Here are 4 quick freeware utilities that tweak the way you interact with open windows and applications in most Windows environments: Deskpins, Winroll, RadTab, and AllSnap.
Deskpins: this free program resides in the system tray to be used whenever you need to keep any Window or application topmost (i.e. keep it above all other windows) – see screenshot.
Rather cool (especially the little red pin icon that you apply to windows); works with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, 2003 and takes up a mere 4 megs of system memory.
[Thanks go to reader Orin for pointing this app to my attention.]
Winroll: this application allows you to roll up a window so that only the title bar is visible, resulting in an effect similar to rolling up a blind. This is done simply by right clicking anywhere on the title bar, and works well (except I noticed it displayed an unwanted context menu whenever I rolled IE 7 windows). In Windows 2000 and above it also applies a transparency effect to Windows using the middle mouse button. Costs less than 1 meg in memory. No info on compatibility with Vista. [Thanks go again to reader Orin for pointing this app to my attention.]
RadTab: reduce desktop clutter by consolidating open windows into a single, tabbed window. Running the Radtab.exe executable will present you with a list of open Windows that you can apply RadTab to. The selected window will now feature a small tab in the bottom left corner; you can right click on that tab in order to add more of your open windows to it. Note that you can add tabs for different types of windows (e.g. an open folder window, a browser window, and, say a text file).
After using RadTab for 24 hours it seems that it can be somewhat buggy (e.g. tabs can flicker in and out, or windows disappear(, but hopefully the author will eventually fix that. RadTab is similar to WinTabber (which I must confess I didn’t like very much). RadTab runs on Windows XP only.
AllSnap: this program will make windows that you might move around your desktop ’snap together’ (as, for example, they do with WinAmp), or snap to desktop. You can set the threshold in pixels in the settings, and once your window is within the range you define the snapping-to-grid will take effect. It can also prevent any Windows from going off the screen. You can press the Alt key (user definable) in order to suspend the snapping action and move windows normally. Takes just over 5 megs in memory. Does not work with 64bit Windows; no info is provided for Vista compatibility.
