Introduction

If you are a frequent Unix/Linux user, and use one of the many window managers for X, you will be well aware of the multiple desktop support. So, this tools lets you bring that functionality to Windows...

The 'Desktop Manager' basically provides you with four virtual desktops within Windows. Individual windows can be added to desktops, and hence you can switch between the desktops whilst maintaining window position and size! A screen shot of this little application is shown to the right. The four desktop are displayed with the grey boxes representing the windows active on them. Users can switch between the desktops either by using short cuts keys, by clicking on the window in the manager itself, or by using a 'mouse switch' feature, similar to that in KDE. The application itself can either stay on top of other windows, or minimize to the system tray. You can in fact use the whole application using shortcut keys, which are mapped to work anywhere in Windows. My main criteria for this product was that I wanted to be able to switch between desktops, and add/remove windows from desktops very quickly.

 So What Does it Do?

Anything that has a window can be added to a virtual desktop. As basically everything in Windows is treated as a window, even buttons etc, it means that you can even add your whole desktop and start bar to virtual desktop! You can add as many or as little windows as you want. If you really want to, you can add the OK button of a dialog to one desktop, and the cancel button of the same dialog to another desktop! As indicated in the screen shot to the left, there is an option to enable a set of controls that float next to the desktop manager. These allow remote control of Winamp, providing options to play, pause, stop, forward, backwards, show playlists and change volume.

Also included is a Window Manager, allowing all windows to be shown/hidden and added to desktops. You can analyse controls within windows, such as buttons, panels and lists.

Windows added to any of the desktops can be directly manipulated by clicking on the grey boxes in the desktop manager. You can move windows about, even if you are not currently viewing that desktop, and perform other direction operations on those windows. Included with the application is an option to allow you to manager all windows with a registered handle, hence you can find out exactly what is running and have complete control over your desktop!

The application is now completely configurable. Using a single INI file you can specify what key combinations are used to change between desktops and add/remove windows to/from desktops. It allows various other aspects of the application to be controlled, such as toggling mouse desktop switching. Support is included for specifying sticky windows. These are windows that should never be able to be added to a desktop, hence will always be visible.

 Features

Listed below are just some of the features included with this product.

 Alpha Blending

The desktop manager allows you to apply transparency (0-100% in 10% increments) to any window, either through right clicking on it in the manager itself, or using the form selector. Windows can use alpha blending whilst being added to a virtual desktop. Ok, so you can go a little over the top with alpha blending, as the picture to the right shows! Click on it to see a full sized version. Under 2k, it does seem to go a little weird with lots of alpha blended windows. Repaint problems sometimes occur, but generally it is ok.

Of course, if you don't want to use alpha blending, just set the AlphaBlending variable to 0 in the INI file, and it will not use it. Obviously it won't work in 9x, but the program will behave as normal without any extra configuration.

If you apply alpha blending to the actual desktop itself (Program Manager - Progman), you get very strange effects!

 Downloading

 Source Code

All the source code is available for free download from this site. I developed this application in Delphi 3, but there shouldn't be any problems converting up the version tree. I tried to keep the code neat in design, hence a splattering of OO to help future expansion. The concept of desktops and desktop entries should allow for easy expansion to support more than four desktops, hopefully with only a small amount of hacking.

 Recorded Bugs

This software is very much a work in progress. I simply write new functionality when I find the need for it. However, there are bugs in this software, and to be honest I've simply been putting up with them!

Desktop switching using the mouse is pretty icky in places. The main problem is that this software uses the mouse co-ordinates to detect screen limits, and switch desktop. However, if a window is placed at the boundaries of the screen, the mouse doesn't receive the mouse move events up to the boundary. So, having the task bar at the bottom of the screen prevents downwards switching!

This application uses a simple method for switching windows, it simply hides and shows them. Therefore, adding a window to a desktop does not mean that all its children will only appear on that window, they will have to be added individually.

When I last tried it in Windows 95 it went a bit strange. If anyone else has such a problem, with menus not being drawn, please mail me.

 Planned Additions

• Hook to catch right click on window title bars, so that windows can be added to desktop using the mouse easily.
• Setting transparency levels using right click on title bars, as above.
• Method to link parent-child windows together, so that a whole application can be added to a desktop.
• Ability to send various messages to windows, such as resizing them remotely etc.
• Fix vertical mouse desktop switching.