Multiple Desktops on WinXP

by Chris Spackman, posted 1 October 2006

Background

In my article Switching from KDE to WinXP, I complained loudly about WinXP's lack of virtual desktops. Well, several people took pity on me and pointed me to two programs that bring multiple desktops to WinXP. One of the programs, “Virtual Desktop Manager” is from Microsoft. It is one of their “PowerToys” and is a free download. The other program is called “Virtual Dimension” and is also a free download. Even better, it is licensed under the GNU Public License.

I tried both of the programs for a couple of days each. I usually hate it when someone reviews software they have only used for a short time, but in this case, the programs are fairly small, they do one or two things, and they are not overloaded with features. In other words, you don't need a month of use to come to informed and reasonable conclusions about these programs.

MS Virtual Desktop Manager

From the Microsoft PowerToys website :

[PowerToys] are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft.

PowerToys only work with U.S. English regional settings.

The first is the reason I still say that WinXP does not have multiple desktops. The second is not true because MSVDM works just fine on my WinXP computer with Japanese regional settings. I cannot say with certainty that some features aren't missing or that my system isn't less stable because of my regional setting.

MSVDM installs like any other WinXP program but after that it takes some experimenting to figure out how to activate it. Nothing is added to the programs menu and there are no icons on the desktop. Nothing in the control panel that I could find. Turns out that MSVDM is a toolbar that you add to the panel by right clicking on the panel and selecting from the toolbars submenu.

After activating VDM, you now have four desktops. No more, no less. You can assign different wallpapers to each one or use a common one for all four desktops. Switching between desktops is accomplished in three ways: clicking on the MSVDM button, clicking on one of the desktop quick switch buttons in the panel, or using keyboard shortcuts. Clicking the MSVDM button shows all four desktops and clicking one changes to that desktop.

Right clicking on the toolbar brings up a list of options plus buttons for switching desktops. The options are:

• use animations
• shared desktops
• show quick switch buttons

“Use animations” probably has something to do with wasting CPU cycles when you switch desktops. I made sure it was off and never turned it on. I just don't care for things like that and even if I did, my machine is underpowered enough as it is.

“Shared desktops” toggles whether the taskbar will show all windows or just the windows that are opened on the current desktop. Turning this on provides the only way I could find to switch windows to different desktops. Which means turn it off, and you cannot move a window to another desktop. Talk about annoying.

“Show quick switch buttons” toggles the buttons for each desktop in the toolbar. Turning this option off means that only the MSVDM button shows in the toolbar, so switching desktops with the mouse requires two clicks.

Shortcomings

I am sure I just missed it somewhere, but I could not find a way to turn off the “MSVDM” label in the taskbar. As the screenshots show, that label takes up a lot of space so not being able to turn it off is very annoying. I turned off the quick switch buttons because having them and the label took up way too much space in the panel. Obviously, I would have prefered to have the quick switch buttons and turn off the label.

MSVDM really is a desktop manager. Windows are not managed. The quick switch buttons are the closest MSVDM comes to having a pager, yet they do not show thumbnails of the desktop or give any indication of what programs are open on what desktop. You cannot use the buttons to move programs from one desktop to another. The MSVDM toolbar is not a replacement for the KDE pager.

The MSVDM button shows all four desktops in a full screen view and superficially resembles Kompose on KDE or Expose on Apple Mac OS X. However, MSVDM does not allow you to choose a program to switch to, just a desktop. It doesn't even show you programs that are minimized (they are shown in the taskbar, if you can make out the text at one-fourth size) so you may have to guess where you left what.

Yet another problem with the MSVDM button's four desktop view is that the thumbnails seem to be updated only when you leave a desktop. So when you first switch desktops, it will show you desktop one and three gray desktops. It doesn't even show you the wallpapers. This isn't a huge problem at first, but later, when you have several programs open and have been moving between desktops, it becames highly annoying. The thumbnails are not updated unless you visit and then leave a desktop so if a window changes on a desktop (download complete, kill a program with the task manager, or you use shared desktops and click a program in the taskbar, etc.) the next time time you use the MSVDM button, the thumbnail is misleading. How big a problem this is depends on individual user's work styles. I was annoyed within 30 minutes.

