bao's blob

It's finally ready! Please leave a comment if it works. Bug reports and suggestions are also welcome, but I'll likely only fix major problems before releasing 2.0.0 final. Additional features or non-trivial tweaks will have to wait until the next version, otherwise I could easily spend a few more months working on Switcher

• New: Windows now have a label, background color, and border. All are customizable. Labels can display the following information:
  • Filename of the application.
  • Window icon.
  • Number shortcut.
  • Memory used in megabytes.
  • Process name.
  • Window title.
• New: The first 9 windows can be activated by pressing the respective number on the keyboard.
• New: Filters can be applied to narrow down the windows that appear. They can also be toggled during a session. Available filters:
  • Search by window title (default shortcut Ctrl+F, or simply type to automatically display the search box). You can search using regular expressions (an obscure feature that I keep forgetting about).
  • Exclude minimized windows (default shortcut Ctrl+M).
  • Hide a particular window (default shortcut Ctrl+H).
  • Show only the windows belonging to a certain program (default shortcut Ctrl+W).
  The default shortcut to remove all filters is Ctrl+R.
• New: You can now close windows during a session (default shortcut Alt+F4 or middle-click a window).
• New: Added Grid View, which arranges windows in a grid. It is intended to make the window numbers easier to use.
• New: Mouse shortcuts can now be restricted to a certain monitor instead of applying to all monitors.
• New: Added the "Begin and Select Next" command that begins a session and selects the next window.
• Change: Animations may appear smoother due to using a different method of smoothing stuff.
• Change: The default shortcut for minimizing all windows except the selected one changed from middle-clicking anywhere to right-clicking on a window. Beware: middle-clicking a window will now close it.
• Change: Reorganized settings into tabs.
• There may be other changes that I've missed.

• Close a window. I had many requests for this one
• Hide a window.
• Show only the windows from the same program.
• Search for a window by text.
• Hide minimized windows.

All the above are commands, so you can assign your favorite keyboard and/or mouse shortcut to them. With exception to the first, they're also all toggleable, which is a new ability for 'hide minimized windows'.

There may be worries of each filter adding a significant amount of bloat. That's actually not the case. They all share a common framework. The filters themselves are quite simple and lightweight; in fact, most of them took only a few minutes to write. And considering how many requests there were for 'close a window', it made sense to me to write a common framework and implement that plus a couple other filters on top. If you're baking a cookie, you might as well bake a batch of them.

• Windows have labels that include the window title and icon.
• The number in the label is a shortcut key. For example, pressing 4 in the first screenshot will activate the Pictures window.
• There's a search box for searching by window title. The second screenshot demonstrates a search for "picture".

Comments and suggestions welcome. And yes, there are more features in 2.0 in addition to the above.

• New: Mouse shortcuts can now have required keyboard modifiers: Control, Shift, Alt, and the Windows key. This lets you create shortcuts such as Ctrl+Middle click.
• New: Settings now upgrade across versions. The settings are unique to wherever you placed Switcher, so they will not upgrade if you move the Switcher executable around.
• New: Added setting to hide notification tray icon for Switcher. You can either right-click the icon and select Hide, or uncheck the Show tray icon checkbox in the main window.
• Change: Throughout the UI, input triggers are now called shortcuts. I feel the latter is a better-known term.
• Change: Cleaned up UI in Input Settings dialog. It should be less cluttered and confusing. Added tooltips.
• Change: Starting secondary instance of Switcher now activates and shows the existing instance.
• Change: Pressing Esc in Tile view now does not change the activated window. Previously it would activate whatever window your mouse had moved over.

Let me know if it works or if you experience any serious bugs. I plan on releasing 1.2.1 final within a few days assuming nothing serious comes up.

Thank you everyone for the comments and suggestions. And just so you know, while I can't incorporate all feature requests due to conflicts or resource constraints, I do consider all of them. More versions to come :)

• You can now choose between Dock and Tile view in the main window. This was probably the most frequently-asked question :) Other settings have also been moved to the main window for easier access.
• Fully customizable keyboard and mouse settings. Middle-clicking now minimizes everything except the selected window.
• The desktop can now appear as a selectable window. Selecting it minimizes everything.
• Many bug fixes.

A complete list of changes is available here. Thanks everyone for the feedback and bug reports. And yes, there are more versions to come!

For those who beta tested 1680, the following changes were made:

• Multimon: When desktop is displayed as a window, only the primary screen is displayed.
• Switcher doesn't attempt to minimize windows lacking a minimize button anymore.
• Fixed problem where Skype caused an invisible window to show up in Switcher.

• Fix: Winamp doesn't cause small windows anymore in tile view. Known issue: Winamp windows are treated as separate application windows.
• Fix: Lessened flickering in Input Settings dialog when selecting new command.
• Change: The command list box in Input Settings now looks cleaner. Less commands are visible with this change, but if that's a problem you can resize the dialog to see more.
  
  Old:
  
  
  New:
  

Thanks for the comments everyone. Keep them coming!

• Keyboard and mouse bindings are now completely customizable. (As a safeguard, Esc always works to end a session.)
  
  The default bindings now let you:
  • Middle-click to activate the current window and minimize everything else.
  • Click the background to minimize all windows.
  • Press Windows+CapsLock to start Switcher in a mode that stops Switcher when you release all keys.
• Some settings now appear in the main window and are easier to change.
• Desktop can now be displayed as a window; see the "Show the desktop" setting.
• Tile view arranges windows across all monitors.
• Fix: Google Talk doesn't cause windows in tile view to be small anymore.
• Fix: Vista Virtual Desktops' hidden window doesn't show up as a selectable window anymore.
• Fix: Wacom tablet tooltips don't show up as selectable windows anymore.

Known issues:

• Keyboard and mouse bindings do not work if active application is elevated (i.e. Registry Editor).
• Multimon: Really wide or long windows have messed up thumbnails.
• Google Talk doesn't minimize when you perform a minimize command. It then refuses to participate as a selectable window. Unfortunately, Google Talk has a bizarre window setup and quirks, so I'm not sure I can fix this.
• Yod'm 3D may show up in Switcher if you activate Switcher while Yod'm 3D is activated. It's a Switcher bug that probably won't get fixed until post 1.2.0.
• Some global mouse triggers theoretically make your mouse unusable: move mouse anywhere, or left/right click anywhere. Switcher ignores these triggers but doesn't tell you.

Bug reports, comments, and suggestions are all welcome!