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Topic: «Conditional Window Settings for Complex Multi-Monitor Environments , Granular and Advanced Window Rules based on Mouse Focus etc. » on forum: Feature Requests   Views: 3936
 
Mike Webber
Registered user
 
 Posts: 3
Joined: 05/10/2012
Posted: 05/10/2012 10:10:58
 
 
 Hello everyone,

I just registered here to share a feature request that we hold rather dearly as we were unable to find a software that can do all this anywhere else.
We hope this is the right place to share this and we also hope very much that such a function can be implemented in the near future.

We are looking for a feature that allows for a more predictable and flexible behaviour of windows in a multi-monitor environment in which the controller is not able to see all the screens at the same time (e.g. because they are in different rooms).

Picture this situation:
-------------------------------
Quote

- There is a workstation with a monitor (A) and mouse connected to it, sitting in room no. 100.

- To this workstation are further connected two more displays that are in another room, no. 101, via long VGA cables:
- One of these displays is a projector (P), the other one is a touch screen (T).

- All monitors are independent (no mirroring).

First, you will sit at monitor A in room 100, using the mouse etc. to power up the workstation, use the control panel etc.
In this situation, you want all your windows to behave normally, with no additional settings in effect that could move your windows to one of the displays in the other room where you could not see them anymore.

Later, you move to the other room 101, where you use the touchscreen (T) to open up Windows Explorer and start a video presentation!
In this situation, you will want all Explorer windows to show up on the touchscreen only and when you double-click on the video presentation, you'll want that one to open in VLC player on the projector (P) only.

After the presentation is over, you go back to the control room 100 and you want to review the same presentation on monitor A (as you can no longer see P and T).

--------------------------------

Now, the problem is that with ActualTools, if I am not mistaken, you can configure the settings so that new windows always open on the screen where your mouse pointer is.
However, this is too generic, because what you would need in this situation is an option that allows you to set rules like this:
Quote

IF [mousepointer is on monitor A] THEN {display all windows on monitor A}.

IF [mousepointer is on monitor T] THEN
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . {display all Explorer windows  on monitor T} BUT
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . {display all VLCplayer windows on monitor P}.

IF [mousepointer is on monitor T] AND [there is an open VLC player window on monitor A] THEN
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . {move that window to monitor P}.

IF [mousepointer is on monitor A] AND [monitors P and T are active/not switched off] THEN
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . {display all Explorer windows on monitor A} BUT
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . {leave any open VLC player window on monitor P alone}.

Escuse the pseudo-code, but I felt that was the easiest way to show what I meant.
I hope you can follow me with what I am getting at here.
Feel free to ask me for clarification if necessary.

You would of course also want to extend this example with other ideas, so you could come up with a situation where the controller, sitting at monitor A, could set up this whole thing with multiple monitors in other rooms and would still be able to predict which windows would show up on what monitor - without looking (basically being confident enough and able to operate the system blind, more or less). At the same time, you would enable a user in the other rooms to use their displays (like touchscreens) in their confined environment without seeing any of their windows moving to another room where they would be lost forever...

We are quite desperately looking for such a function and would easily buy like a hundred licenses if this were to be implemented in ActualTools software.

Personally, I am quite sure that there is no multi-monitor software as flexible and comprehensive as this one, but implementing the options to set up such granular rules along the lines of the above example, this would certainly make the program even more perfect in terms of features!

Thank you very much for considering this.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts soon.

Kind regards,
Mike
 
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Mike Webber
Registered user
 
 Posts: 3
Joined: 05/10/2012
Posted: 05/25/2012 04:04:32
 
 
 Hi,

Any news on this? Did I describe it in an understandable manner? Is it feasible?
I'd love to discuss this further if you like.

Thank you very much for considering this,
I look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards,
Mike
 
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Chris Miller
Advanced user
 
 Posts: 249
Joined: 08/02/2011
Posted: 06/05/2012 10:31:16
 
 
 I understand this as a user with multiple monitors and would like to see this even with all the monitors in the same room.

You could use the Mirroring function under MultipleMonitors settings to create mirror images of the monitors in different rooms to see what's happening on those.

I'd like to see that expanded upon where some options were added to mirroring to be able to set and restrict placement, and also possibly remove the window border.  That way it looked like the mirrored "image" was apart of the desktop.  The ability to put it into ghost mode so that it was only enabled/disabled by hotkey would be nice as well.
 
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Alex Fadeyev
Administrator

Moderator
 
 Posts: 1428
Joined: 09/30/2005
Posted: 06/06/2012 02:59:40
 
 
 Chris, thank you for supporting.

Mike, sorry for a long delay - we're currently preparing the new beta so that I have a little time shortage.

Your explanation is great and clear. However, I think that implementing a facility that could allow writing such flexible and comprehensive conditions would require to embed some kind of scripting language, which is beyond of demands for a majority of our users.

Also, my personal opinion is that introducing such conditions is "an overkill": most of the goals you described can be achieved using the current set of features. The main one is the Mirror mode of the Multi-monitor Taskbar: after activating this mode, you will see all open windows no matter what monitor they are actually located. So, you will be able to control any window from any monitor, e.g. move it from its current monitor to any other via taskbar button's context menu. To summarize, from my point of view the following features may be useful in the described situation:
  • Multi-monitor Taskbar in the Mirror mode
  • "Move to Monitor - Where mouse" in the Default window settings
  • "Move to Monitor" command in the taskbar button's context menu
Also, the Mirroring facility may be useful, as Chris advised above.

Of course, such approach requires some manual manipulations but I believe that after getting used to a new environment an operator will perform them smoothly and automatically.

Finally, I'd like to say that we already have a request in our wishlist to embed the scripting language into our products (mainly, into Actual Window Manager) but this task has a low priority at the moment.

Please let me know your thoughts.
 
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