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It's odd that it's so rare in software to find window widgets that push each other out of the way instead of overlapping.

I'm thinking of the gazillion pallettes in Adobe CS that always occlude each other. You'd think they'd have figured that out by now.

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That's why I prefer Wmii, Ion2 and similar window managers. They really manage my windows, ensuring that they don't overlap and use the screen effectively.

In contrast, most other window managers just enable you to fiddle with the windows yourself, and that's all they do for you. You keep moving and resizing them, one by one, steadily. That's very annoying.

(In fact, I don't even have a desktop image, because most of the time, the desktop isn't visible anyway. I don't want to look at my desktop, I want to use that space for the application I'm working with!)

Visual Studio sort of does this. When you drag one pane over another, the default is to have the panes be tiled or tabbed (depending on where you drag it). It's all very intuitive too, with the arrows to guide you through what you're doing. Visual Studio's window management is totally awesome and one of my favorite features.

Does it work well with multiple monitors yet?

I was watching a channel9 video where one of the devs claimed multiple-monitor support in 2010 was improved. I'm not sure how, or even what needs improving for that matter (I use VS across two monitors.)

VS2010 let you have 2 files open. In VS2008 you cannot have 2 sources code file open in each of your screen. Only one (of course you can put other windows to other screen but not multiple code windows).

Oh! I've never tried that. That explains it. I only put panels on my 2nd monitor.

i end up running multiple instances typically, as opposed to a single one over multiple monitors.

Visual Studio 2010 RC just came out this week and it touts multiple monitor support and other very shiny features. The official release is on March 22; they're not called M$ for nothing =P http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/2010/de... [microsoft.com]

Nice. When do you suppose they will support editing code? You know, features we've learned to expect from IntelliJ and Eclipse?

I don't get it? I edit a lot of code in it?

I never even thought of that. Any examples of software that does this?

Any tiling window manager will have a mode, usually the default, where no windows will be occluded. Instead, all screen space is divided among them according to some algorithm.

blender

Indeed. Remember that overlapping windows was a tech demo to show how powerful the graphics processing was. It was never intended to actually be a production feature.

Thank god for tiling window managers. Xmonad, we salute you. You are the best.

Wmii and Ion2 are also very nice tiling window managers.

Pallets have been able to snap together to the side of the screen since at least CS3, though I only had issues with < CS1 just after changing main monitor resolution...

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