Z-Bar [1] is a fantastic free and lightweight solution I've been for years. Highly recommend for those using Windows 7, especially in the Enterprise as it requires no installation and it is only 2 files.
I like this cost/benefit analysis. Often people forget that, when building a product, there are tons of features wanted, with different costs, and different benefits. Its not easy todo the right thing.
I have 3 monitors and use ultramon as a utility to do this. I can totally appreciate that the population here is not the norm and whatever metrics we see here is an outlier.
In most cases I assume people use laptops with one monitor. The percentage of desktops with two monitors can't be too high. So when you combine laptop and desktop it lowers the total percentage. How many of us have a laptop in addition to out desktop that is never connected to another monitor ;)
My guess for why it made it into Windows 8 isn't that it was randomly suddenly worthwhile, its because a multi-monitor setup becomes more important in the new workstation/tablet hybrid tool that Microsoft is creating. I carry my Surface around, using it as a laptop or tablet, but at home or at the lab, it plugs into larger external monitors to enable maximum productivity.
Agreed, I use SysInternals Desktops for that since it's the only one that isn't implemented with a hack.
I haven't had any problems with it but because of Windows' limitations it starts a separate logon session for every "desktop" so you can't move windows between them and so on. It's brilliant if you're constantly remoted to somewhere else, you can keep a full screen RDP session on another desktop while using your primary one for other stuff and quickly swap between them.
> I would hazard that fewer than ten percent of users use a multiple-monitor system on a regular basis, so any benefit would have to be ten times as great as the benefit of features that have broader use.
What kind of logic is that? And how would you even mathematically quantify the "benefit" of such a feature, save through tedious usability studies that could only come after you've implemented it?
You need some sort of cost/benefit to go off of to make decisions on which features get included and which get cut.
One way: consider how many Windows users would switch OS's or not chose a Windows computer as their next purchase due to the lack of multi-monitor taskbars. I don't need any sort of study to say that it's probably not a very high number.
Even if you could quantify it, I don’t agree with the 10x ratio that the original author proposes. Early in the development process, you will be implementing “low hanging fruit”—features that are easy, and provides great value.
Lower priority features are lower priority because they provide less benefit, but that doesn’t mean that you should not get to them eventually if you want to improve your product. If you have a variety of proposed features, you’ll start with ones that provide 100x benefit (compared to some benchmark), move on to 50x and 20x and 10x and so on, and eventually you’ll get to features that are barely worth the cost.
And this is why Windows Phone is what it is. The only thing MS is actually interested in is what (they think) directly projects to sales according to analyses, which are undoubtedly mostly based on "automated feedback" from current users and other "big data". Where are the times they actually cared for the (vocal) minorities?
It's not built in functionality which makes a lot of people irate. The thing is nobody would know what to do with it on Windows. Windows users aren't taught about multiple desktop session, virtual desktops, etc.
I forget where I read this, but the Windows team is certainly aware of virtual desktops and has made a conscious choice not to include them, even as an option.
The Sysinternals Suite has a utility for this: Desktops v2.0 [0].
I've been using VirtuaWin (http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/) for a number of years to get virtual desktops on windows. It's a little of a pain to get installed & configured exactly as I want it, but it (along with selected plugins) get awfully close to replicating the MATE / Gnome2 virtual desktop system.
What is amusing to me, is that started programming on a 20 x 80 line terminal (Beehive Bee3), then got spoiled by a 25 line by 80 character terminal, and then one with multiple 'pages'. When I got to Sun and had all that space of a 'workstation' I could never imagine going back to a single terminal, then I got two monitors and couldn't imagine going back to one (although I operate that way in a pinch on some systems). Certainly there is always "something" to put up in the extra real estate.
At the moment I think my ideal is 3 (a 2K landscape in the middle) and two vertical 1080P monitors, one on either side. I'd really like something like a 2440 x 800 "strip" to put along the bottom for a high res "task bar" kind of deal but can't find anyone with that particular glass and I don't want to glue together two 1280 x 800 panels.
One trick though is keeping the PPI the same (or close) on the monitors so that things don't distort weirdly when they move from one to the other.
