Friday 16 December 2011

Lots of screens? Lots of windows? WindowPad!

I use three screens for work, and I usually have about 12-15 windows open at once. I'm also a bit precious about the window sizes and positions of the things I'm working with - especially when using Visual Studio or another tool with a lot of dockable windows.

I hate having to drag windows about and manually resize them. Enter WindowPad!

It's a little utility which consists of an executable file and an ini file for configuration - you just put it in your Startup folder to use.

WindowPad uses a virtual "pad" to arrange windows, where you can use the Numpad to move and resize windows to fill the appropriate sections of your screens.

Features include:
- Move windows within the current monitor or between monitors (in multi-monitor setups).
- Customize hotkeys via WindowPad.ini with AutoHotkey-like command syntax.
- Define custom commands as labels or functions in WindowPad.ahk.
- Execute WindowPad commands specified on the command-line.

This is one of the tools mentioned in my .NET tools post, but it's the best utility I've discovered in a long time.

Friday 9 December 2011

Power tools every .NET developer should have

Working every day within a Windows environment, you get used to your own specific way of customising your workspace.

I'm always on the look out for ways to make my laziness less of an issue by being able to do common tasks more quickly, and Scott Hanselman's Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows is brilliant.

There are some really useful applications on there and in particular I liked WindowPad because it helps you to quickly arrange the various Visual Studio windows on your screens rather than having to drag and resize constantly.