Best Task Switcher Replacement

[Gunslinger08]

The standard one is boring, and the Power Toys version just doesn't work very well with AIM or Firefox. Any other good ones out there?

 

[shortylickens]

Do a google for "Task Managers".

Back in the Win98 days, I went to cnet.download.com and found quite a few.
The thing is, even though they might provide more functions and features, all of them are less stable than the program built into Windows.

And since XP is so much better about these things, I doubt anybody has tried hard to come up with something better.

(Are you using XP?)

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: joshsquall
The standard one is boring, and the Power Toys version just doesn't work very well with AIM or Firefox. Any other good ones out there?

How is Alt+Tab boring? What do you want to happen? The screen start to flicker and change colors, music blasting?

 

[shortylickens]

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: joshsquall
The standard one is boring, and the Power Toys version just doesn't work very well with AIM or Firefox. Any other good ones out there?

How is Alt+Tab boring? What do you want to happen? The screen start to flicker and change colors, music blasting?

Why not?
Every computing experience should be a blast!

Along similar lines, how does Apple do their process managing? I only got to play with one for a little while, didnt see those types of features.
Anybody know?
Anybody?
Bueller?
Bueller?
Anybody?

 

[Bowsky]

Mac OSX uses expose to manage windows. Honestly, its like nothing Windows XP has to offer (with the exception of a small amount of third party programs that come to mind). It uses the Function keys (F9 - F11 if memory serves) to activate expose. One key is basically a Show desktop, it will slide all of the windows off the screen giving the user a clear view of the desktop. Another is a scale, at least thats what the linux equivalent is called. It will move and resize all windows so the appear lined up across the screen. It does not do this in the typical sense. The windows are resized as you think of in Windows, they are scaled, so the contents remains the same, much like scaling a picture. During all of this the active contents are shown, if you are playing a video in Quicktime or have the visulizer on in iTunes, it will continue to display (sounds like eye candy but it really can help). The third key is much like the scale but only works with windows associated with the same program. For instance, if you have 10 Word windows and 10 Excel windows open and a Word window is your active window, when you hit the F-Key it will scale and show all Word windows and exclude all others.

Luckly features like these will be coming over to Windows with the release of Vista. While it is eye-candy, these tools come in handy when working with many windows.

 

[camara120]

TaskSwitchXP?

 

[SunnyD]

Microsoft's own powertoy.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Microsoft's own powertoy.

Read the OP.

 

[AmigaMan]

OSX also has AppleKey-Tab which is similar to Window's alt-tab but with a twist. Apple-tab will switch between your open applications, but if you have more than one window open for a particular app, you have to use Apple-` to switch between the different windows of that app. Kinda different and annoying at first, especially if you're a recent convert.

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: joshsquall

Originally posted by: SunnyD
Microsoft's own powertoy.

Read the OP.

I did. It works fine with Firefox and all my various IM's. He's rather vague on what the issue actually is. Ironically - I have minor problems with it and IE7 (not rendering the full picture).

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: tfinch2

Originally posted by: joshsquall
The standard one is boring, and the Power Toys version just doesn't work very well with AIM or Firefox. Any other good ones out there?

How is Alt+Tab boring? What do you want to happen? The screen start to flicker and change colors, music blasting?

You've obviously never used anything else

OS X's task switcher is far easier to use that XP's, as has been pointed out. At the very least you should be able to click on the icons so that you don't have to scroll through a list of 50 by hand. And it would be very nice to have some kind of indication of what window each icon actually is when it's not selected so that, if I have 5 explorer windows open, I don't have to cycle around until I find the right one.

 

[CreepieDeCrapper]

Originally posted by: camara120
TaskSwitchXP?

i'm using this (free) app and it works great... pretty customizable and definitely worth installing and playing around with

it's a touch slower than the default winxp task switcher but don't be scared off as i have an old (and dying) comcrap laptop