Extra buttons is a convenient solution that uses the space to add functionality to those windows. It integrates perfectly with the window design, making it difficulty to distinguish between native buttons and new buttons that have been added by the free software program. That’s at least true if the window uses the standard Windows color scheme and not a custom skin.

Even better; It is possible to remove items that are not needed from the title bar to concentrate on some of the buttons and functions only.

The available buttons are the following:

• Send to tray
• Send to tray menu
• Send to box
• Roll up / Unroll
• Always on top
• Send to Back
• Transparency
• Adjust transparency
• Copy window

Some require explanation. The first two options, to minimize the window to the system tray or system tray menu does the following. If send to the tray individually it shows up as an icon there. The tray menu offers to place multiple icons in one menu to save space there.

Send to box offers a similar concept as the free software Fences, albeit in a simplistic form. It can be used to place windows in arrangements on the Windows desktop.

Send to back places the selected window beneath other open windows on the desktop.

Copy window finally launches a copy of the window if possible which can be very convenient in certain situations.

Buttons can be removed and added again in the program options which are accessible from the system tray.

The program adds the functionality to the window title right-click menu as well, again with options to only display select items from the available ones.

Another feature of Extra Buttons is the ability to configure keyboard shortcuts (hotkeys) for every action.

Now on to the problems. The tool displayed buttons fine in some windows, for instance in Firefox or Thunderbird. It did not display buttons in Google Chrome or Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer may be a restart issue but I’m not sure about that. Another problem was that buttons sometimes took time to move to the new location, especially after resizing windows. The last problem I encountered was that the hotkeys did not work, no matter what I tried to make them work.

I have tested the software on a Windows 7 Professional 64-bit system. Extra Buttons could become an interesting convenient service for Windows users, if the developers manage to sort out the bugs that I have encountered (provided that they are general bugs and not only on my system).

Users who want to give it a try can download Extra Buttons from the developer homepage. (via)

This can be done from within Windows without having to install additional software. To select multiple programs or windows at once press the Ctrl key while selecting the items in the Windows taskbar. You notice that every selected window or program will be shown as selected immediately.

To perform an action a right-click on any of the selected programs or windows is required. This right-click opens a context menu with five options for processing the selected windows.

Available options are cascade, tile horizontally or vertically, minimize or close.Especially the options to tile the windows horizontally or vertically can save lots of time or the need for third party software programs that offer this option.

Taskix is just one program for the Windows operating system that allows users to move Windows taskbar items around. A new version of the software program has been released as a beta recently adding support for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 and 2008.

By default only the function to move items in the taskbar is activated. This is simply done by left-clicking on a tab in the Windows taskbar, holding the mouse button down and moving it to another location. The cursor changes as soon as the user begins to move the mouse after selecting an item in the taskbar.

Taskix supports multi-monitor systems and can start with the Windows operating system. Both of these features are optional. As are the following features which can be enabled in the program’s options.

• Scrolling tabs in the taskbar with the mouse wheel
• Configuring middle-clicks on the taskbar
• Configuring middle-clicks on items in the taskbar

The first option makes it possible to scroll through each tab with the mouse wheel so that each window – with the option exception of minimized windows – becomes the active window on the system. Middle-clicks on the taskbar can be configured to either show the desktop or restore all visible maximized windows. The middle-clicks on tabs on the other hand can either maximize that window or close that window immediately.

Taskix is a lightweight software program. It runs in the background and consumes about 1 Megabyte of computer memory.

Win Layout adds 33 new keyboard shortcuts to the Windows operating system that can be used to manipulate open windows easily. Most of the keyboard shortcuts make use of a combination of the Windows, Alt and CTRL keys plus the numpad.

Pressing the Windows key plus the numpad keys 1-9 will move the active window into the corner of the windows desktop. Adding the alt key to that combination will move the active window and resize it at the same time. Resizing will either change the size of the window in half or a fourth depending on the numpad key that is pressed.

