Dad’s Around is a panic button software that was created as a contribution to the Donation Coder NANY 2009 programming challenge. The software program is supplied in 7z format which means that a unpacker supporting that format is needed. The software itself is portable and can be run from any location without installation.

It provides access to four options that can be activated with the [Windows Z] key by default. The options can be configured by right-clicking the system tray icon after execution. The possibilities are to silence WAVE audio, kill the actual foreground process, minimize all windows and show a black screen. Each option can be activated or deactivated separately.

The hotkey can be changed as well in case it is interfering with existing hotkeys on the computer system. The program uses roughly 5 Megabytes of computer memory while running.

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The feature can be useful if you work with applications that provide independent windows, say a color palette in Adobe Photoshop, the project manager in C++ builder and basically any other window that you need from time to time but not constantly. You could for instance add and hide a notepad window on the right side of the screen and use it to write down comments, remarks or to-dos.

The application is very simplistic, it provides only two shortcuts to hide applications and an interface where you can remove panels again. Pressing CTRL ALT A adds the panel of the active window to the list of panels that are automatically hidden when you move the window near one of the screen edges. The window automatically docks to the screen and minimizes itself.

Please note that I said panel and not window that is added to the list that gets automatically minimized. If you do that for an explorer window all explorer windows will have that behavior. It does not really matter for Notepad or other applications that you usually only open once though.

The second option is to press ALT A if the Panel Hider window is active and your mouse hovers over another window. The application adds an icon to the system tray providing options to restore the settings and to remove panels from the list of windows that are automatically processed.

Once the window is docked to the screen you can reveal it by simply moving the mouse over the title bar of the window. Yes that is right, the title bar will still be visible but the rest of the window won’t be.

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Simply select the window from the Watchcat system tray icon and it will be automatically hidden in Windows. Now this only works with windows that are not minimized to the system tray. If they are located in the system tray maximize them first and select them afterwards in Watchcat. I made a quick test with Thunderbird which is minimized in the system tray most of the time. I maximized it and used Watchcat to hide the window.

The mail notifications would still appear in the system tray and I was able to view new mail as usual. I personally think that it does not make much sense to hide windows that are already minimized in the system tray. This works definitely best for windows that are in the taskbar.

Watchcat is highly customizable. It’s really incredibly what the author packed into such a tiny application. It’s possible to password protect the application or unhide all applications on system exit. Even more interesting than that is the extensive list of hotkeys that are available for all sort of purposes in Windows.

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Windows Hidie is a 17 Kilobyte program that runs under Windows XP SP2 and all Windows Vista editions. It id capable of hiding pretty much any window, not just the ones that you have opened in Windows. It displays lots of system windows as well which might be a bit confusing for beginners. My advice would be to check out the filenames if you are unsure about an entry. Most that you would like to had have appropriate names though, say uTorrent if you prefer to hide the Bittorrent client at system startup or during a session.

Checking a window and clicking on hide hides the window on the system. The reference however is still visible in Windows Hidie so that you can display it again if you need to. The process in the task manager, if there is one, is also still visible of course.

The best part however is the option to hide windows on startup. This makes sure that the window will be hidden whenever windows is running and not only in the current session.

Three shortcuts are available while windows Hidie is running. You can hide the active window by pressing Windows Z, Windows S shows all hidden windows again and Windows A displays or hides Windows Hidie.

The version of Windows Hidie is only 0.1 and I would like to propose a few changes that would improve the application. A way to filter windows would be nice, maybe implement a default filter that would not display all those windows system windows that are only confusing. I would also like to see a way to mark more than one window at once and hide them together.

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Plancoin is able to hide windows for you. You can either select to hide all windows that you add to Plancoin or all windows except those that you add to the software. The latter is the safer choice in my opinion but it is up to you. Adding windows is a little bit problematic because Plancoin uses page titles to identify windows.

This means that you have to find a generic name that is always in the window title to make sure the application will be closed every time you press the hotkey. Pressing CTRL + F8 either hides or reveals all windows.

Discovering generic titles is however not as complicated as it may sound. Firefox for instance has always ‘Mozilla Firefox’ in the title.

I was surprised on how quickly all those windows were hidden after pressing the shortcut. It should be noted that sound does not stop playing when hiding the windows which means that listening to Internet Radio for instance can still reveal that something is not right.

The software Plancoin itself is not visible in the taskbar or system tray after you press the ‘hide this dialog’ button. The configuration window can only be revealed by pressing the shortcut CTRL + ALT + F8.

Read More:

Plancoin Homepage

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