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Topic: «Taskbar app. cycle, consecutive window alignment and more » on forum: Feature Requests   Views: 5060
 
Lishten Bird
Registered user
 
 Posts: 1
Joined: 12/06/2011
Posted: 12/06/2011 13:28:25
 
 
 First of all, thank you for a beautiful program! It includes many features I've always needed, but that were not included in the OS.

Some suggestions on other features that I feel could be very useful:

1. Cycling through open applications with mousewheel over the taskbar (just like with tabs in browsers). E.g., when I roll the wheel down, the next application on the taskbar gets active, and vice versa. There were similar solutions (standalone and Autohotkey script) for Windows XP, but they fail to work on Windows 7.

Emulating this with actions and Alt-Tab is almost impossible as Alt-Tab menu ignores the order of the applications on the taskbar and shuffles its own order, so some kind of internal array of visible open windows is necessary. As for direction of switching ("WheelDown for Next" or "WheelDown for Previous"), it depends a lot on the user, so an option to choose direction would be preferable. The feature would be very useful if it could work on both original and AWM taskbars.

2. Closing applications with middlebutton click on their taskbar button (just like with tabs in browsers), not the previews. The standard behavior in Windows 7 implies opening a copy of the application. On the AWM taskbar I can get the closing behavior through assigning "MiddleButton click" on "TaskBar" to "Close", but the status indicates that it is used by the system, so it won't work on the original taskbar.

I can emulate the feature by replacing the original taskbar with AWM clone or through AutoHotkey script, but there are reasons why I prefer the original taskbar (it is more stable and prettier), and the script is not very reliable and shows blinking popup menus. So overriding the default (pretty useless to me) behavior of the original toolbar would be very nice.

3. Consecutive window alignment. This means opening new windows (of any class; of several classes put into a specific group; of a single class) side-by-side one after another. E.g., I open My Computer, it launches on the left half of the first monitor; then I open Documents folder, it opens next to the first Explorer window - on the right part of the monitor; if I launch a web-browser now, it opens on the left half of the second monitor, and so on. (There has been a similar feature in Ubuntu, but I do not remember its name.)

Tracking the changes requires two points: a switch that tells whether the window should go into the next slot and a preset grid. As for the switch, the most logical solution seems to be in tracking the position of the previous window: if its X and Y were modified by the user, then the program should start filling the grid from the beginning, else it would proceed to the next slot, assuming that the current location of the window satisfies our user.

As for the grid, I feel that it can be possible to either provide a complex grid editor or just a set of 2 grids that I think would suit all users. "Side Grid" (similar to AeroSnap): left 50%, right 50% (with consecutive slots for monitors 2, 3 etc.) - this grid fits most widescreen monitors and dual-screen set-ups. "Quarters Grid": top-left quarter, top-right quarter, bottom-left quarter, bottom-right quarter (with consecutive slots for monitors 2, 3 etc.) - this grid fits most non-widescreen office monitors and high-resolution models. By this a user can force the applications to open in their "slots" instead of random OS's places and sizes, their previous places stored by AWM, or in static places set in the "Startup" menu of AWM.

4. Grid window arrangement instead of numpad alignment/stretching. There actually is a program called GridMove (already mentioned here) that manages it in a versatile manner, but some basic functionality can replace another standalone program on a user's PC. The reason I suggest it is that I almost never need to solely reposition a window, I would always need to reposition and resize it at the same time. That is why Numpad hotkeys in AWM implementation are of no use to me, though the numpad hotkey method is very intuitive. While working on a single-monitor set-up, I used a modified grid like this one. "Complex Grid": top-left quarter (NumPad 7), top half (NumPad 8), top-right quarter (NumPad 9), left half (NumPad 4), maximize (NumPad 5), right half (NumPad 6), bottom-left quarter (NumPad 1), bottom half (NumPad 2), bottom -right quarter (NumPad 3). (Splitting monitor in 9 equal parts instead is excessive.) Using such a grid with a modifier proved to be very effective (though I used a script that turned NumPad 0 into a Win modifier; this caused outputting "0" only on KeyUp, but this way I could use the numpad with a single right hand).

Hope these ideas help. Thank you.

Update. And a flag-option "Also move mouse to another monitor" when moving window to another monitor via button or menu would be great, as after you move a window you usually manipulate its location at the new place.
 
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Vasiliy Ivachev
Administrator
-retired-
 
 Posts: 2073
Joined: 11/09/2010
Posted: 12/07/2011 00:22:36
 
 
 Hello Lishten,

Thanks for the post.

I've added your wishes to our base of feature requests.
We'll consider them.

Best regards.
 
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