Virtual Desktops

With VirtualDesktops you have a tool that manages various desktops for you. This enables you to pretend that you have several monitors (I prefer a 2 by 2 grid but I've seen people using 4 by 4 grids) and do different things on different desktops.

The better implementations of this give you the ability to decide if a window will appear on all desktops or just a particular desktop. They also offer some feature that allows you to see which apps are running on which desktop and re-arrange them.

For example I like to run xmms and its playlist on one desktop, run several emacs frames on one desktop, run my browser on one desktop and have various xterms open on another.

At other times I use the various virtual desktops to sort my work. So all communication with the outside world (i.e email and sending attachments) happens on one desktop whilst java source files are on another desktop, shell scripts are on another desktop and compiling/debugging happens on a different desktop.

-- AdewaleOshineye

Note that this is drastically different from actually having more monitors. With virtual desktops, you the human are required to make some command gesture to indicate to the computer your desire to see a different desktop. With more monitors, you just look where you want to see. This is a completely natural act that requires no intermediate mapping of the physical to the electronic. The less "mapping" that we have to learn for the specific context of our interaction with computers (and not other parts of the world), the more naturally we will work with those computers. Consequently, we'll be able to work faster and more efficiently.

I want a window manager that manages keyboard focus based on where on the screen I am looking.

A friend of mine called this FocusFollowsEyes?. It's a nice idea, but with a minor catch: Sometimes you want to type something in another window while reading it (or something related) from another.

Is it better to have more monitors, or one larger monitor?

More monitors... beyond a certain size, more width (easily do-able with multiple monitors) takes better advantage of our field of vision.

Like

from http://www.digitaltigers.com/multi-monitors.shtml. Only if you've got money to burn though since there's a 2x premium over assembling one yourself: CommonWorkspace

I "assembled one myself" at work, and having something like the above setup would certainly be a lot nicer. There's something to be said for decent design over duct tape and baler wire.

I wonder how much of the dead space between adjacent screens could be eliminated if the LCD industry made it a priority.

Does anyone know of a virtual desktop manager for Windows that does paning / fliping the way that Enlightenment does? That's the only feature I want and need.

Can you be more specific?

Enlightenment has the usual ways of switching to a different desktop (hotkeys and clicking on a pane of the thumbnail view). But the usual way of switching to a different desktop, which ironically enough is "optional", is simply to move the mouse pointer to an edge of the screen. This will cause the screen to flip to the corresponding adjacent desktop.

Check out VirtuaWin?. I've used it for years on Windows systems. It's the only one I've ever used that was stable enough to use for more than a few days, but then I haven't used anything else in a long time so the others might be better now. It has mouse settings (also, not the default) but I never use them because I've been doing the "KM" sharing thing with x2vnc, win2vnc or Synergy for years and it interferes with "mouse pointer off the screen goes to the next monitor on the other machine". -- BillSmargiassi?

Thanks. I wish the desktop expanse was actually continuous so that I could place a window across multiple desktops, but I can live with this. The default delay between flips is much too short, you have to set it to at least 10x as long. Except I much prefer resistance to simple delay. A violent mouse motion should flip desktops with little delay. -- RK

You can also check out JS Pager, available at http://tucows.mundofree.com/winnt/preview/51883.html. It works somewhat like Enlightenment in that it navigates around a single large virtual desktop one screenful at a time, and can be configured to flip screens when the mouse is at the edge. I don't know how well it works with multiple monitors, though.

Unless I find someone selling stolen LCDs, that won't be a problem. Thanks for the suggestion.

Dicussion(s) moved to VirtualDesktopsDiscussion.

MacOsx, while not supporting virtual desktops, has a thingy called Exposé that lets you zoom your view out and see and select from miniature versions of all your open windows. Perhaps a MacOsx user could elaborate more.

It's really need because it actually manages windows, unlike all the so-called window managers out there. When you hit the Exposé hotkey, it finds a tiling that, well, exposes all your windows. Selecting a window zooms back around that window.

CategoryUserInterface