Vista Expose-style switcher

Heh.

I absolutely love that they had the foresight to actually make an API for working with DWM and doing stuff like this -- something that to my knowledge Apple and the XGL guys have not bothered to do for either OSX or Linux.

That's really cool. I do kind of wonder, though, what benefit it would have beyond providing an Expose-like feature?

Any thoughts?

CM

Conner: Mac users are convinced it's superior to the task bar.

Interestingly, IE7 has something like this for its tabs. On the far left of all the tabs is a very small tab that only appears when you have two or more tabs open. Rather interesting feature.

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Original post by Promit Heh. I absolutely love that they had the foresight to actually make an API for working with DWM and doing stuff like this -- something that to my knowledge Apple and the XGL guys have not bothered to do for either OSX or Linux.

You can use Quartz Composer/Core Image to manipulate the window management inside your application and inside the window manager; Amit Singh has made a couple "wobbly window" plugins for OS X.

As for Xgl, Xgl is just the X server -- you can access it using GL/X11 calls like normal. The window managers that you run on top of Xgl (Compiz, Beryl) add stuff like wobbly windows, and Beryl has a pretty aggressive plugin architecture -- I've already replaced its default Expose clone feature with a different one. I never use Expose on my Mac -- according to capn_midnight I'm the only Mac user not to. [wow]

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Original post by Conner McCloud That's really cool. I do kind of wonder, though, what benefit it would have beyond providing an Expose-like feature? Any thoughts? CM

I provided it as something people can play and experiment with. The experimentation bar is very low since all you need is Notepad and the C# compiler, both of which come with Vista. It definitely doesn't do much at the moment and is quite lacking in some areas (keyboard navigation is the big one), but hopefully it can inspire someone to do something really awesome and different.

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Original post by mutex I provided it as something people can play and experiment with. The experimentation bar is very low since all you need is Notepad and the C# compiler, both of which come with Vista. It definitely doesn't do much at the moment and is quite lacking in some areas (keyboard navigation is the big one), but hopefully it can inspire someone to do something really awesome and different.

I didn't mean your program specifically, I meant the thumbnail feature in general. Apparently its got its own API, which is cool, but it seems like an API developed specifically for building an Expose-like program. So why didn't MS just make an Expose-like program?

That said, I did get one idea. It would probably greatly simplify things like overlaying your messenger app over top of a full screen game.

CM

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Original post by Conner McCloud That's really cool. I do kind of wonder, though, what benefit it would have beyond providing an Expose-like feature? Any thoughts? CM

Alt-Tab has been updated to use the DWM, the new Win-Tab replacement is also made possible by the DWM, the taskbar has live preview thumbnails of its windows, etc. You could definitely imagine other non-Expose uses for the DWM API. In fact, while I was interning at MS they had me working with the DWM quite a bit.