Task Switch XP
I work with a lot of open windows. I can have several instances of Word open, Firefox, as well as a few Putty sessions and a Virtual PC or two. Using Alt-Tab to switch between them has been a pain. I often end up at the wrong Word document or wrong session in Putty. There is a better way – TaskSwitchXP. This is a sweet little utility that replaces the alt-tab of windows with a nice easy to see task switching window. If you work with many open windows this is a must.
There is also the power toy from MS that is similar. TaskSwitchXP blows it out of the water. It is completely customizable. You can choose the font, the colors, what keys launch the program and even the transparency level of the window.
There is one thing I found annoying. It puts an icon in your tray BUT like everything else in this program – It is customizable. You can turn it off with in the TaskSwitchXP Configuration tool. So overall a very cool app.
It is free and Open Source.
You can get it at: http://www.ntwind.com/taskswitchxp/
Note: There may be a possible crash with MS Virtual PC. See http://www.ntwind.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=131�
The MS power toy can be downloaded at:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx
TO UN-INSTALL THE MS POWER TOY :
Do this if the add/remove programs and a reboot don’t work.
Go to C:\WINDOWS\Downloaded Installations directory. Just run that, choose “Remove,” then reboot, and you should be good-to-go!
January 19th, 2006 at 11:24 am
Thanks for recommending this tool. Initial impressions are great. I particularly like the “left-right pane order” option – all other windows apps work that way already (e.g. Explorer’s list of folders on the left then the specifics of each on the right) Although it’s completely logical it had never occured to me that it was missing from the Alt-Tab tool.
The “minimize windows to tray with right-click on minimize button” option is also very useful (although only peripherally related to Alt-Tab.
January 19th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
When I first saw the title, targetting users who keep many windows open at once, I was hoping you were presenting a solution for the limited resources problem on XP. But I was nevertheless quite pleased with this utility, since the standard Alt-Tab is just not sufficient when 50-75 windows need to be managed simultaenously.
Of course, the default mode of the program only displays 12 lines of text, so my first attempt at configuration was aimed at getting more applications on that screen at one time. The dimensions of the window are indeed configurable – theoretically up to 100 lines – but at a certain point they just scroll off the screen without a scrollbar. I found that I was able to reasonably go up 25 lines, which is already a big jump from the standard alt-tab. I was even able to get it to 30 lines by positioning it as “center” (oddly, with the position set to “top”, there is always a significant margin above it. to use the whole screen, “center” must be chosen.)
However, to see all 75 windows at once, I needed to move to “icon” mode (instead of “vertical list”); this mode can provide a nice overview of *hundreds* of windows, since it only displays the icons. If you need a particular window, it won’t help much, but if you need to pick a single application at of the bunch, you can find it immediately.
However, when so many windows are in use, what we really need is the ability to see the list of titles in multiple columns (currently, widening the window does not add columns). Hopefully the writer will add this one day. [And, for the meantime, since the icon list is the only way to see all windows at once, I am going to be using both the icon list as well as the text list; Therefore, I'd prefer to have two separate hotkeys for these two lists, or a quick way to move between the modes without going to the configuration dialog.]
The “instance list” is particularly useful – get all of the windows belonging to the current program, or to a particular program on the list. Great concept!
The right click functionality is very useful. For instance, on the Alt-F12 screen, one can access the process info, and do things such as close windows or end processes. A few issues here:
1] The process info window appears *on top* of the window image. But when you are using an enlargened process list window (as I am), there is plenty of space above and below, and there is no reason to obscure the window image.
2] After performing actions such as “close”, the list should not disappear, since it is natural to use that situation to close multiple windows.
Finally, to end on a positive note, an example of how flexible the program is in its current form: I tend to move the mouse randomly as I alt-tab, and in this case this created a conflict, since the mouseover triggers a select on the alt tab screen. But sure enough, within several moments I found that I was able to disable the mouseover effect from the configuration screen.
January 24th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Wow, Avi, when you review an application, you don’t leave much up to chance. Very in depth. nice.
February 23rd, 2006 at 9:53 am
New version came out: v2.0.9
http://www.ntwind.com/taskswitchxp/history.html
Mostly bug fixes so worth downloading:
New interface languages (+5 new).
Improved animation for minimizing to tray.
Second press of the sticky hotkey works now like as Enter.
Bug with MSN Messenger conversation window was fixed.
Bug with switching to multiple windows was fixed.
Bug of installer with unsupported language was fixed.
Bug with MS Office Outlook message icon was fixed.
Some issues with text colors were fixed.
Some minor bugs were fixed.
April 14th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Hey, cool tips. I’ll buy a glass of beer to that person from that forum who told me to visit your blog