Enhance your Windows PC: Virtual Desktops & Open App Management

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We always talk about games here, but we all know something outside of games and for most of us video games are a hobby. I'd like to open up some useful non-game dialogs here and share some of the tidbits of info I've amassed over the years and hopefully you'll find it useful in your everyday life. I haven't come up with a good name for this series yet but I'll try writing up something every week so that you have something cool to look forward to (╹◡╹ ✿)

Kntnjtz

"Exposé and Spaces like Features for Windows"
That's the promise and Better Desktop Tool delivers in spades.

So, what is Exposé and what are Spaces and why would you want them on your PC? These are the names that Apple uses for their old brand of desktop management apps that first came bundled with MacOS X 10.3 "Panther" and 10.5 "Leopard" respectively. Better Desktop Tool is a single app for Windows that enables the same features as Exposé and Spaces for Windows Users. So what do those apps do?

Exposé manages all the windows from your open desktop applications with three viewing modes

  1. Show all windows
    Shows an overview of all open windows, shrinking their appearance so they all fit on a single screen.
  2. Show foreground app windows
    Shows an overview of all open windows for the currently active application. Again, the windows shrink to appear on the screen together
  3. Show Desktop
    Pushes all windows to the edge of the screen, giving the user clear access to the desktop

Spaces is a virtual desktop app

  1. Spaces enables users to create multiple virtual desktops suited to different tasks.
  2. In terms of practicality it allows a user to, for example, assign a "space" to office work and then switch to a different "space" designated for Internet and research, while yet another "space" could be dedicated to media applications
  3. Users can navigate between spaces via keyboard shortcuts, hot corners, or by dragging application windows in the direction of the desired space to the corresponding edge of the screen and holding for a moment.

There are other apps out there for windows that have a much deeper feature set, but I find that when it comes to something that is powerful, yet easy to use and customize Better Desktop Tool strikes the right balance. With Better Desktop Tool you'll get all of the features from Exposé and Spaces as well as bonus features that weren't in the Mac versions such as multi-touch support (later, Mission Control, which replaced Exposé and Spaces on the Mac got multi-touch support, but Exposé and Spaces themselves didn't get any.)

Did you find this info useful? I'm considering a series of forum posts that focuses on productivity and other useful info and will probably post them at a rate of one per week.

Download Better Desktop Tool