Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
Dexpot: Probably the best virtual desktop manager around
MrCrispy:
Dexpot has 1 big flaw for me - lets say I am on desktop #2 and in the system tray I double click an icon for a program which is on a desktop #1 - Dexpot does not switch the desktops and I get no indication that something has happened.
This is unnacceptable. I am going to try the other managers to see how they do.
btw, I have not seen the source code for these programs but I wonder how many are using virtual desktop support which is built into XP. Like many other things, XP and Win32 fully support virtual desktops, its just not exposed as a feature in explorer - its pretty unfortunate as MS has chosen in the interests of simplicity to make XP far less capable than it really is (and the trend continues with Vista).
Curt:
virtual desktop support ... is built into XP. Like many other things, XP and Win32 fully support virtual desktops, its just not exposed as a feature in explorer - -MrCrispy (January 29, 2007, 01:05 PM)
--- End quote ---
Could you tell a lot more about this, MrCrispy?
f0dder:
Perhaps PlatformSDK::CreateDesktop and PlatformSDK::SwitchDesktop? Dunno if any of the switchers use these APIs, the ones I've looked at have done tricks like just moving windows off-screen when they're not on the currently active (virtual) "desktop".
Edvard:
MrCrispy: The feature you are looking for is usually called "Active Window Switching" Look for it or something similar in the configs.
f0dder: They all use different ways. I assume those APIs are rather new, XP-centric? So they're available for newer apps to use. All the virtual desk apps previously either used the "hide" function or moved windows off the visible space, and at least one I tried a while ago (that failed miserably) simply minimize/maximize sets of windows automatically. I know that the more "intelligent" ones will allow different hiding methods for different apps because some "child-window" type things like older versions of Photoshop tool windows didn't play well with some methods.
f0dder:
Those APIs have been there since NT3.5, but are unavailable on 9x...
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version