Wednesday, February 27, 2008
http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/
Even though there isn’t any active development on this (last update: 2005-07-09), this is still the best virtual desktop manager I’ve found for Windows. A couple quirks, but so far I’m happy with it. It lets me set up the same keys I use on Mac/Solaris for virtual desktop switching, will switch backgrounds, and even has a text popup of the desktop name when you switch. Its missing some features, but it covers the basics, which is good enough for me.
I tried this out alongside of VirtuaWin (http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/), and I think I like VirtuaWin better. Virtual Dimension seems to be better polished, but I found that it wouldn’t handle the keyboard shortcuts correctly for me when I had Virutal PC running (which grabs the keys when it feels that you have focused on the virtual machine). Using VirtuWin, the Windows+arrow work well, and the Windows+Alt+arrow works well to switch the application to another desktop, with the desktop switching at the same time. The plugins, which in theory, are a great idea, however, things like transparent desktop tags and automatic desktop switching (popular in my last place of employment for monitoring systems powering big LCD displays) seem to be buggy and were made many years ago (presumably no longer supported).
My .02
I just gave VirtuaWin a quick test drive. There were several features missing initially, but then I found them as plugins/extensions. Overall, I found it to be not bad.
Caveats: Even after installing the “display the name of the current desktop when I switch to it” plug-in, the text was often *under* an open window on my desktop. Perhaps this problem doesn’t exist if I start VirtualWin before opening windows.
I’m guessing in a year or so I’ll be running this instead, since there is active development on it, but I didn’t see enough coolness to make me switch now.