Virtual desktops?

generic_user_id

I would like to learn something about virtual desktops, but it's hard to find some articles or msdn info on it. Is there some sort of function in Windows that makes it possible to switch desktops? As far as I know windows does support it completely, so it shouldn't be hard to code. Got any links or information? Cheers!

Mike Nordell

It's not fully supported (f.ex. creating a new desktop still gets SystemParametersInfo to return the working area of a desktop with an Explorer bar), and you can't move windows from one desktop to another like you'd expect from any other OS, but you should have a look at the Win32 SDK sample "switcher". It's using CreateDesktop & co. Note: You [obviously] need an NT kernel based OS for this.

generic_user_id

Thanks for the feedback, but I was looking for something that would work on both NT and 9x. There are quite many apps out there that work on 95/98, so it must be possible. As the apps are fairly small I guess it doesn't take an awful lot of code to make it work. I'll keep searching, if you got an idea please tell me. Thanks in advance

Mike Nordell

In Win9x it's completely unsupported. I've seen references to apps being _really_ ugly and to "switch desktop" they just grab a handle to any other apps window and move it to e.g. "appWnd.currpos - screenWidth", but I'd say yo get no friends from that approach even that it appears to work. Now you know how some others do it. I just hope you don't do it yourself... And even if you do, you'd have to track e.g. ALT+TAB to either not display the apps on "another desktop", or to swith desktop when alt-tabbing to an app on "another desktop".

generic_user_id

Okay, thanks. I guess I have to do it in the dirty way, as there appears to be no proper solution. But as the desktop is a class of some sort it should be possible to create an array of them. I wonder why it isn't an array of desktops in the first place....