Make your Desktop Bigger with 360desktop (Windows)
Your desktop provides a limited amount of space. Usually that’s just enough to do one thing at a time. Many times however, these two dimensional limits are way too tight to work productively with layers of open windows.
Increasing the available space, for example by adding a second monitor or installing a virtual desktop manager provides more room for multiple open programs, and can help to stay organized with complex projects. Additionally, more space offers more room for creativity and a unique desktop.
Experience something different and take your desktop for a spin with 360desktop (Windows only).
In its native form the program control panel hides unsuspiciously in the top right of your screen. Nothing else hints to the presence of a “spinning” desktop. Clicking on the control in the top right reveals a 360desktop preview or QuickNav of the whole desktop, with little symbols representing the position of open windows on the desktop.
Spinning through the desktop can be done in three different ways:
- drag the red slider of the control panel to the left or right
- drag the white frame in the QuickNav to move back and forth
- click onto the desktop and use the scroll wheel of your mouse to spin round and round
The Windows taskbar stays put at all times. When you click on the button of an open application in the taskbar, 360desktop can pan it into focus. New applications, folders or widgets are opened wherever you are on your desktop. Thus, it’s smart to move to the right spot before opening them because dragging an item to the left or right border of your screen does not initiate panning!
The right-most button on the control panel opens the 360 Manager. This is where you can manage and select 360s (wallpapers) and widgets. The website offers a nice selection of 360s in their gallery and registered users can create their own with the Create 360 tool.
There are no widgets for download because you create them yourself. You can clip any part of any web page to your desktop, get web widgets or keep your favorite media files on your desktop. It can be most popular page from Youtube, your playlists from some music site etc.
When you see something you would like to add to your 360desktop, copy the URL or code, then click the widget button on the 360desktop control panel, name your widget and paste the URL or code into the respective field. To complete, click OK and you’re done.
For me, adding a YouTube video didn’t work because 360desktop relies on Internet Explorer, and apparently my IE isn’t able to playback stuff from YouTube. But as you see below, creating widgets did work for websites and images that I clipped to my 360desktop.
Each widget comes with its own controls. You can scale the widget window, move it around and close it. To re-open a widget, you must go back to the 360 Manager. Here you can also delete widgets.
The widgets that were open when you closed 360desktop will automatically open again when you re-launch the application. They will open in the same configuration and arrangement as before in respect to each other. However, they will open wherever your current focus is.
Finally, there is a 360desktop button in the task manager. This is where you can control how the tool acts. Define characteristics like sensitivity, speed or which items shall or shall not pan. For example, when you disable icon panning, your desktop icons will not move when you take your desktop for a spin.
Do you have sufficient space on your desktop? If not, how do you cope and could this application provide a solution? What do you think about it in general?
(By)
This looks great, but since I have Vista 64 Bit, I cannot use it. It does not support 64 BIt systems.
On XP I tried running this combined with Yodm 3D and QT Tabs, now I have more desktop space than I’ll ever use. Great for impressing/confusing old folks.
This has potential, but in my Vista laptop it didn’t work as expected. Other than moving the wallpaper in the background, it does nothing but to add more stuff to my already crowded desktop, because all the applications just stay where they are, instead of being “pinned” to the wallpaper.
Tried their troubleshooting for this issue, but their solution just doesn’t exist in the present version of this program.
Their free account creation is just not working, so I cannot send them a support query.
I hope they can fix these problems.
@ Dod - It happened when I tried it as well, but then I went to Display Settings and re-applied current settings. All the programs were apperaing on the preview window after that.
@ Tina - I also discovered that it doesn’t work with Dual monitors.
Thanks for all the feedback!
@ Will, Dod & Aibek: I didn’t have the opportunity to test it with Vista or dual monitors.
@Dod: Creating and account with them via the website worked fine for me, though. This might be a temporary problem you experienced.
Pretty cool, but I rarely use my Desktop at all, as all files and shortcuts are accessed through the keyboard using either Launchy or Active Words. In fact, I have my desktop set to hide files so that I can enjoy my wallpaper photos.
Tina are you greek or you just visited greece? You saw pictures from Ioannina in Greece.
Sotiris, I recently visited Greece.
Hi Tina (and friends), thanks for your comments and feedback - really appreciate it. in response to a couple of comments: dual monitors - the panning 360desktop (and 360 wallpaper) operates on the primary monitor, and any web widgets, webclip widgets that you put on the desktop, can be put on either the primary or secondary monitor. (the theory here is that the additional desktop space is managed by the additional monitor). Given the very significant feedback we’ve had re wanting panning 360 wallpaper on both monitors, we’ve moved the feature to the top of the list (still a couple or releases away). re the 64bit - we’ve just about got it ready for private beta testing (a couple of weeks away). we’re a small team, working very hard to pull everything but thanks again for the patience and very valuable feedback.
Cheers Evan (founder/ceo)
doesn’t let you upload images from your computer.