VirtuaWin

I recently ditched my dual display setup and moved back to a single widescreen display. The second display definitely helped while debugging code in Visual Studio. However, most of the time it was turning out to be a distraction, staying in my peripheral vision, while I was trying to focus on the primary display. The move to a single display felt right, thanks to virtual desktops.

Ubuntu comes with virtual desktops built in and it works beautifully. But, Windows 7 does not have built-in support for virtual desktops. I am using VirtuaWin, an excellent open source virtual desktop manager for Windows.

VirtuaWin is chock-a-block full of bells and whistles! I turn off all of them and just do the following:

• Reduce the number of desktops to 2. One for work, other for fun. The default is 4, which is too many to be useful.

• Start it with Windows and turn off the splash screen.

• Bind some intuitive key combinations to switch between desktops. I like Ctrl+Shift+→ and Ctrl+Shift+← to move to the next and previous desktop. Ctrl+Shift at the left corner of the keyboard, and the arrow keys at the right, perfect to use!

• VirtuaWin ships with some cool plugins. I use Dexcube, which has the 3D cube effect, very nice for folks using 4 or more desktops. But, since 2 desktops are enough for me, I use the Filmstrip effect inside Dexcube.