Given the lack of a desktop environment with a plain Openbox install, it can be useful to install one or more application launchers as supplements to the Openbox menu system and the hotkeys. Lists of such launchers can be found at Category:Application launchers and List of applications/Other#Application launchers; popular examples are Gmrun and dmenu.
Switch desktops using the mouse
It is possible to switch desktop by
moving the mouse cursor to the edges of the screen. First install xdotool and add the following two lines to your ~/.xinitrc:
xdotool behave_screen_edge --delay 500 left set_desktop --relative -- -1 &
xdotool behave_screen_edge --delay 500 right set_desktop --relative -- +1 &
Set default applications / file associations
See the Default applications article.
Ad-hoc window transparency
Warning: This may not work where other actions are defined within the action group.
The program transset-dfAUR can enable window transparency on-the-fly.
For example, using the following code in
the <mouse> section of the ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml file will enable control of application window
transparency by hovering the mouse-pointer over the title bar and scrolling with the middle button:
<context name="Titlebar">
...
<mousebind button="Up" action="Click">
<action name= "Execute" >
<execute>transset-df -p .2 --inc </execute>
</action>
</mousebind>
<mousebind button="Down" action="Click">
<action name= "Execute" >
<execute>transset-df -p .2 --dec </execute>
</action>
</mousebind>
...
</context>