Window management

With the discussion about the iconbar on the forums, it made me think one thing that drives me crazy is when I have loads of windows open and I need to find a specific window.
I know I should probably organise the windows as I’m going along, but I can’t be bothered. Also I think that is what the desktop should do, as GUI’s are supposed to be a productivity tool.

So I was thinking it would be nice to implement some of the window management features that Windows/Linux/MAC OS have.
Specifically:

1. Being able to see all windows open
2. Tile all windows
3. Bring a specific window to the top – i.e. when you can’t see it
4. Minimise all windows – “Show desktop”
5. Fit window to half of screen (for editing so you can quickly have one window on one side, one on the other)
6. Alt-Tab style behaviour of some kind

There are probably loads of other ideas too, some people will hate and not use, some will love.
I can’t think why these aren’t possible, as I use moredesk which fiddles with windows a lot – so it would be an extension of the routines that uses.
I wasn’t thinking about doing what moredesk does, i.e. to give the feel of virtual desktops.

Would there be interest in something like this?
If there is, what would people be looking for?

I’m not sure whether ROOL (the collective) would do this in the OS, whether someone (i.e. me) random, or a commercial offering is done.
It all depends on interest and time avaliable as always.
I would like to see this as an open extensible offering as I feel it’s core functionality missing from RISC OS, but that’s just based on my experience and possibly my mis-use of RISC OS ;-)

Anyway! Thoughts appreciated!

Don’t a couple of those features already exist in the standard system?

There is an alt-tab utility somewhere, which would cover 1,3 and 6.

I think this should really be an add-on, but it would be nice if it were able to be adopted as an official add-on supplied in the disk image, with a tick box in configure to use it or not.

I would like to see adjust on send to back, work as bring to front. (For consistency if nothing else).

5 is a nice idea.

Not sure if they do exist, they possibly could – I’m not aware of them, but that doesn’t mean much.
There is an alt-tab utility but it doesn’t really do what I would be looking for.
“This is a small module that intercepts the Alt+Tab key combo and flips the backmost window to the front of the stack.” I’d have to alt tab through a lot of windows :-(

Do you need that many windows open?

I’m not being facetious. I used to have lots of windows open when coding (header files and such) but found that opening the file again was quicker than going through the window stack.
So now I keep a column free on the left and stick the important files on the pinboard. So much quicker.

Yeah I’ve ended up doing the same, but it seems a bizarre and painful way of doing it. Having possibly a menu or selection window that shows windows in groups then there location/name would make it easier Maybe somekind of hotkey driven, e.g. alt-tab to bring up selection app, press F (Filer) which shows filer location windows open, then press a number to select the window you want – or alt-tab, F then A to show all filer windows?

Maybe showing recently opened files would be a good idea? That would vastly reduce the problem as a whole.

I’m still working out which files are important! :-(

I pin to the iconbar then you can always access files/folders by bringing the iconbar to the front – saves having to move windows to get at the desktop.

I ought to point out that Alt-Tab on Windows does not switch window. It switches applications; Ctrl-Tab then chooses which window of the foreground application is desired.
Not sure how that would translate to RISC OS…

But it shouldn’t be too hard to put an icon on the iconbar that builds a dynamic menu listing all of the open windows…if such a thing doesn’t already exist.

Moredesk kind of does this, but it’s not without its problems

if such a thing doesn’t already exist.

It does Switch (it’s in the utilities section).

For Alt-Tab functionality you could try CoolSwitch

Cheers Fred. I’ll download both of those when I get home.

Wonderful! Cheers Fred another couple of links to add to my freebie section
I should really do some more work on that area

Director gives list of windows by Alt-click on TaskManager icon. Click a window in the list to bring it to front.

My DrWimpC test program MyDesk might also be of interest. It uses a dynamic menu system to list open windows from the main window stack either by virtual screen or by task sorted into task/screen order. By opening its Panel window and clicking menu to get a list of tasks with open windows in the current screen you can select/deselect windows by task or use the menu button in the right corner of the Panel window to list windows by task or screen for any or all tasks and screens. You can tab forwards or backwards through the selected windows by clicking select or adjust over the Panel window ‘T’ icon. The selection can be toggled to the front or back of the stack by clicking select or adjust on the vertical arrow icon below the ‘T’ icon. You can also move the selection around the screen by clicking select or adjust on the two arrowed icons at the top of the Panel window or snap the selection of windows to the edge of the screen or centre them, clicking select or adjust on the button icons in the Panel window. (The selection sub menu provides other actions like hiding and copying windows to other screens). By default untitled windows (usually pane windows) are not listed and only windows that have some part of their visible area within the screen area are handled. You can download a standalone MyDesk (uses the ROOL Shared C library so doesn’t need the GCC shared DrWimpC library installed) from here

4. Minimise all windows – “Show desktop”

PBFront will bring the desktop/pinboard to the front by pressing ALT-Up Arrow, very similar to Windows “Show Desktop”

PBFront will bring the desktop/pinboard to the front

As does my ToggleBD

It’s a bit more flexible than PBFront as the hotkeys are configurable and you can use the iconbar-icon to toggle the backdrop as well. The iconbar can be moved along with the backdrop if desired.

