OnTopReplica

OnTopReplica uses the DWM Desktop Composition found in Windows Vista and Windows 7 to clone a window and run it in a small thumbnail that always stays on top. This is perfect for keeping only the video frame of a video player on top. OnTopReplica requires .NET Framework 2.0 and a Windows Aero theme.

When you launch OnTopReplica, you will see an empty grey window on your screen. Right-click the frame and select the window you want to clone.

Next, right-click the frame again, pick select region to define the region of the screen you want to clone. Finally, enjoy the result!

Note that the original window cannot be minimized and if you choose to replicate a browser window, you cannot switch the tabs. Also see this article for a more thorough review of the tool: Two Ways To Sneak A Peek At Videos While You’re Working

4t Tray Minimizer

4t Tray Minimizer adds several additional buttons to the title bar of your windows. One of them, the pin icon, will fix the respective window on top of everything else, until clicked again. A very simple and easy solution.

Besides keeping our windows on top, 4t Tray Minimizer allows you to manage open windows in many different ways. Besides the new title bar buttons, the options are also available via the top level system menu. 4t Tray Minimizer was previously mentioned in this article: 3 Best Strategies & Tools For Open Window Management In Windows 7

PowerMenu

This tool adds additional menu options to all top level system menus without compromising the standard options. Apart from making a window stay Always On Top, you can also minimize it to the tray or change its transparency. It offers some of the same options as 4t Tray Minimizer, but it does not add the extra buttons to the title bar.

See a full review of PowerMenu here: Keep Windows on Top & Minimize To Tray with PowerMenu

DeskPins

DeskPins lives in your system tray. When clicked, your cursor turns into a pin and whichever window you click next, will be pinned to the top of your screen. Clicking the red pin in the title bar of the respective window, will unpin it. Very neat one task app that doesn’t add any extra clutter to your windows or menus.

DeskPins was also reviewed in this article: How To Pin Any Application Window To The Top

AquaSnap

Like the previously mentioned tools, AquaSnap offers a host of features. One of them is shaking a window to at once make it stay on top and change its opacity. The shake detection sensitivity, speed, and duration can be customized.

See this article for a full review of AquaSnap: How To Enhance Your Windows Experience With AquaSnap (Not Only in Windows 7!)

For even more useful tools to manage your windows, have a look at these articles:

• 3 Simple Programs That Can Help You Manage Multiple Windows
• 3 Programs That Help You Snap Windows Like a Win 7 User
• 3 Useful Programs That Help Manage Multiple Monitors

Do you still need to manage several applications on one screen or have you dedicated a second or third screen to parking your videos or other must watch items on?

Image credits: Tatiana Popova

One of the most common functions that I’ve found I use in many of my scripts is maximizing a window. This may be the launching of an application from a Windows script, or maybe launching an Excel or Word document in full-screen mode for display in a conference room, or as an application of sorts.

The beauty of scripting is that you don’t have to be a programmer to do this, and you don’t have to have any special software installed. If you’re using a Windows computer, or any application that has a VBA back-end, you can make use of these functions. In this article I’m going to provide three examples of how you can maximize windows using VB scripts, but you can take what I’m going to show you here and use it throughout any other script that you might be building.

Launch Applications In Maximized Mode

Before we get started, I’m going to quickly show you how you can launch any application in maximized mode by writing a quick script that launches that program using the Windows Shell.

There is a parameter in the Shell “Run” command where you can tell the application what mode to run in, and it will run it maximized. This is what the script looks like.

<job>
<script language="VBScript">

Option Explicit
On Error Resume Next

Dim WshShell
Dim retVal
Dim myPath 

set WshShell=CreateObject("WScript.Shell") retVal = WshShell.Run("C:\temp\firefox", 3)

WScript.Quit

</script>

</job>

You can substitute any program in the string where I currently have Firefox, and if the app allows for it. It’ll launch maximized. Some apps don’t. For example, this technique works for Firefox, but Chrome seems to have a mind of its own. Regardless, this script will work with most applications.

Open Documents Maximized in Word

To maximize any Word document, using nothing more than a command button in Word, you’ll need to enable Developer mode. To do this, click the Windows button and select Word Options at the bottom of the dropdown. In the Options menu, select “Show Developer tab in the Ribbon“.

