Zirconium Desktop Environment

Zirconium Desktop Environment is a low-resource desktop shell that prioritizes usability. The philosophy behind this environment is that it needs to remain unobtrusive and provide the quickest access to essential functions. The design goals of the Zirconium Desktop Environment include easy navigation through the use of corner effects by placing icons of the two essential functions (program launcher and window switcher) in the top corners. Additionally, there is minimal use of on-screen real estate by "recycling" the window title bar and overlapping it with the already minimal on-screen furniture when a window is maximized.

Another unique feature of the Zirconium Desktop Environment is the elimination of the "system tray." Instead, it uses the ZDE Notification Daemon to send small and unobtrusive notifications to the user when something of note occurs. The ZDE Notification Daemon is built on the SOAP protocol that allows for universal compatibility and network transparency. It also offers web integration with an optional backdrop manager containing embedded Gecko engine from Mozilla to run "Weblets" on the desktop. The ZDE system also serves as a SOAP API that can be accessed by signed or expressly permitted Weblets.

The components of the ZDE system include Corner Menus, Mini-Bar, Notification Daemon, and Window Theme. The left corner menu provides access to the Program Launcher, which is a custom navigation window instead of a pop-up style menu. The right corner menu is a standard GTK pop-up menu containing a list of open windows for window switching. The Mini-Bar shows essential items like the time, volume control, battery, and network status. The Notification Daemon is flexible and appears briefly when a SOAP message arrives. It offers easy access to Notification History for all logged notifications during the session.

The Zirconium Desktop Environment requires a minimum of GTK+ version 2.4.x and works best with Oroborus based window managers like OroROX (or XFWM4) and the ROX-Filer. The latest component preview release includes the Weblet engine, Mini-Bar applet container, and a completely rewritten window switcher and pager target. All corner targets are now 'clickless,' allowing easy access to these menus by just touching with the pointer.

Overall, Zirconium Desktop Environment is a unique and user-friendly desktop shell that offers simplicity and convenience while using minimal resources.