You know, windows management is in the freaking stone ages
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Trouble is, that's all very well, but seems to raise more problems than it solves: 1) bring into the foreground several windows Only one window can ever be the foreground window, so you want the impossible. 2) easily position the windows side-by-side horizontally Suppose they don't fit on the screen side by side. What then? Any ruleset to cover all situations is going to be complex, and therefore non-obvious to most people. 3) have other windows slide around so that I can position a window in a different place on my monitor without having to then move other windows that are in the way For almost all window layouts and sizes, that would be impossible without either moving windows partially or totally off screen, or resizing windows that the user isn't currently working with, neither of which sounds like good usability to me.
Electron Shepherd wrote:
- bring into the foreground several windows Only one window can ever be the foreground window, so you want the impossible.
What I mean is, I have, say, Notepad, a schema designer, and Visio in windows spread across my monitor, not maximized, but nicely positioned next to each other. I also have Chrome and a couple PDF viewers open, also nicely spaced on my monitor. I want to context switch so that I can show notepad, the schema designer, and Visio, in the foreground, or context switch and show Chrome and the PDF viewers. Does that make sense.
Electron Shepherd wrote:
Suppose they don't fit on the screen side by side. What then? Any ruleset to cover all situations is going to be complex, and therefore non-obvious to most people.
So what? Do we write software for the dumbest user? No, they just don't use those features, or someone figures out how to make them easily usable. Marc
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Or you could just man up and use one monitor and make each window full screen and find something worth complaining about. ;)
Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already. - Marcus Aurelius
I like to drag each of two windows to their own side of my laptop monitor, to maximise them vertically and give each half screen horizontally, where their adjacency is a plus. Now having two monitors results in some funny squinting when one window ends up at the left half of my left monitor and the other in the right half of my right monitor.
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While Windows' windows management is ... improvable to say the least (although there is no such plan on the horizon), do you know of (at least in .NET) that Form (in WinForm) and Window (in WPF) both have a Owner property, that can make a group of windows behave just like you said!?!? My particular pet hates with window management are: - modal dialog which appear behind other modal dialog while they are the one stealing the focus!!! - windows which change their respective z-orer when another window is closed
A train station is where the train stops. A bus station is where the bus stops. On my desk, I have a work station.... _________________________________________________________ My programs never have bugs, they just develop random features.
Modal dialogs are my pet hate full stop. Only message boxes should be modal - anything else that is modal and requires input, yet prevents me from sourcing that input from any other window is a crock of shit! :mad:
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GridMove. Great software. Doesn't do the grouping thing, but you can use out-of-the-box or easily mess with the configs to do more regioning of screen space than default.
puromtec1 wrote:
GridMove
Excellent! A great find, cheers!
Now I know what I'll be doing for most of the day!
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Electron Shepherd wrote:
- bring into the foreground several windows Only one window can ever be the foreground window, so you want the impossible.
What I mean is, I have, say, Notepad, a schema designer, and Visio in windows spread across my monitor, not maximized, but nicely positioned next to each other. I also have Chrome and a couple PDF viewers open, also nicely spaced on my monitor. I want to context switch so that I can show notepad, the schema designer, and Visio, in the foreground, or context switch and show Chrome and the PDF viewers. Does that make sense.
Electron Shepherd wrote:
Suppose they don't fit on the screen side by side. What then? Any ruleset to cover all situations is going to be complex, and therefore non-obvious to most people.
So what? Do we write software for the dumbest user? No, they just don't use those features, or someone figures out how to make them easily usable. Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
What I mean is, I have, say, Notepad, a schema designer, and Visio in windows spread across my monitor, not maximized, but nicely positioned next to each other. I also have Chrome and a couple PDF viewers open, also nicely spaced on my monitor. I want to context switch so that I can show notepad, the schema designer, and Visio, in the foreground, or context switch and show Chrome and the PDF viewers. Does that make sense.
If that's what you want: linux, visual studio and visio in a VM, and multiple desktops. AFAIK none of the 3rd party multiple desktop apps for windows have ever worked well.
3x12=36 2x12=24 1x12=12 0x12=18
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I like to drag each of two windows to their own side of my laptop monitor, to maximise them vertically and give each half screen horizontally, where their adjacency is a plus. Now having two monitors results in some funny squinting when one window ends up at the left half of my left monitor and the other in the right half of my right monitor.
Brady Kelly wrote:
Now having two monitors results in some funny squinting when one window ends up at the left half of my left monitor and the other in the right half of my right monitor.
Sizer[^] helps with that, if you are on a 32-bit Windows OS - it allows you to set up specific locations and sizes (starting loc, width, and height), then set any window to that preset with a right-click on the title bar. Since each preset is named, you can have prsets like "Left_Half_SingleMonitor" and "Left_Half_DualMonitor". I use it frequently for apps running over an RDP connection or in a VM ... The price is right - it is freeware. It can take a bit of playing with the presets to get just what you want, and the 32-bit limitation bites, but ...
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Electron Shepherd wrote:
- bring into the foreground several windows Only one window can ever be the foreground window, so you want the impossible.
What I mean is, I have, say, Notepad, a schema designer, and Visio in windows spread across my monitor, not maximized, but nicely positioned next to each other. I also have Chrome and a couple PDF viewers open, also nicely spaced on my monitor. I want to context switch so that I can show notepad, the schema designer, and Visio, in the foreground, or context switch and show Chrome and the PDF viewers. Does that make sense.
Electron Shepherd wrote:
Suppose they don't fit on the screen side by side. What then? Any ruleset to cover all situations is going to be complex, and therefore non-obvious to most people.
