Installing and Using SmallWindows
Navigate to the developers website where you can download SmallWindows. Once you have downloaded and successfully installed the program, launch the program.
On first start up, a welcome message appears requesting if you would like SmallWindows to open every time you start up your computer. Click “Yes” to continue. If you decide “No” but want to enable it later, this can be configured in Settings.
When the program is running it can be found in the system tray where you can access settings or the mini windows feature. Click on the miniature windows option to view a default version of SmallWindows.
The miniature windows will appear as below.
Alternatively, to configure the settings on SmallWindows, select settings from the system tray instead.
In Settings, you can configure your 4 corner Hot Zones. For our example, we set it to show related applications if you push your cursor into the top left corner of the screen, to show the desktop if you move your cursor to the top right of the screen, and to show all open programs if you move the cursor to the bottom left of the screen.
From now on, if a user open a particular web browser and wants to view all related browser windows open on their computer, they merely have to glide their mouse to the top left hand corner of the screen. You can also see that the miniature Windows are marked from 0 in ascending order. If you wanted to view the desktop, you can just navigate your mouse to the top right hand corner of the screen.The beauty of hot zones….
Instead of using your mouse to access the Hot Zones you have configured, you can configure Hot Key activation. For example, to put in a Hot Key activation code for the related Hot zone select the [None] button.
The Set Hotkey dialog box appears. From the key droplist we choose the “F1” key from the drop down list.
For Modifiers, tick the “Ctrl” check box. Click “OK” to continue.
Another handy feature in the settings page is that you can nominate particular Windows to be excluded from miniature or show desktop. For example, if you wanted to prevent Google Chrome, you just have to select the Exclude Windows button in Settings, click “Add” button and type in its name. It should appear as below if configured correctly.
There are a few other options available in settings such as configuring colour options or enabling Live update of windows.
Conclusion
SmallWindows is a great productivity booster for people who tend to have many applications open at once. Please post your experiences or questions below in the comments.
