Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware
DM2: Window Management Wizardry
by Lee Mathews Aug 1st 2008
The Windows Explorer shell is great and all, but I've written before about some of it limitations and omissions - and offered up some downloads that help patch the holes. DM2 is yet another solid choice: it's free, tiny, portable and it's got a ton of useful tricks up its sleeve.
DM2 looks like any other shell enhancer at first, offering all the expected tweaks: it'll minimize apps to the system tray or to floating icons, hide, align, and change opacity of windows, and roll up windows to the title bar. With DM2, however, that's just the beginning.
Minimize, restore, and maximize just aren't enough options, so DM2 amps them up by letting you add right-click and control, alt, and shift click actions to them via the app's control center. For example, I've set right click on the minimize button to roll up, right click close to send to tray, and shift + right click close hides my window. But wait, it gets better.
The control center is a power user's dream, offering support for plugins as well as an extremely flexible custom action system that supports expressions. If you're willing to put the time and effort into learning the lingo, there isn't much that you can't do with DM2 as far as window management goes.
A few plugins are packed in the zip, and they add a whole new layer of awesome to DM2. Try PasteSN: it'll take your serial from a text file, dashes and all, and effortlessly paste it into those annoying, non-advancing boxes that Adobe and Microsoft tend to use in their regestration forms. There's also a Cd drawer controller, virtual desktop manager, and gamma switcher.
DM2 can also embed a small dropdown menu of your favorite folders in the windows open/save dialog screens. Anyone that does a lot of work with local files will appreciate this function for the repetetive clicking it can save. Menus can even be application specific, and environment variables are supported - important, since it's portable and your %windir% may be in a different spot on your work PC.
For the incredible number of welcome improvements DM2 adds to Explorer, it's well worth a download.
A few plugins are packed in the zip, and they add a whole new layer of awesome to DM2. Try PasteSN: it'll take your serial from a text file, dashes and all, and effortlessly paste it into those annoying, non-advancing boxes that Adobe and Microsoft tend to use in their regestration forms. There's also a Cd drawer controller, virtual desktop manager, and gamma switcher. DM2 can also embed a small dropdown menu of your favorite folders in the windows open/save dialog screens. Anyone that does a lot of work with local files will appreciate this function for the repetetive clicking it can save. Menus can even be application specific, and environment variables are supported - important, since it's portable and your %windir% may be in a different spot on your work PC.
For the incredible number of welcome improvements DM2 adds to Explorer, it's well worth a download.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
conor said 6:47PM on 8-01-2008
what theme is that?
Reply
Lee Mathews said 6:49PM on 8-01-2008
Royale Noir...It's an official MS theme, so it doesn't require the uxtheme patch.
Reply
conor said 5:04PM on 8-10-2008
I was away for the weak so thank u a little late
conor said 3:53PM on 8-02-2008
whats that xp theme?
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