Shoulder Angel's Deadjournal - [entries|archive|friends|userinfo]
Shoulder Angel

[ website | my calendar ]
[ userinfo | deadjournal userinfo ]
[ archive | journal archive ]

[Sep. 2nd, 2008|09:21 pm]
Previous Entry Add to Memories Tell A Friend Next Entry
[Tags|, , , , ]
[mood | geeky]
[music |Hammerhead, The Offspring]

Since I now have a significantly larger screen (dual screens on the work machine, single on the home, but each individual monitor is a 22" widescreen), maximising windows isn't really a viable option any more. The lines of text spread out way too much to be easily read.

So, I remembered in the depths of my memory, some scrap of information I'd come across - an app that allowed you to "dock" windows to set locations by clicking-and-dragging.

It took a fair bit of searching through my "I read this and it was interesting" archives to stumble across the article; the magic keyword wound up being "maximise".

The article in question was The Large Display Paradox from Coding Horror.


Having found the article, I downloaded and installed GridMove.

It works brilliantly with Connor with one screen - I tried a couple of different configurations, but found myself sticking with a simple side-by-side layout.

It's a tidge more buggy with the work machine's (I really need to give that beastie a nickname, at least in my own brain) dual monitors. It lost track of the (what became) four monitors, a time or two (though that may have been me setting it up badly and confusing it.

Small side note, though? iTunes, and its OMGFancy interface, seem to confuse it - you can't click-drag-snap it, and have to maneuver it manually.

My screen layout at work is now laid out like this, most of the time (at least thus far):
|----------------||--------|--------|
|                ||        |        |
|  1        2    ||   3    |   4    |
|                ||        |        |
|                ||        |        |
|----------------||--------|--------|
The lefthand monitor is the one directly facing me - it can still be split into the two columns if I'm reading free-flowing text, but when I'm working with code or big Excel spreadsheets, the more screen real estate, the better. You try reading the fifteenth level of indented code.
Panel 3 is stuff I still need to read and access easily - FireFox and Skype chats, mostly. Panel 4 is "I still want this open, but most likely won't need it in the immediate future" - the main Skype window, iTunes (when it isn't minimised to the tray), etc. Panel 4 is well-and-truly out of easy viewing distance, which is why it's relegated to non-essential content. If I had any sidebars I'd be shoving them over there as well.

My new keyboard has a button that successfully pauses iTunes! This seems like such a trivial thing to be delighted by, but it's the case - makes it much quicker to answer a Skype call or respond to someone in the office talking to me.

So yes. Summary: if you have a big screen and are running Windows, go get GridMove. It's shiny.
-Mmaster
linkReply

Comments:
From: [info]terriblerobbo [livejournal]
2008-09-02 09:17 am (UTC)

(Link)

... try reading the fifteenth level of indented code.

Please hold while I smack the hell out of your developers.
From: (Anonymous)
2008-09-02 06:31 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Make them program in Lisp, they will quickly learn to write easy to read maintainable code... or commit suicide.
[User Picture]From: [info]mmaster
2008-09-02 06:35 pm (UTC)

(Link)

Oh, it's perfectly readable. It's just written on a wider monitor than the 19" I was working on, so I was doing an awful lot of scrolling to navigate it. If you were staying in one area, that was on one particular indentation level, it was fine.

We have a program that's supposed to confine things to 80 characters, but it doesn't for some reason...