Now you can select the Developer menu item and make use of “design mode” where you can code awesome functionality into your Word documents. To create a button that can maximize the document to full-screen, just enable Design Mode, click on the Forms dropdown button and click on the button object.

Place the button anywhere at all that you want in your document.  Right-click on the button, select CommandButton Object and then click View Code. Now, there are two things you can do to maximize the window. You can either force the Windows application itself to maximize like this.

Application.WindowState = wdWindowStateMaximize

Or, you can make the entire document go full-screen and remove the header toolbars completely.

ActiveWindow.View.FullScreen = True

This puts the entire document in full-screen with only a ruler enabled (if you click on the ruler button in the upper left). To get out of full-screen mode, just tap the Escape key.

What can this be used for? Well if you don’t have Microsoft Powerpoint, you can basically use this feature to  make use of Word as a similar display tool. To flip to the next page, you just scroll down the document.

If you don’t want to use a command button and would rather have the document automatically open in this mode, just use the code above in the Document_Open() function. You can get to that function in the code editor by selecting “Document” in the left dropdown at the top of the code window, and “Open” on the right dropdown.

Open Spreadsheets Maximized In Excel

What you can do with VBA in Word, you can usually also do in Excel, except things are going to be just a little bit different. You can enable the Developer toolbar the same way you did in Word above, but when you add a button you’ll see that Excel wants you to apply a Macro. All you have to do is name a new Macro and click on the “New” button. That will put you into the code editor.

This is where you’ll type the code to maximize the spreadsheet and remove the scrollbars.

If you’re not accustomed to coding in VBA, you’ll notice that many of the objects you can reference in your code are listed to the left. You can perform a number of actions on specific sheets and workbooks, and lots of the objects inside those sheets as well. In this case you’re referencing the entire Excel application itself.

Application.DisplayFullScreen = True

Application.CommandBars("Worksheet Menu Bar").Enabled = False

You can perform a number of actions on specific sheets and workbooks, and lots of the objects inside those sheets as well. In this case you’re referencing the entire Excel application itself. This code will convert the Excel window to full screen mode and then entirely remove the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Just like in Word, you can get out of this mode with the Escape key, and you can also use the same code in the  screen. You can also use this code in the Workbook_Open() or Worksheet_Activate() functions to enable full-screen mode without the need for a button. However you want to perform your script magic is up to you!

So start up Notepad or MS Office and give these scripts a try. Did you think of some creative use for launching maximized applications? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

In Mac, for example, the close button will only close the open window but not the application. And unlike Windows, Mac OS X also maximises the open window (using the green button) as large as it needs to be, and not necessarily to full screen.

There’s nothing wrong with the way each OS handles the process to size windows. But there’s room for improvement. In Mac OS X, we can use SizeWell to get better options in to zoom and size open windows.

Simple Way To SIMBL

Similar to Afloat – another Mac windows management software – SizeWell runs on top of SIMBL. For those who are not familiar with SIMBL, this is one of the ways to enable hacks and/or tweaks to existing Mac apps.

The current version is 0.9.7a and will work for both 32-bit and 64-bit applications running on Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). For the owners of older cats, you should use the older version (v 0.8.2) instead.

Installing SIMBL is as simple as running the installer package.

Adding SizeWell

The next step is installing SizeWell. This is an application in the form of a SIMBL plugin. After unarchiving the package, you can’t just run it. You need to put the “.bundle” file inside the “~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins” folder.

The “~/” stands for your Home folder. The name may differ from the one in the picture above.

If this is your first time using SIMBL, you might need to create the “Plugins” folder.

To complete the installation, you need to relaunch Finder. There are several quick ways to do this:

1. By clicking on the Finder icon in the dock while holding “Control + Option” and choose “Relaunch” from the pop up menu.

   

2. By using Terminal command “killall Finder”

   

3. By using Force Quit: Press “Command + Option + Excape“, choose Finder from the list and press “Relaunch”

   

Note:  there are cases where a system restart is needed to complete the installation.

Using SizeWell

What SizeWell does is add more options to the normal actions to zoom and size windows. This is achieved by adding more players into the game: Command, Option, Control and Shift buttons.