I've had multiple but I find I am going back to single monitors on all my computers. They're not small single monitors (27" or 24"), mind you.
I find that I've been suffering from information overload with multiple monitors and that it's been too hard to focus. I would always have my email open on another monitor and whenever I found myself waiting for a build, or stuck on a problem, I'd glance over to my email and lose myself in that for a while.
With a single monitor all the distractions tend to go to the back; while they are still easily available to me I now do need to consciously move to another task, rather than have my context switch because of a sideways glance.
I, on the other hand probably couldn't work with more than two screens. I always had two screens at my last jobs but I always ended up using only one of them actually.
First I had the typical setup of putting the editor/shells on one screen and the browser on the other. But I found that moving the head and re focus all the time was more of a hassle than just cmd+tab. After that, I just put things that selfupdate and I can look at once in a while on the second screen. Like Mail, Twitter, etc.
Now since I rarely work in any kind of office anymore, I'm glad I never really got into the multi monitor thing:)
If I would do more design work I'd probably have use for more than one monitor. But as a programmer, having a editor with good split screen and code/project navigation support is way more important to me than the size or number of monitors.
Monitors are getting large enough for many to be productive using just one.
A single monitor can also help one be more productive by not having always-on distractions in your periphery. Putting the inbox away is a very effective way to be productive. (There was an article about this on Slate but I can't seem to find it.)
I like the one comment lamenting people saying, "It can't be that difficult to implement." If you're not the person who is in the code and doing it, you don't know. You can't say what is hard and what is not hard. You don't know what the code currently does, what systems it makes available to support the change. Perhaps the feature itself is small, but getting things in place to support the change is not.
It may not be easy, but there are certainly several add-on products that support this feature and they have no where near the same level of resources and know-how that the Microsoft team in charge of the taskbar has. So it seems unlikely that "hard to implement" was a primary reason for not implementing this sooner.
I haven't had an old school desktop[1] in a long time. Laptops have been it for me for years. And I've always had an external monitor attached to it. I find the multi-monitor taskbar in Win 8 (at home) to be pretty useful. I've tried several apps to add that to Win 7 (at work) but they all sucked. So I gave up.
[1] Technically, I've never put those computers on the desk... as it has always been under the desk. It seems strange to call those desktops but that seems to be the standard name for something that is not a laptop.
Edit: Yes, I should have clarified that I am fully aware of computers going on top of the desk. I even had one that was meant to but I used a stand to hold it up right and placed it on the floor (I guess like a tower). But that was with floppies and not a CD so it worked out just fine. I was just saying it was weird for me to call my old computers desktops since I never put them there. Also, there are a good number of systems that are not really meant to be put on the desktop but are still called desktops to separate them from laptops... which are more often on the top of my desk than on my lap. :)
Even many low end business desktops today are designed with the intention to be placed underneath or behind the monitor. It tended to be the big, clunky workstations or consumer PCs that were relegated to underneath the desk.
If I had to guess the reason, I would say that the new Windows devices are going to include many more small screens, which MS forecasts will make secondary (bigger) displays much more common than with traditional Windows PCs.
This was an issue for me this morning when my recently installed copy of UltraMon had expired.
Instead of purchasing a license (which I would be happy to do, but cannot on this workstation as it belongs to the company and was denied), I was introduced to an open-source alternative here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dualmonitortb/
Not as feature-complete as UltraMon - though provides me with a working taskbar on my second monitor.
Anyone on HN know of more software to extend the taskbar? Open-source, free or commercial.
Buy the license, crack UltraMon. This way you have what you want and your karma is clean. :) I used to use UltraMon on my desktop all the time, before moving to OSX. I find it preposterous that the multi monitor task bar is so hard to implement that it wasn't worth doing until Windows 8.
Your employer allows you to install UltraMon on their workstation, but does not allow you to pay for a copy? Or are they willing to install freeware, but not commercial tools, even if you pay for them? Or do they deem UltraMon detrimental for your productivity?
I used Actual Tool's Actual Multiple Monitor on Windows 7 and it has some amazing features.
