Tabbing shell add on for windows

Is there an shell replacement for Windows which allows the Windows to be tabbed rather than stacked?  I basically want my desktop to be tabs and splitter windows, like the new VC.Net IDE.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

You mean no overlapping windows? Windows 1.0 was like that:  http://www.infosatellite.com/news/2001/10/a251001windowshistory_screenshots.html#win101

Matthew Lock
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Yea sort of. 

I don't think I get any real advantage from overlapping Windows as I usually have them maximized, one on each monitor, and use alt tab to switch between apps.  I think tabbing would be cleaner.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Hey Christopher,

Isn't the taskbar effectively the same thing? If you like it on the top of the screen better, you can unlock it and drag it to any side of the screen that you prefer. The XP taskbar's grouping features make it an even better "tabbed" interface, though if you don't like them you can turn it off.

If you also want the look of VS I'd assume that any one of the theme programs around could do it.

  --Josh

JWA
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

When I hit something in the task bar it doesn't go to the location that I want necessarily.  I want to activate and reposition in one step (ie selecting a tab). 

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

this is a good idea.. i'm suprised i haven't seen it around yet.
i would expect something similar to the tabs in newer browsers (firefox, opera) but for windows explorer

pukerz
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

If you maximised all your windows wouldn't selecting them from the task bar have the same effect as tabs?

Matthew Lock
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

"When I hit something in the task bar it doesn't go to the location that I want necessarily.  I want to activate and reposition in one step (ie selecting a tab)."

I'm not following you here - if I have three apps open and maximized, as I click on their button in the taskbar the respective program window is shown. Similarly, if I open three windows in tabs in Firefox or VS.NET, when I click on the tab the respective window is brought to the front. What "location" do you mean? If we're talking about your VS.NET example, there is no position other than on top or below the top. What am I missing?

JWA
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Not if you want to split the screen in quadrants.  I guess I'm thinking about getting rid of the "restored" state all together.  An app is either displayed in a pane or it isn't.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

If you want them in quadrants you will have to initially position and size the windows, but how hard is that?

Matthew Lock
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

RE: Sizing windows manually

Yea that's the difference between VC6 and VC.NETs interface, and yes that's a pain, especially when you want to move an app from the top left to bottom right portion of the screen. 

With VC.NET you can have the screen split into as many sections (horizontal and vertical) as you want and view any buffer in one of sections. 

This is sort of the Emacs style of window management.  It is main reason I prefered emacs over VC++.  VC++.NET basically does what I want now.  But now that I have it in the development environment, I'd like to have it window manager wide. 

I figured with all the Window's shareware, someone would have already done this, but I guess not.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Trouble with MS Windows is that not too many applications really work when they are much smaller than maximised. Imagine Excel and Word tabbed away in the corner, you'd only see about 1/2 of the toolbar.

Matthew Lock
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Probably doesn't do what you'd like, but you can Ctrl + Click on buttons on the task bar, then Right Click and tile the group via the context menu. This way you can quickly get four quadrants across two screens. Or just Right Click on the taskbar and do the tiling for all windows (they'll stay on their original screen). You only get rows or columns on each screen though.

Thom Lawrence
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Try MS Windows version 1.04.

Simon Lucy
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

You can tile horizontally or vertically. The problem comes when you give another Window the focus. Which window does it replace?

Stephen Jones
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Like I said I'm looking for something that works nearly identical to the VC.NET buffer manager.  The only way I can explain it is to compare what I want with emacs or the VC.NET development enviornment.  I thought some emacs geek would have come with something like this, but I guess not.   

To me randomly overlapping windows is a silly paradigm.  It is supposed to represent papers on a desk, but a computer isn't a desk, and I'd rather maximize my screen real estate.  Having a window partially exposed is rarely what I really want.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

I think the designers at Microsoft made a conscious decision to leave customization out of the hands of most shareware programmers or power users. It's most probably a good thing to not have 50 window managers and 200 virtual desktops and tabbed explorers, but I think quite a few windows power users make it their pet peeve being restricted in this manner.

Li-fan Chen
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Microsoft does not such thing.  There are replacement shells available.

christopher baus (www.baus.net)
Wednesday, May 19, 2004

I want this too, although I didn't know it until I read christopher's question and subsequent explanations.

Picknitter
Saturday, May 22, 2004

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