Using SizeWell is a matter of resizing (click and drag the bottom right corner of the window) or zooming (clicking the green button at the top left corner of the window) while holding one of the keyboard combination.

The SizeWell site has a list of what these keyboard keys do, but I’ll put them down here for reference.

To Size a window, hold:

• Shift to keep its width or height.
• Command to keep its aspect ratio.
• Option to keep it centered.
• Control to pin its bottom right corner.

To Zoom a window, hold:

• Shift to really maximize it.
• Control to maximize it left.
• Command to maximize it right.
• Shift + Control to maximize it top.
• Shift + Command to maximize it bottom.

There’s also a short video on the developer’s website showing you the usage of SizeWell.

What’s Coming

For those who think that it’s just too much trouble to install this app, the developer promises a more user-friendly version with the next major upgrade. The user-friendliness will include easier automatic installation and updates, and a System Preference pane interface.

While SizeWell may not be for everyone – and some might only remember one or two of the functions – the app delivers on its promises to enhance the way we zoom or size the windows.

Do you use SizeWell? Do you know of any other alternatives? Please share using the comments below.

Personally, I find that hiding the more distracting windows actually increases my efficiency while I use my computer. In fact, having less on the screen at one time means no more absent minded glances at the taskbar, no getting lost on facebook, and a whole lot more concentration.

OuttaSight is an excellent free solution to the common time management or privacy problems that computer users face today. This lightweight application allows users to hide active windows either by the push of a button, or automatically when they are run. While it is only stated as supporting up through Windows 2000, it works perfectly fine on XP and Vista.

OuttaSight is a Windows desktop utility that hides running application windows to un-clutter the desktop, quickly hide private work, or secure your applications while you’re away from your computer.

Features

• Hide running programs with the push of a button
• Set programs to automatically hide when they start up
• Hide OuttaSight from the taskbar
• Password protect OuttaSight to prevent changes
• Hide/Show all windows with a single hotkey
• Ability to hide windows to the system tray (instead of hiding them completely)

Using OuttaSight

The first thing you’ll notice when you download and run OuttaSight is that it’s very simple looking. This is one of my favorite aspects of the software – it’s very clear, lightweight, and efficient.

First, it is important to personalize the utility. Go to “Hot Keys” and decide what you want your shortcuts for different actions to be. My personal set up used F10 as the hide window hotkey, CTRL+F11 to hide all windows, and CTRL+F12 to show them all.  While you are setting things up, keep in mind the reasons you got OuttaSight in the first place. Do you want it to be very easy and intuitive to show and hide windows, or would you like to be the only person that knows how to do it?

Second, you’re going to want to decide how you want programs to hide. Would you like them to disappear altogether (for secrecy) or minimize to the tray instead? If you are tired of your taskbar being cluttered, but do not mind people seeing that the programs are running, you may want to tell OuttaSight to minimize them to the tray as shown below.

To do this, navigate to the Options tab and check off  “Hide windows to system tray“. If this is not checked, the default behavior is to completely hide windows.

Next, you’ll need to decide if there are some programs you would like to automatically hide whenever they start. These programs could consist of automatic virus scans, annoying startup messages, or other things of that nature. If for some reason you like to start up applications with the intention of not viewing them at all, you can do that too .

To set up a list of programs that will hide when they run, simply navigate to the “Auto-Hide” tab and start adding programs.

Note that you can specify whether you would like the program to hide completely, or run in the tray instead. To view a window that has minimized to the tray, simply double click it.

Finally, analyze things with your privacy in mind. You have the option to password protect OuttaSight. That means that even if someone knows it is running, they can’t use it without entering your password. That also means that your hidden programs remain hidden no matter what. To prevent others from seeing OuttaSight you have the option of hiding it from appearing even in the taskbar. If you do this, make sure you remember the hotkey to pull up OuttaSight – otherwise you’ll have to reboot your computer to access it again.

Hopefully this article was informative. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to post your comments and let me know if you found a better free alternative. Overall I’d like to hear what you have to say about this concept in general – do you use software like this and why?

I too work with many windows opened at one time: mail, browsers and its tabs, text editor, media player, you get the picture. Most of the time I have to get the information from one window and use it on another. This method of working requires my agility to switch back and forth between windows and tabs, and also my wisdom to find the information among the clutters.