I would like to see adjust on send to back, work as bring to front. (For consistency if nothing else).

That’s already supported by RISC OS 5, I discovered it myself (along with several other hidden features) a few years ago.

Here’s a wiki page I put together as a place where we can document all of the desktop interactions.

I also suffer from Malcolm’s problem of habitually having hundreds of windows open at once. Despite having a multiple desktop utility (I forget the name) I usually end up with one desktop which has the top 25% and left 30% full of filer windows, and the remaining space full of StrongED windows (1920×1200 means I can just about fit three 80-column windows side-by-side, or two windows with enough space left over to access the filer windows down the left edge of the screen). As long as I’m working on one source components it’s usually quite manageable (the filer windows will tile without too much overlap, and there will only be a handful of source files), but once I start jumping all over the place trying to track down bugs or cross-reference things it can quickly get out of hand. Especially since the filer prefers to make its windows wide enough to fit the entire pathname of the directory – not very convenient when you’re got lots of >100 character pathnames and only 3-10 files per folder. StrongED’s shift-up and shift-down make navigating through the open source files relatively painless, although the fact that the list-of-files window it pops up only shows the leafname makes it a bit tricky to tell the difference between a C file and its header. Often files which I’m not using end up getting “stacked” at the bottom of the screen over the iconbar. If the title bar of the file is visible I can quickly pull it back up to look at the contents, if not I generally rely on shift-up/shift-down as mentioned. Some files do get iconised, but finding a spare spot between all the windows to iconise them to can be a bit tricky.

I also suffer from Malcolm’s problem of habitually having hundreds of windows open at once. Despite having a multiple desktop utility (I forget the name)

It’s much the same here. Lots of windows, (a hacked copy of) VirtuDesk, Transient for quick storage and StrongMen to get at directories easily.

StrongED’s shift-up and shift-down make navigating through the open source files relatively painless, although the fact that the list-of-files window it pops up only shows the leafname

The LoW (list-of-windows) contains the full pathname you just need to widen it. To make the new width stick, open global choices → windows and set the default position for LoW, then Save.

Some files do get iconised, but finding a spare spot between all the windows to iconise them to can be a bit tricky.

Why not simply hit the iconise button and use ToggleBD to raise the backdrop to get at iconised items when needed?

Despite having a multiple desktop utility (I forget the name)

WindowMan, in case people were wondering.

StrongED’s shift-up and shift-down make navigating through the open source files relatively painless, although the fact that the list-of-files window it pops up only shows the leafname

The LoW (list-of-windows) contains the full pathname you just need to widen it. To make the new width stick, open global choices → windows and set the default position for LoW, then Save.

Ah, many thanks!

Some files do get iconised, but finding a spare spot between all the windows to iconise them to can be a bit tricky.

Why not simply hit the iconise button and use ToggleBD to raise the backdrop to get at iconised items when needed?

Probably because I don’t have ToggleBD installed! I guess I should give it a go at some point.

Ctrl-Tab then chooses which window of the foreground application is desired.

So how about Ctrl-F6 when more than one document opened?

So how about Ctrl-F6 when more than one document opened?

[Alt|Ctrl]-Tab can be done with one hand. ;-)

Druck’s !Workspace application has an iconbar menu that gives a list of all open windows and lets you either “fetch” or “go to” a chosen window. (Steve Revill’s !Moredesk has similar purpose, but I dunno if it has this feature.)

MoreDesk lists all open windows and allows you to bring them to the top. It also provides an alt-tab function to switch between open windows.

One thing that’s been on my ToDo list for ages is adding the facility to auto-arrange windows (tile, cascade, pile, etc). This would be one of:

• all open windows
• all open windows on the current desktop
• all of the selected windows (in the MoreDesk overview window)

It’s just a matter of me finding the time to implement it.

I know it’s not the right place (and time), but could I suggest a commercial “feature pack” for RISC OS from ROOL (or a pack of third party tools a la Nut Pi)? Perhaps a way to get more money.

A lot of people complain that RISC OS 5 is not very feature rich. But take MoreDesk, PS3 drivers, ImageFS, LanMan98, CD-Burn and a few other tools, and it’s really a good system.

4. Minimise all windows — “Show desktop”

Holding Ctrl+Alt and then clicking on the iconise icon of a window iconises all windows to the PinBoard which can be quite useful. You can’t reverse the process and reopen all iconised windows though. Besides, you’d most likely want to reopen all the windows you hadn’t already iconised, or reopen something that was iconised previously and then reopen the rest.

I think Ctrl-Alt with a click on a close icon closes all the windows, but I’m not going to test that in the middle of writing this…

Personally I love the Win-Tab feature in Windows 7 (it was in Vista as well but only the Premium and Ultimate editions). Works like Alt-Tab but does a 3D-flip of all the open windows so you can flick to the right one like a card index. Yes, it’s a bit eye-candy, but I actually like the eye-candy in Win7.

They ditched it (along with Aero) in Win8. Talk about going backwards.