You are using too many softwares running at the same time and you feel that you need a bigger monitor. Well before buy that new monitor, you might want to try Virtual Dimension first. This is a SourceForge hosted free GPL licensed virtual desktop manager. You can manage multiple virtual screens as many as you want .
Actually Virtual Dimension gives you full control over the how to manage and process applications, I was just surprised and never use any other virtual desktop manager.
Some of the nice things that you can with Virtual Dimension are
- You can move application around between virtual desktop so easily by moving the icon from one desktop to another
- You can easily make the application to show in all desktop by right click on the icon and click on “All desktops” menu. For some applications, like application launcher, you will need to access from all desktops.
- It comes with a very nice transparency function. You make the windows transparent! By using the short cut key, you can easily turn on and off the transparency. Or you can save the settings so it is transparent whenever you execute the application. So great!
After you install the application, you may want to change the number of virtual desktops and keyboard shortcut for easier access. Personally I only use 2 desktops because more than 2 desktops makes me confused and hard to find which desktop the application is located. Also I changed the shortcut key for ‘Activate next desk’ to ALT+Q (similar to ALT+TAB) and Toggle transparency shortcut to WIN+T.
Below is the transparency activated Firefox. By using the shortcut(WIN+T for my case) you can easily enable and disable the transparency. You can change the level of the transparency by right clicking on the icon and selecting the properties menu in the Virtual Dimension screen.
Virtual Dimension is sure a good option when you need a bigger screen. Enjoy. 🙂