Managing tasks / windows like real time strategy games

[justice]

A great post on the Windows 7 Engineering blog about Managing windows in windows 7 got me thinking again on window management

I tend to work on several different tasks, each with their own windows. Usually this is a web development task, a web research task, maybe an email / administration task and a file management task. For example the webdevelopment task can consist of Dreamweaver, beyond compare, several browsers, remote desktop, visual studio.
That's 6 windows for one task, and then with 4 tasks this can easily get to 15+ windows.

The taskbar, systemtray, alt-tab etc don't work very well in this scenario. Instead of using virtual desktops which are never very well implemented in my opinion, I was thinking about creating window groups ala RTS games:

* Define a group by selecting multiple windows on the taskbar, then ctrl-<number> them
* ctrl-numbering with no windows selected should remove the group.
* Switch to a group by pressing windowkey-number (unfortunately number only will conflict, although windows+number is also the hotkey for quick launch icons bah) - this should minimize or hide (?) the other groups.
* add the current window to a group by activating it and pressing shift-number
* remove the current window from a group by activating it and pressing alt-number

Would this be worth pursueing?

[Deozaan]

Sounds like a good idea to me!

[f0dder]

Sounds like it could actually be pretty useful - I, too, find that multiple virtual desktops never really worked very well for me. But something along your ideas might, and it could probably be implemented just fine as a third-party utility

[skrommel]

Have you tried WinGroup WinStep ?

Step through groups of windows using hotkeys.

  Ctrl-0: Add a window to a Group0
  Ctrl-1: Add a window to a Group1
    ...

  Alt-0 : Show the next window of Group0
  Alt-1 : Show the next window of Group1
    ...

Features:
- User defined hotkeys and sounds.

Skrommel

[Deozaan]

Have you tried WinGroup?

I don't see WinGroup in the list...

EDIT: There it is, as WinStep.

[justice]

damn you're good lemme try Nice good step i'll keep using this for a while