My best friends during the time of trouble with Mac window management are Alt + Tab (to switch windows), Exposé’s F3 (to show all opened windows) and Control + F3 (to show all opened windows within one application). Sometimes, I use Spaces to separate the “working” windows and the “entertainment” windows to unclutter the workspace a little.

Afloat – take two

Then I stumbled upon Jackson’s old article about Afloat and it really helped me with Mac windows management. But almost a year has past since that article was published and Afloat has been updated with a new Snow Leopard-compatible version and several new features.

So I thought it would be nice to have another look at this app from a slightly different perspective.

We’ll start with the installation. Unlike common Mac apps that only need to be dragged and dropped to work, Afloat needs SIMBL before it could be put into action.

After the installation, you need to restart any opened applications to be able to use Afloat. The app will add new menus under Window menu in any Cocoa application. Here are two pictures comparing the Window menu before and after the installation of Afloat.

It’s also been said that Afloat will not work with Carbon apps like Finder and iTunes. But I tried restarting Finder using Command + Alt + Esc and the new menus appear.

Maybe it’s because I use Snow Leopard. After I’ve searched a little bit on the net, I found out that according to Snow Leopard technology page:

All system applications except DVD Player, Front Row, Grapher, and iTunes have been rewritten in 64-bit.

Translation: there are not many Carbon apps left (Cocoa apps are 64-bit) and that Afloat will work for almost all the main applications. I don’t know about third party software yet since I haven’t explore too many applications after installing Afloat.

Now let’s see how this app could help us in solving our Mac window management problems.

The Seven Steps

First problem: working with several windows.

Solution: Instead of flipping through the windows, you could just put the source window always above others.

There are few steps to do to achieve this without disturbing the workspace.

1. First, go to the source window and hit “Command + Control + A” to keep the window always floating above.
   
2. Then hit “Control + Command + 1″ to make the window transparent.
   

   Note: Control the transparency level by using “Command + Control + Page Up/Down” or “Command + Control + Two finger scroll on the multi touch trackpad”. Restore the window to the non-transparent state (opaque) by hitting “Command + Control + 0″.

3. You could also use Overlay command (from Window –> Adjust Effect menu or Command + Control + F) to make the source window transparent, floating above other windows, and unaffected by mouse click or keyboard input. Look at number 2 in the picture.
   

   This “Adjust Effect” window will also give you access to set the window position (number 1), and the transparency level (number 4) as discussed above.

Second problem: the window we need is located in a different Space from the window we use.

Solution: Instead of turning off Spaces or moving the needed window around Spaces, you could keep the window on all Spaces, by checkin the option as shown in the picture above (number 3).

Third problem: it’s difficult to work with a transparent window.
Solution: Instead of turning the transparency effect on and off, you could just make it opaque when active by giving checkmark to the number 5 option in the picture above.

Fourth problem: the size and/or the position of the window is not right.

Solution: you could just resize and/or drag the position of the window, but you could do it easier by performing Quick Resize using Command + Control key while click and drag using the right mouse button anywhere in the window. You could also do a Quick Drag using Command + Control and left mouse button.

Normally, resizing the window require you to click and drag a specific point at the bottom right of the window, and moving the window could be done only by clicking and dragging the title bar of the window.

Fifth problem: you don’t know the location of the file that you are currently working on.
Solution: You could try to do a “Save As” and then click cancel. That might work with some applications. But there is an easier way, using Float’s “Show Window’s file in finder” menu or using the “Command + Control + Up arrow”. This is by far my most favorite feature of Afloat because I often have to rummage through Finder to just email the document that I’ve just finished.

Have you tried Afloat? Do you know other tips on using Afloat? Share using the comments below.

This new ‘open-everything spree’ lifestyle adapted by most modern people under any OS – me included – results in a very cluttered Mac desktop. One hit on the Exposé’s “Show All Windows” button reveal just how many of them are cluttering my desktop.

More clutter means less focus, and I realized that, to improve myself,  I need to organize. Fortunately, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard comes with the solution: Spaces – a tool to organize your Mac desktop and optimize those cluttered workspaces.

So, how to organize Mac desktop with Spaces

Open Spaces

To get the maximum result from utilizing Spaces, we need to customize it first to fit our need. Go to System Preferences,

choose Exposé & Spaces

and click on the Spaces tab.

