Filed under: Fun, Utilities, Windows
WinPLOSION and TopDesk: Exposé for Windows
by Jordan Running Jul 8th 2005 at 3:58PM
One of the neatest "wow factor" features of Mac OS X is Exposé, which, with a keystroke, will show you a "map" of shrunken versions of all the windows you currently have open for easy task-switching. For Windows there are at least two utilities that emulate Exposé's functionality: WinPLOSION and TopDesk. (If you want to know what the effect looks like, check out the Flash demo on the WinPLOSION site by clicking on one of the screenshot thumbnails.) Though they use different keyboard shortcuts, the programs seem fairly comparable, both featuring the same three main functions of Exposé: Show all windows, show all windows that belong to the current application, and show the desktop. Unfortunately, neither program is free -- they both cost about $10 -- but WinPLOSION has a 7-day free trial and TopDesk has a feature-crippled unlimited trial.
[Thanks Marc and Cosimo]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Myria said 4:19PM on 7-08-2005
The 'Alt-Tab Replacement' XP power toy does something very similar for free.
From http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx --
"With this PowerToy, in addition to seeing the icon of the application window you are switching to, you will also see a preview of the page. This helps particularly when multiple sessions of an application are open."
Frankly I've never found this function very useful, but to each their own.
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Victor Agreda, Jr. said 5:16PM on 7-08-2005
Personally Expose changed the way I used my Mac. With a 12" laptop screen my real estate was precious. And before, I had a lot of window management. Now, that is no longer an issue. Seriously, I would estimate my productivity with Expose alone doubled.
But then, I have friends who hate GUI's and live in the command line. If only there was Expose for Amiga...
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David said 6:45PM on 7-08-2005
Another Alt-Tab replacement for Windows XP is TaskSwitch XP
http://www.ntwind.com/taskswitchxp/
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William C Bonner said 6:59PM on 7-08-2005
I tried Topdesk a couple of months ago. I had really liked Expose and wanted that abaility on my PC. The thing that I didn't like with top desk was that if I hit the hot key twice in a row, it switched what was on top. I think it was switching to whatever window the mouse happened to be hovering over but it still was annoying. On the mac, I'd sometimes hit the hotkey just to see what windows I've got open, and being able to hit it again and go right back to what I was doing was important.
Other issues I ran into: repeated hits of the hotkey re-arranged the windows differently each time. results were strange on a multi monitor configuration.
I may go and try WinPlosion, but some of the shortomings may simply be because it's not fully integrated into the OS.
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James Stewart said 1:34AM on 7-09-2005
William, you'll find that the latest version of TopDesk (1.3.3) resolves the issues you were experiencing.
You can see what's changed since you last tried out the program at http://www.otakusoftware.com/topdesk/whats_new.html.
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JinFX said 3:36AM on 7-09-2005
TaskSwitchXP still rules for me...though it has crashed at least once out for no reason
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DigitalStupor said 1:22PM on 7-09-2005
I tried em both, but TopDesk was a far better integration of the simple Expose featur (I have a PowerBook, so I love this feature to death). It was faster, smoother, and even put info titles over each tiled window so you could use it as a reference if need be. Winplosion worked, but was really "jumpy" and not silky smooth, unless there was some killer extra feature, I would never use it over TopDesk! I instantly purchased TD when I saw how well it worked. I know have the tile all windows button mapped to the task switching button on my Logitech Mouse - works like a charm!
This is an awesome find, thanks DownloadSquad!
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Lisa said 3:42PM on 7-13-2005
Looks like WinPLOSION is for sale:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/7/prweb260467.php
Just saw it on Yahoo-News.
Cheers,
Lisa
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