Upgrading to Windows 8, I stopped using that tool and I am ( mostly ) satisfied with Windows 8 support for multiple monitors. But I still miss a lot of features. From all I miss one feature the most, the system stray on secondary monitor. For some reason it was very convenient to have it. And launch applications from system tray on the secondary monitor itself.
I was actually just thinking about this yesterday. I finally took the leap and got a second monitor back in the winter time because I found doing school work (it was my first semester) tedious on one screen. Type, alt tab look at info, alt tab at another source, alt tab to type - too much. Now I cant imagine going back to single monitor and wish I could have a second one at work to help with my productivity here as well.
I've been using Display Fusion [1] for years, and it's a great multi-monitor taskbar, with lots of other useful enhancements - hotkeys, wallpapers, window management, etc.
Multi-monitor support (or lack thereof) is one of the things that makes me cringe every time I'm dual-booting Linux/Gnome3.
Linux: Well asking that question is impossible to answer. Depends on the desktop environment. BUT by default No But if you put in the time to set things up most of the time yes.
KDE4 - Yes, but might have to fiddle a bit. Do able.
Gnome 3 - Not really
LXQT - Yes
i3 (Tiled Window Manager) - Yes perfectly BUT I had to set everything up by hand. I love i3!
[+] [-] srhngpr|11 years ago|reply
[1]: http://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/zbar/
[+] [-] TeeWEE|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlakePetersen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FollowSteph3|11 years ago|reply
In most cases I assume people use laptops with one monitor. The percentage of desktops with two monitors can't be too high. So when you combine laptop and desktop it lowers the total percentage. How many of us have a laptop in addition to out desktop that is never connected to another monitor ;)
[+] [-] neil_s|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JetSpiegel|11 years ago|reply
I have a single monitor, but with four workspaces I have a lot of screen real estate.
[+] [-] calciphus|11 years ago|reply
It's available as a Microsoft "powertoy" as well as countless open source and free programs.
Virtual Desktop Manager. Sorry you missed it for 12 years.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/xp-downloads#2TC=...
[+] [-] noinsight|11 years ago|reply
I haven't had any problems with it but because of Windows' limitations it starts a separate logon session for every "desktop" so you can't move windows between them and so on. It's brilliant if you're constantly remoted to somewhere else, you can keep a full screen RDP session on another desktop while using your primary one for other stuff and quickly swap between them.
[+] [-] TillE|11 years ago|reply
What kind of logic is that? And how would you even mathematically quantify the "benefit" of such a feature, save through tedious usability studies that could only come after you've implemented it?
[+] [-] prawks|11 years ago|reply
One way: consider how many Windows users would switch OS's or not chose a Windows computer as their next purchase due to the lack of multi-monitor taskbars. I don't need any sort of study to say that it's probably not a very high number.
[+] [-] guan|11 years ago|reply
Lower priority features are lower priority because they provide less benefit, but that doesn’t mean that you should not get to them eventually if you want to improve your product. If you have a variety of proposed features, you’ll start with ones that provide 100x benefit (compared to some benchmark), move on to 50x and 20x and 10x and so on, and eventually you’ll get to features that are barely worth the cost.
[+] [-] Aoyagi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varkson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MichaelGG|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] emehrkay|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darksim905|11 years ago|reply
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/power-toy-microsofts-virtual-de...
It's not built in functionality which makes a lot of people irate. The thing is nobody would know what to do with it on Windows. Windows users aren't taught about multiple desktop session, virtual desktops, etc.
[+] [-] codeulike|11 years ago|reply
"Windows UI designer explains why forcing Metro on all is great for power users"
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2098585/windows-ui-designer-e...
[+] [-] dmunoz|11 years ago|reply
The Sysinternals Suite has a utility for this: Desktops v2.0 [0].