As I said above, MSVDM is a desktop manager and takes no notice of windows. It provides no window specific settings. It doesn't provide a way to have a specific window show on all the desktops or to always open one on a specific desktop. KDE can do this sort of thing. MSVDM doesn't even give you an easy way to move windows to a different desktop.

For some reason, MSVDM minimizes some windows when you switch desktops. For example, I had PSPad open on desktop 4. I switched to desktop 2 and PSPad was minimized above the start menu. Very strange. I restored it (on desktop 2) and clicked the MSVDM button and now PSPad was shown on two desktops and seemed to be open on both of them. Seems clunky and inconsistant, as it didn't do this with any other apps that I had open. Further, PSPad was minimized above the Start menu and not into the task bar. It goes to the taskbar when I click the minimize button, so why is PSPad (and only it, Firefox and the GIMP were not affected at all) above the Start menu?

Minor thing, but when you set the wallpaper for desktops with MSVDM, no option says anything about scaling the picture — just “center”, “stretch”, and “tile”. Experimenting revealed that “stretch” also covers “scale down to fit”. I was not aware that “stretch” was a synonym for “shrink”.

Virtual Dimension

I have only been using Virtual Dimension a couple of days but already I like it better than MSVDM. Partly that is because Virtual Dimension is more like what I am used to with Linux. Mostly it is because Virtual Dimension works better and has more useful features. For starters, Virtual Dimension makes it easy to send windows to different desktops. It also provides a useful pager with icons of the windows that are open on each desktop.

With Virtual Dimension, you can configure the number of desktops you want. As I mentioned above, it has a real pager that shows you what is really on the desktop (unlike MSVDM which shows you what was on the desktop, the last time you were there). Right clicking on a pager desktop brings up a list of the windows on that desktop. Unfortunately, on my computer at least, clicking on a window name did not actually switch to that window. It only switched to the desktop.

I don't much care but Virtual Dimension can make windows transparent. Not sure of the connection between that and multiple desktops. I would much rather they added the ability to shade windows. I only mention this because it seems like it isn't that hard to make windows transparent. Virtual Dimension does it. So does another program called (FIND NAME AND URL). Yet MS cannot do it? Anyhow, that is a totally different rant.

Speaking of shading windows, there is software that allows you to shade windows (FIND NAME AND URL) but the default settings interfers with the titlebar right click. So until you change the settings, you cannot access the Virtual Dimension right click menu. And even after you change the settings, the two are still accessed through right clicking on the titlebar. Right click once, and the XXXX menu comes up. Right click again and the usual windows menu comes up, which includes the Virtual Dimension menu.

The point is that to get the same functionality that KDE comes with out of the box, you have to install at least two third party programs that, on my machine, occasionally conflict.

KDE

KDE is a good example of how the user benefits from the integration of multiple desktops with the desktop environment. Virtual Dimension is good but because it is not an integral part of the desktop environment it cannot match the features and usability of KDE's multiple desktops. For example, KDE's desktop properties control panel program includes all the multiple desktop options. MSVDM could have added this but didn't. Virtual Dimension cannot. KDE's pager integrates into the panel. Virtual Dimension doesn't. MSVDM does but it isn't really a pager, just some buttons.

Right clicking the titlebar of any KDE window brings up a menu that includes options to move to other desktops. It also has advanced options for things like forcing windows to always open on a specific desktop. Virtual Dimension adds an titlebar right click option for moving the window to another desktop and has some of the advanced options. MSVDM doesn't have either.

Conclusion

Microsoft's Power Toy is not powerful but it is a toy. WinXP users who are not used to multiple desktops might find it useful. People who are used to Linux / KDE style multiple desktops will probably not like the PowerToy at all. Anyone looking for multiple desktops on WinXP should avoid MSVDM and instead should give Virtual Dimension a try. It might not be best for you but it will be much closer than MSVDM.

Thank you for reading this far. If you have any questions or comments about this article, please email me at <osugi_sakae at yahoo dot com>.

In my next article I will take a detailed look at WinXP's file manager, Explorer, and KDE's file manager, Konqueror.

Switching from KDE to WinXP
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