The first thing to do is to make sure that there’s a checkmark in the “Enable Spaces” option. Then you may also give a checkmark to the other box that says “Show Spaces in the Menubar” if you like to have access to Spaces from the menubar.

By default, there are four virtual desktops. But users can add/remove more rows and columns up to sixteen desktops (four rows times four columns) by clicking the plus (+) or minus (-) signs.

Everybody has different preferences on how many virtual desktops they would want. So before deciding your number, the first thing to do is to make a list on what ‘workspaces’ you need.

For example, I need four virtual Mac desktops: the first one is dedicated to work and internet-related activity (work 1), the second one is to music, movie and games (entertainment), the third one is to graphic design (work 2), and the fourth one is for any background activities like downloads or backups.

The next step is to assign applications to their respective virtual desktops. Click on the plus (+) sign under the “Application Assignment” window and choose which one of the opened applications you want to assign. If the application that you want is not on the list (it means the app is not running at that time), choose “Other…”

Then you should assign one of the spaces to the app by clicking on the arrows next to the space number and choose one from the pop-up list. If you want to, you can assign an (important) app – like Mail or Safari or any other app that you need all the time – to be available in every spaces.

The last step is to customize the shortcut keys. Choose one of the available options from the drop down list. There are three kinds of shortcut keys: To activate Spaces (by default assigned to F8), To switch between spaces (by default assigned to Control + any of the Arrow Keys), and To switch directly to a space (by default assigned to Control + Number Keys related to the space numbers).

Using Spaces

After assigning the apps to their spaces, you can do your everyday activities like normal. If you switch between apps with Alt + Tab, you will be taken to the app’s virtual space automatically.

You can use the menubar icon or shortcut keys combination to access Spaces. To use the shortcuts, you can – for example – press Control + Right Arrow to go to the next space, press Control + 4 to go directly to space number 4, or press F8 and you can choose which space to choose.

By categorizing apps into different spaces, I teach myself to focus on a specific task at one time. Hopefully, this will lead to better work results.

How do you organize your Mac desktop? Do you have Spaces related tips to share? Use the comments below to spill your thoughts.

This is a native feature of Linux and can be easily accessed by right-clicking the mouse and choose “Always On Top” from the context menu. However, when it comes to Windows (and even Mac), I am surprised that this small, but useful feature is not available in all iteration of the operating system.

Here comes Deskpins.

Deskpins is a small and lightweight application that can keep your application window on top of all other windows at all time. Simply grab a pin from the Deskpins icons and click on the window, it will then automatically pin itself at the topmost of the desktop.

Installation

The installation is easy. Download the software (only 96KB in size) and run the .exe file to install it in your system. It shouldn’t take more than a minute, even if you are using it on an old system (like Windows 95). It is stated in its website that it is compatible up to Win XP, but I tried it on Windows 7 and it works flawlessly.

Usage

After you have launched the application, it should show up as an icon in the system tray.

Click on the Deskpins icon. Your mouse cursor will instantly change to a pin icon. Click on any window to pin it to the topmost level of the desktop. You will now see a pin on that particular window.

Configuration Options

Even though it is a simple and small application, it also comes with several configuration options for you to customize its behavior and look and feel.

First of all, if you are not a red lover, then you can change the pin color to your favorite color in the first tab menu. You can also change the tracking rate and to use a single or double click to activate the pin in the system tray.

Now, if you have a particular application that you want to keep it “always on top” at all time, instead of activating the deskpins everytime, you can create an Autopin rule such that the application is automatically pin to the desktop each time it is launched. This is definitely one nifty feature that will come in handy at all times.

For those who prefer keyboard shortcuts more than clicking the mouse, there is also an option for you to configure the hotkey to activate the Deskpins.

Conclusion

For a simple feature that should exist by default, but doesn’t, this simple application has definitely done its job well. It is small in size and only take up little system resources, best of all, it supports all version of Windows, thus making it an useful and versatile application.

This is definitely not the only app that can make an application “always on top”. If you have tried any other apps that perform the same function, share it with us in the comments.

On the opposite end of this productivity stick, Varun wrote about the top 5 desktop apps for multitasking. You should definitely check it out, if you haven’t already.