Avant Window Navigator

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This article or section contains information about computer software currently in development.
The content may change as the software development progresses.

Avant Window Navigator

A Screenshot of a development version of AWN
Design by	Neil J. Patel
Latest release	0.2.6 / 22 February 2008; 275 days ago
Written in	C, Python
Platform	GNOME
Available in	English
Development status	Active
Type	Dock
License	GNU General Public License 2.0 (Dock), GNU Lesser General Public License 2.1 (Library), Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (unported) (images)
Website	https://launchpad.net/awn/

Avant Window Navigator (abbreviated AWN or Awn) is a dock-like bar for Linux, which sits at the bottom of a user's screen and tracks open windows. Instead of representing open windows as buttons or segments on a bar, it uses icons to minimize screen space and add visual appeal. Avant Window Navigator was created by Neil J. Patel and is currently in the beta stages of development.

Both the appearance and functionality of Avant Window Navigator may be customized, and plugins and applets are available, such as to display the progress of a download in Mozilla Firefox or to control a music player like Rhythmbox.^[1] The plugins use the D-Bus IPC system, and applets can be written in C, Python, or Vala. There is a sister project, AWN Extras, which is a collection of community-contributed applets and plugins. Its releases are usually kept in sync with AWN.

One of the major requirements to run Avant Window Navigator is a composited environment. Therefore, the user is required to install a compositor^[2], such as Compiz, which could tax performance on low-end systems. Support for non-composited environments is planned for a future release.^[3]^[4]^[5]