[0] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc817881.aspx
[+] [-] warbiscuit|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kozhevnikov|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varkson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_ancient|11 years ago|reply
I have to have at minimum 3, I have quads setup in my home office.. I could not function on a single monitor system
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|11 years ago|reply
At the moment I think my ideal is 3 (a 2K landscape in the middle) and two vertical 1080P monitors, one on either side. I'd really like something like a 2440 x 800 "strip" to put along the bottom for a high res "task bar" kind of deal but can't find anyone with that particular glass and I don't want to glue together two 1280 x 800 panels.
One trick though is keeping the PPI the same (or close) on the monitors so that things don't distort weirdly when they move from one to the other.
[+] [-] maximilianburke|11 years ago|reply
I find that I've been suffering from information overload with multiple monitors and that it's been too hard to focus. I would always have my email open on another monitor and whenever I found myself waiting for a build, or stuck on a problem, I'd glance over to my email and lose myself in that for a while.
With a single monitor all the distractions tend to go to the back; while they are still easily available to me I now do need to consciously move to another task, rather than have my context switch because of a sideways glance.
[+] [-] smoe|11 years ago|reply
First I had the typical setup of putting the editor/shells on one screen and the browser on the other. But I found that moving the head and re focus all the time was more of a hassle than just cmd+tab. After that, I just put things that selfupdate and I can look at once in a while on the second screen. Like Mail, Twitter, etc.
Now since I rarely work in any kind of office anymore, I'm glad I never really got into the multi monitor thing:)
If I would do more design work I'd probably have use for more than one monitor. But as a programmer, having a editor with good split screen and code/project navigation support is way more important to me than the size or number of monitors.
[+] [-] bluthru|11 years ago|reply
A single monitor can also help one be more productive by not having always-on distractions in your periphery. Putting the inbox away is a very effective way to be productive. (There was an article about this on Slate but I can't seem to find it.)
[+] [-] dublinben|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moron4hire|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smacktoward|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DougWebb|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jack-r-abbit|11 years ago|reply
[1] Technically, I've never put those computers on the desk... as it has always been under the desk. It seems strange to call those desktops but that seems to be the standard name for something that is not a laptop.
Edit: Yes, I should have clarified that I am fully aware of computers going on top of the desk. I even had one that was meant to but I used a stand to hold it up right and placed it on the floor (I guess like a tower). But that was with floppies and not a CD so it worked out just fine. I was just saying it was weird for me to call my old computers desktops since I never put them there. Also, there are a good number of systems that are not really meant to be put on the desktop but are still called desktops to separate them from laptops... which are more often on the top of my desk than on my lap. :)
[+] [-] Luc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dublinben|11 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II
Even many low end business desktops today are designed with the intention to be placed underneath or behind the monitor. It tended to be the big, clunky workstations or consumer PCs that were relegated to underneath the desk.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] abengoam|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mdhgriffiths|11 years ago|reply
Instead of purchasing a license (which I would be happy to do, but cannot on this workstation as it belongs to the company and was denied), I was introduced to an open-source alternative here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dualmonitortb/
Not as feature-complete as UltraMon - though provides me with a working taskbar on my second monitor.
Anyone on HN know of more software to extend the taskbar? Open-source, free or commercial.
[+] [-] x0054|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Someone|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vidyesh|11 years ago|reply
Upgrading to Windows 8, I stopped using that tool and I am ( mostly ) satisfied with Windows 8 support for multiple monitors. But I still miss a lot of features. From all I miss one feature the most, the system stray on secondary monitor. For some reason it was very convenient to have it. And launch applications from system tray on the secondary monitor itself.
[+] [-] luckyno13|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guiambros|11 years ago|reply
Multi-monitor support (or lack thereof) is one of the things that makes me cringe every time I'm dual-booting Linux/Gnome3.
[1] www.displayfusion.com
[+] [-] Shivetya|11 years ago|reply
Well that and I never knew I wanted this feature, doubtful I would. I tend to like knowing that the session with the bar is the main window
[+] [-] jmount|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baldfat|11 years ago|reply
KDE4 - Yes, but might have to fiddle a bit. Do able. Gnome 3 - Not really LXQT - Yes i3 (Tiled Window Manager) - Yes perfectly BUT I had to set everything up by hand. I love i3!
[+] [-] eropple|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benaston|11 years ago|reply