should appear on your desktop. I will not explain every option, but you may want to: resize and change the orientation of the box, add/remove the title or change it, change the icon size, and change the icon hue/saturation. Another very helpful and common plug-in is bbSysMon. This will tell you a variety of things including IP address, ram usage, CPU usage, and hard disk usage. bbSysMon 0.8.1: http://xoblite.net/files/bbsysmon081.zip Follow the same procedure as before to install and enable the plug-in. I like to move my system bar far enough and make it small enough to fit bbSysMon on the side of it as if it were part of the bar. Changing the settings is simple, ctrl + right click on bbSysMon, settings > edit settings. A notepad file should come up. It is pretty self-explanatory on what changes what. I to changed the height, width, font size, turned ?bbsysmon.alwaysontop? to false, and changed the display format to C:%C R:%R IP:%P. Information on the display format is found in the help documentation in the bbSysMon folder. Note: always on top will interfere with full screen applications so I advise you turn it off with most things. The last plug-in that I love to use is bbSystemBarEx. It is another system bar that displays the name of the current application running, the current workspace being used, tray icons, and time. Because of this I have turn off my primary system bar?s time display and turned always on top off. bbSystemBarEx 2.1: http://xoblite.net/files/systembarex21.zip The menu is accessed the same way as the main system bar. I moved mine to the bottom right and turned always on top on so I can easily switch applications via the icons, view the systray, and see the title of the currently running application. Other plug-ins worth using: multiamp(controls for many music players including winamp), bbAmpTitle(displays currently playing song), bbMemShrink(reduces memory used by bbLean), and a few others. Downloads for plug-ins can be found at http://xoblite.net/plugins.html.



4)Customization: Many times when you change something you must restart bbLean or the changed plug-in(not your computer) for the changes to take effect. Most of the customization of bbLean lies in the plug-ins and various options. Your root directory and most of the plug-in?s folders contain one or more .rc file(s), those are the configuration files. I feel exploring this on your own is important in learning how to use it. The documentation is a huge help when it comes to this.



5)Styles: There are many styles for bbLean. They give it a completely different look and feel. http://www.uzable.com/ has an abundance of styles other blackbox related things in their download section. To apply a style, find the style menu in the main blackbox menu. You will have a choice from the default blue styles and whatever other styles are in your ?styles? folder in bbLean?s root folder. Too apply a style simply click on it from the styles menu. I have had trouble applying wallpapers in the past, but what I generally do is completely turn off the backgrounds from the menu; configuration > graphics. Then just apply a wallpaper by right clicking on the image, as you normally would.



6)The Menu: You can change around bbLean?s menu and add your own things. There is more information about this in the bbLean documentation. One of the things to know is that you have access to your control panel from the menu by System > Controls in the bbLean menu. You also have access to My Computer, My Documents, BitBucket(recycle bin), your bbLean root folder, and the run command(win + R will also bring up ?run?). The file for customizing your menu lies in your bbLean root folder under the name menu.rc.



7)Conclusion:This tutorial is far from a complete guide. I made it up in an hour or so to explaining the basics to people who many have asked me in the past(*cough JLTucker cough*) or just wanted to know. I hope you can go on your own from here. Websites like http://bb4win.org/news.php and others provide a lot of help.



By: BloodyBlade

If you need any help just PM me, IM me, email me, or make a thread here at BWHacks.

My desktop: http://www.star****.net/bloodyblade/...%20Desktop.JPG Replace **** with sh*t (* = i).

kds

Very nice BB. I wish I had this when I first started using BBlean. I had to nag gamepin for help :(

GET THE **** OUT OF MY SIGNATURE

HeavenlySpirit

Very nice Bloody.Same as knockdown,I which I could have had this tutorial before.I have had bbLean since I bought this CPU,...good tutorial though.

SSF

#1 (Thats all i have to say OK) I didnt know there was a nother shell for windows.. and this one is great!

JLTucker

WTF? Do not make useless posts.

Anyways, thanks a lot BloodyBlade. Much appreciated. I have found a fault in the bbLean. When I have blackbox.exe running, I cannot use the media player and volume controls on my keyboard.

At CORNERSTONE, learning finds its fuel in Truth. And we believe that all truth is God’s Truth. It is as unchanging as God Himself and is the only reliable anchor for intellectual pursuits.

gamepin126

That's a pretty nice tut.

Regarding 5#. bbLean has an on-the-fly style editor. Instead of making people download new themes. It's called BBStyleMaker. You can get it here. http://bb4win.sourceforge.net/bblean/bbsm.htm

Set a trashcan on fire and keep a bum warm for a night. Set the bum on fire, and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
--
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. - Edsger Dijkstra

Otaku

Thank god, I didn't know what to do with it >_> :D. Thanks Bloody.

willbyte

Hello - btw excellent post and tutorial. I have a problem though. I have a laptop dual-booting Vista and Ubuntu. When I try to install bblean in Vista, it says "error" could not install as default shell". I only have one account and it is Administrator. I also tried right-clicking on blackbox.exe and selecting "Run as Administrator" to see if that would work, but my computer seems to hang every time (the hourglass indicates something is happening, but nothing ever does). Very strange behavior. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Indefinite

Try looking for another shell replacement as bbLean probably doesn't support Vista, partly because last time it was updated, Vista wasn't there.

gamepin126

You're probably better off asking the people over at Lost In The Box - Index page. I know that Vista has legacy api compatibility, but I don't think it'd work for Vista. I'm sure your question has been asked there before.

Still using this thing, I love bblean <3

Even got it on my EEE PC

Set a trashcan on fire and keep a bum warm for a night. Set the bum on fire, and keep him warm for the rest of his life.
--
If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in. - Edsger Dijkstra

DSG

Don't bump an old topic please, you should have made a new thread.