Seems like *nix users are always ahead:
http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii
window manager improved 2
wmii is a dynamic window manager for X11. It supports classic and dynamic window management with extended keyboard, mouse, and filesystem based remote control. It replaces the workspace paradigm with a new tagging approach.
…
I confess I still have to try it, though, as it seems like *nix users always have more work to do when setting-up any soft 
For Winxp; Look at scalable Fabric from microsoft labs - as you drag windows to the the edge of a user-defined ‘desktop’ they are minaturised (a la Vista), the further from the ‘desktop’ the smaller they are.
Can anyone say if Winsplit Revolution is compatible with 64 bit Windows XP (or Vista)?
I’m building a new computer and would prefer to go with 64 bit if possible due to the ability to use RAM over 3.5 GB but a program like Winsplit is a gotta-have for the type of work I do.
Thanks in advance.
Winsplit works fine on x64. As a general rule, everything works on x64. The exceptions are extremely rare in my experience, and tend to be obscure.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000994.html
I was as surprised as anyone else to find this out. x64 “just works”.
Thanks for the confirmation, Jeff! Now just to decide whether to go with WinXP or Vista…
I have a Vista laptop (32-bit) and I am grossly underwhelmed. A 2.2 Ghz Core2Duo with 2GB of DDR2 RAM should not be slower than the WinXP laptop I replaced. :-/
The term for this is [tiling window manager][1].
[1]: a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager/a
dude, you need freesnap
it has saved me from your pain for years and is free and pretty darn simple to use.
its one drawback was that since its so old it was written with a one-monitor paradigm, so some features don’t work so good on a multi-monitor system. while this may get corrected in a future release, i wouldn’t hold your breath.
check it out here: http://blueonionsoftware.com/freesnap.aspx
also with regards to comment #1 about macs - i recently switched to mac and find myself with EXACTLY this same problem on my mac. made somewhat worse by the stupid horizontality of the mac laptop screen.
most text content is formatted vertically because that is how people read. text content makes up the vast majority of content, period. (email, web browsing, news, document writing, etc.)
only video, spreadsheets, music, and presentations are typically horizontal. and as a percentage of time spent using computers these are minimal.
i hate the short fat screen that my mac has and much preferred the overall smaller but much taller screen my old thinkpad
my current resolution is 1280 h x 800 v; my old thinkpad was 1024x768. so my current screen is 60% wider than it is tall, versus my old screen which is only 33% wider than it is tall.
i have so much more wasted space on this widescreen than i used to have, and i’d definitely prefer this macbook to be taller and narrower instead of short fat.
i wonder what apple were thinking when they went this particular design direction?
and i hope i find an application like the ones discussed here that i can use on my mac, the grid concept is a good one, as is the freesnap approach (size snap).
cheers!
I have this exact problem on the Mac as well! On my MacBook Pro, I use an external wide-screen monitor as well, which only makes the problem worse. Every day I plug and unplug it when I take it home, and I have to reset my window positions when in different modes.
It’s certainly a suck on my productivity. Any apps for OSX yet?
-Kevin
Funny that noone mentions “cognitive awareness” of the available screen space. When I went to 30" monitor(s), I noticed that there was so much information on the screen(s) that I actually had to partition them mentally into different spaces - the monitor(s) were back at arm’s length, yet the field of view was so wide that I would “switch” between the spaces on screen as if they were different monitors.
Ultimately, I went to just one 30" monitor because the second one was mostly a waste for me (and better used by someone else who “only” had a 22" screen).
“users only need to deal with one maximized window at a time”
Seriously, man. The concept of “maximizing a window” is relevant in ONE of the, say, five, software environments I use semi-regularly. If you mean “Windows users”, just go ahead and write “Windows users”, and let the rest of us go on living in the 2000s.
When in MS windows (at work) I use winsplit to survive, but that is an insult compared to:
1.- awesome window manager
2.- wmii
3.- xmonad
*nix users are years ahead. When so many people rant about how crappy windows is, they usually are thinking about things like this. In MS windows you get one windows manager. Everywhere else, you get freedom of choice. If you need a window manager to, um, manage your windows instead of throwing them at you for you to decide what to do every single time, then try to look outside of that hole.
Helping apps to manage windows? what?
Thats why I use Compiz…Its already revolutionized desktop organization before all of this Vista business.
I’ve used tiling window managers for years. Get yourself a sensible OS and the rest is easy.
FreeSnap has been updated to for multi-monitor use and the source code has been released.
I’m really glad I read this before I purchased a new set of monitors. I had forgotten about this fact before when considering whether to get 1 large or 2 smaller monitors.
I totally agree with this article! When it come to computers and productivity, smaller multiple monitors surpass single large monitors. I have a Quad monitor SUPER PC from http://Multi-Monitors.com and the 24 LCDs have plenty of desktop space. It’s funny that you mention Minority Report, because that’s how I got into multiple monitors. Here is a video of the closest thing we have to a commercial Minority Report type system. I’d say it’s a pretty close relative.
Hi,
I use two 20 monitors at work on an OSX box running VMW Fusion for Windows and Linux use.
To make things better while coding, I have the screens rotated 90 degrees which makes my code speed readable since it is narrower, and presents more than twice as many lines of code since I now use a slightly smaller font.
Try it, it’s great,
-r
I lobbied management in my office for months to provide multiple monitors to everyone, and they eventually relented. They recorded a small raw increase in productivity, i.e. tasks are now completed a few seconds quicker, especially data entry and business support/admin tasks.
The real benefits, however, have been less measurable but noticeable increases in productivity and user happiness. People are less frustrated when switching between windows, and especially when performing ‘side by side’ tasks, such as comparing spreadsheets, or technical drawings with specifications, c.
Interrupting a task to resize a window takes two seconds, maybe three, but the interruption costs you a minute in refocussing and remapping the screen estate in your mind. (i.e. working out where everything is in relation to everything else RIGHT NOW)
However, management here has managed to get it really wrong in pretty much every other aspect of the staff/user experience.
I still prefer not to use multiple monitors. I generally have ~50 windows open at any one time, 20 of which are excel, and my preference is to have large, high resolution monitor, with everything accessible from my 6 row taskbar and quicklaunch.
I’m not allowed a large monitor, which is fine, so I make do with what I have, but I recently discovered a multiple monitor configuration which felt good to me and actually saved me a lot of time.
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So…
I use a laptop for software development (dell xps 1710) with a 17" 1920x1200 screen + a 19" 1280x1024 external LCD. The biggest problem is the difference in DPI. If I increase the text size to make text easy to read on the 17" screen, the text becomes too big on the 19" screen. So I’m concidering getting more displays
For about the same price I can get
What would your choice be?
/Fredrik