Having eighteen and a half monitors is nice. It lets you spread out. Have 87 apps open at the same time without having to switch windows. Unfortunately, not everyone has 18.5 monitors at their disposal.
Right now, I've only got my main UXGA monitor up and running, so I've only got 1600x1200 pixels of desktop real estate. It's a lot, but not always enough. I tend to have a lot of projects going on at the same time and with a lot of projects, comes a lot of windows. Sometimes, I'll have upwards of 20 windows open at the same time. Even with 18.5 monitors, it might still be difficult to manage all those windows.
At work, everybody's got several monitors up and running. It's pretty much required for the kind of work I'm in. I've only got one, though. And, just like at home, at work I've usually got several projects open at once. It's really difficult to manage all those projects on just one screen. So, I went in search of a solution.
I came upon something termed "virtual desktops". It sort of emulates a multiple screen setup, allowing you to have multiple windows spread across several screens. Though, because you've only got one physical screen, you can really only display one desktop at a time. That's alright in many cases, however. It really helps declutter a desktop. Instead of having 53 windows occupying a single screen, you can keep each project on a different screen. It's kind of like grouping all your windows into boxes and being able to swap boxes out as needed without messing up any of the windows. For example, if you're working on a powerpoint presentation (that requires you to have several Explorer windows open, so that you can see all of your pictures that you're going to add), a term paper (which will need Word open, as well as 7 browser windows with all your sources), and a website project (which needs photoshop, dreamweaver, and a preview browser). You could have a separate virtual desktop for each project. That way, you could switch between projects without having to open and close all of the related windows. Just switch to a different desktop and have all your windows open right where you left them. It's a great way to increase productivity.
I was first exposed to this concept when I was playing around with Linux some years ago. Linux (as well as BSD, Unix, and Solaris) all have this kind of thing built in. I'm sure that Mac OS has some similar system, but I'll never know. Windows, does, actually have a Microsoft approved add on that allows virtual desktop functionality (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx). As with most Microsoft add ons of this caliber, it just doesn't quite cut the mustard, though.
So, what I needed was a nice, free virtual desktop manager that would do everything I needed and nothing more. Googling "virtual desktop" will lead you to some top quality, third party apps that look really nifty and have tons of great reviews. They all cost money, though. And they usually do a lot more than I need. All I want is to be able to quickly and easily switch between desktops.
That's when I came across Virtual Dimension (http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/). It's a little old (last version came out in 2005), but it's open-source (read: free) and works just fine. No frills, just functionality.
Some of the things I like about Virtual Dimension:
- It's got a little preview window which you can put in the corner. It shows all the icons for all the windows/apps open in each desktop, with tool tips that show you the name of the window.
- You can move windows from desktop to desktop by dragging the icons from one desktop to another in the preview window, or by using the contextual menu that gets added to the right-click taskbar menu.
- Only windows open in a particular desktop appear in the taskbar. If you've got 50 total windows open, only the 4 that are open in the active desktop will appear in the taskbar. This severely declutters the taskbar (which I've still got set at 3 bars high due to the excessive windows I have open at any given time).
- Uses only ~5K of memory.
- You can give each desktop its own name, so that you can easily identify which desktop you want to go to.
And, of course, there's plenty of non-obtrusive features that I don't use, but might be useful to others. It's got customizable hot-key support and dozens of available keyboard shortcuts. You can have a different wallpaper on each desktop. You can change the transparency of windows. And much much more.
I use this bad-boy every day. It's super useful, especially if you're like me and have multiple projects open at all times. Or if you've got computer OCD and have to have all your windows and icons and files all organized for easy access. I'm not sure how well it will work with multi-monitors, though. I certainly hope it will still work. Only one way to find out, though. And that would require having multiple monitors. Which I don't have at the moment.
Until next time,
~~Ben