Through the few years of studying, writing reports and programming I always face one problem, which is managing my windows. I believe whoever has this problems will suffer from efficiency problems. Here’s a few scenarios:
If I’m compiling assignments and reports, I would have up to 5 Microsoft Word windows open at one time. 4 of it may be my groupmates’ work, and one to compile everything together. Alt-tabbing isn’t fun when all the windows look the same.
If I’m doing web design, I’d most probably would want my design to fit different kind of resolutions. (There’s a Firefox extension for this, but that’s not what I’m offering)
If I’m programming, I would want different source files up on screen, maybe as smaller windows to the main source file. Makes refering and coding easier
If I’m studying, researching or blogging I would want to have my Notepad/Microsoft Word/Microsot OneNote as well as 1 or 2 browsers in view at the same time. Minimal time spent alt-tabbing to different windows.
If I had a big monitor or multiple monitors, I would want to resize my windows accordingly without having to resize each and every window everytime I start an application.
So what do you do to be efficient with what you already have? Here I’ll present to you some free solutions to your desktop and window management problems.
DM2 provides several Windows enhancements that may help in every-day work. One of the nicest and most popular features of DM2 is minimizing windows to floating icons® freeing both task bar and tray bar space. Moreover, DM2 can manipulate windows in various ways: minimize to tray, make them standing always on-top over all other windows, roll to caption, resize, align to screen borders, hide, set the opacity etc. DM2 also helps with Open/Save dialog boxes, by providing user-defined menu with favorites and recent files and folders. Plenty of program’s settings options will satisfy most of requirements.
DM2 also supports custom plugins, which further enhances the program and that usually covers some more specific functionalities. So, from this aspect, one may think of DM2 as a small, but robust manager for all kind of plugins. Find what you need, plug it in, and use it:)
GridMove is a windows management program. It helps you with your window resizing needs by defining a visual grid on your desktop, to which you can easily snap windows. This program comes bundled with some predefined grid templates, that can be easily swaped, but also has ways of creating custom grids or sharing grids made by others. It’s even possible to create dynamic custom grids by yourself.
GridMove makes moving windows, resizing windows, displaying them on cascade or on mosaic, making them on top or anything you can think of as easy as drag and drop or even with hotkeys. Multi-monitor support.