So what? Do we write software for the dumbest user? No, they just don't use those features, or someone figures out how to make them easily usable. Marc
Marc Clifton wrote:
What I mean is, I have, say, Notepad, a schema designer, and Visio in windows spread across my monitor, not maximized, but nicely positioned next to each other. I also have Chrome and a couple PDF viewers open, also nicely spaced on my monitor. I want to context switch so that I can show notepad, the schema designer, and Visio, in the foreground, or context switch and show Chrome and the PDF viewers. Does that make sense.
This sounds an awful lot like a set of virtual desktops ...[^]
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I like to drag each of two windows to their own side of my laptop monitor, to maximise them vertically and give each half screen horizontally, where their adjacency is a plus. Now having two monitors results in some funny squinting when one window ends up at the left half of my left monitor and the other in the right half of my right monitor.
Windows 7 has this support built in. Click on a window and then hold the Windows key and press left or right arrow. On multiple monitors it will step across (depending on location and direction), resulting in that layout with just a few keystrokes.
Mike Poz
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Marc Clifton wrote:
What I mean is, I have, say, Notepad, a schema designer, and Visio in windows spread across my monitor, not maximized, but nicely positioned next to each other. I also have Chrome and a couple PDF viewers open, also nicely spaced on my monitor. I want to context switch so that I can show notepad, the schema designer, and Visio, in the foreground, or context switch and show Chrome and the PDF viewers. Does that make sense.
This sounds an awful lot like a set of virtual desktops ...[^]
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Modal dialogs are my pet hate full stop. Only message boxes should be modal - anything else that is modal and requires input, yet prevents me from sourcing that input from any other window is a crock of shit! :mad:
Brady Kelly wrote:
anything else that is modal and requires input, yet prevents me from sourcing that input from any other window is a crock of sh*t!
What about an Options dialog?
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For example, I want to be able to be able to: bring into the foreground several windows in a "group" when I bring any one window in that group into the foreground. minimize the entire group easily position the windows side-by-side horizontally, but not necessarily maximized vertically, etc. move a group of windows from one monitor to another have other windows slide around so that I can position a window in a different place on my monitor without having to then move other windows that are in the way Until then (and I'm sure I can think of a few more things), this whole business of a "Windows" environment is a crock of shyte, IMO. Don't the people that write this stuff think about how they would like to actually use it in a productive setting? Marc
As I read some of your descriptions, it brought to mind a really, really old windows program. Program Manager. And while it allowed only for organization of icons in open folders, it would be nice if there was a Program Manager equivalent for actual running programs. So if I have 20 or 30 apps all running at the same time, I can group several of the windows of those apps together, so that as I switch from one app to another, I'm actually switching from one program group to another. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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As I read some of your descriptions, it brought to mind a really, really old windows program. Program Manager. And while it allowed only for organization of icons in open folders, it would be nice if there was a Program Manager equivalent for actual running programs. So if I have 20 or 30 apps all running at the same time, I can group several of the windows of those apps together, so that as I switch from one app to another, I'm actually switching from one program group to another. :)
Chris Meech I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar] In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra] posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
Chris Meech wrote:
it would be nice if there was a Program Manager equivalent for actual running programs.
Exactly! Marc
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For example, I want to be able to be able to: bring into the foreground several windows in a "group" when I bring any one window in that group into the foreground. minimize the entire group easily position the windows side-by-side horizontally, but not necessarily maximized vertically, etc. move a group of windows from one monitor to another have other windows slide around so that I can position a window in a different place on my monitor without having to then move other windows that are in the way Until then (and I'm sure I can think of a few more things), this whole business of a "Windows" environment is a crock of shyte, IMO. Don't the people that write this stuff think about how they would like to actually use it in a productive setting? Marc
This is a site for software developers right? So write the program yourself. If enough other people find it useful you can make a buck. If you are not a developer, find one and pay/partner with them to do it. Haven't looked into it myself, but I am aware of Windows programs that take over the desktop and/or window positioning systems, so apparently it is possible.
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This is a site for software developers right? So write the program yourself. If enough other people find it useful you can make a buck. If you are not a developer, find one and pay/partner with them to do it. Haven't looked into it myself, but I am aware of Windows programs that take over the desktop and/or window positioning systems, so apparently it is possible.
Jason Christian wrote:
If you are not a developer
:-D
Jason Christian wrote:
So write the program yourself
You know the expression, choose your battles? Well, I'm not choosing that battle at the moment. Marc
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Brady Kelly wrote:
anything else that is modal and requires input, yet prevents me from sourcing that input from any other window is a crock of sh*t!
What about an Options dialog?
An options dialog need not and should not be modal. These are opened electively, not as notifications.
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An options dialog need not and should not be modal. These are opened electively, not as notifications.
tell that to Microsoft or any of the thousands of software companys out there.
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tell that to Microsoft or any of the thousands of software companys out there.
That is exactly my complaint!
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Trouble is, that's all very well, but seems to raise more problems than it solves: 1) bring into the foreground several windows Only one window can ever be the foreground window, so you want the impossible. 2) easily position the windows side-by-side horizontally Suppose they don't fit on the screen side by side. What then? Any ruleset to cover all situations is going to be complex, and therefore non-obvious to most people. 3) have other windows slide around so that I can position a window in a different place on my monitor without having to then move other windows that are in the way For almost all window layouts and sizes, that would be impossible without either moving windows partially or totally off screen, or resizing windows that the user isn't currently working with, neither of which sounds like good usability to me.