Using CTRL instead of ALT with Windows and the numpad keys between 1 to 9 will snap the window to a corner of the computer desktop. The difference between resizing and snapping is the fact that the resizing shortcut will always result in the same window size while snapping windows will not.

The remaining keyboard shortcuts make it possible to increase or resize the window size and to move the active window one pixel into a specific direction.

Win Layout uses roughly 6 Megabytes of computer memory while running. Not really lightweight but acceptable for users who use the software program extensively.

Their small computer screen and the touchpad navigation make it sometimes necessary to be able to resize windows. Netbooks have a maximum resolution of 1024×600 which means that it can happen that some elements of a window are not visible on the screen.

Move Me adds a simple keyboard shortcut to the computer system which can be used to resize the active window. Pressing [Windows Shift Arrow Key] will resize the window in that direction. That’s however not the only functionality of Move Me.

It provides additional shortcuts to scroll and center windows and hide the task bar (which is something you should probably do permanently when working with netbooks)

A computer mouse can also be used to scroll windows to all four directions. Best of all, the software program is portable and uses only 2 Megabytes of computer memory while running. Probably one of the best and easiest ways to resize windows.

The window management software adds three configurable features to Windows. Those are the ability to resize or move a window and to scroll the contents of a window. The resize and move options allow to do that to the active window without having to move the mouse to a border of the active window. Resizing the window is for instance possible from anywhere by pressing [ALT] and pressing the right mouse button.

The same is true for moving the active window only that this is done with the left mouse and [ALT] from anywhere.

The scroll feature can change the default Windows behavior. The window that has the focus will be scrolled by default in Windows. This can be changed in the program’s options to scroll the window that lies under the cursor position. This makes it possible to scroll a window without changing focus.

Winsize2 is a Open Source software program that can automatically store information about a windows location and size. The information will be applied to the window whenever it is opened in Windows.

The program has been developed with AutoHotkey which is identified as malicious by some antivirus applications. Please note that those are false positives.

Usage has been simplified. There is only one hotkey that is used to save the window size and location of the active window, to delete the information and to set the options in WinSize2. You can configure exact X/Y coordinates and widths / heights for the windows or to set them to be always on top.

Pressing the hotkey [CTRL ALT Z] (Y instead of Z on some systems) once will save the information while pressing it twice or thrice will delete them again or load the options for that window.

Winsize2 is excellent to place specific windows and applications automatically on the monitor screen without having to resize or move them whenever they are started.

If you have two computer monitors connected to the PC it will maximize it so that both computer monitors will be used as if they would be one monitor. The author recommends using his software program on Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio 2008 but it actually works with any program window that you want to maximize. Heck, it even works if you only got one monitor.

The software program places an icon in the Windows System Tray. You need to right-click it once to configure the global hotkeys for maximizing and restoring windows. They immediately become active after saving them.

The software requires the Microsoft .net Framework and quite some computer memory considering its size of just 32 Kilobytes.

Display Fusion can be downloaded as a free version from the developer’s website with limited functionality. The pro version of Display Fusion can be ordered as well on the same website. The version comparison between Display Fusion and Display Fusion Pro list the features that are only available in the Pro version including wallpaper rotation, custom hotkeys or the fine tuning of the background image position.

The main feature of Display Fusion is to display wallpapers on multiple desktops. The user may display different wallpapers on each desktop or use one wallpaper that spans across all of them. Each computer monitor connected to the computer system is displayed in Display Fusion’s main interface.

The user can load wallpapers from his computer or Flickr and make them the default wallpaper for the computer monitor. Display Fusion Pro provides access to background image positioning which can be used to fine tune the location of the wallpaper on the monitor. It’s also possible to use one of the seven display modes that range from stretching the image to fitting the width or height while maintaining the aspect ratio of the image.

Users of Display Fusion Pro can enable wallpaper rotation in the same interface. They can either add a list of wallpapers from their computer or get their wallpapers directly from Flickr.

Images can be grabbed from Flickr users, groups or by searching for text. The wallpapers set will then be used to rotate the computer’s wallpaper in a time interval specified by the user. One interesting option is to freeze a wallpaper. This will stop the process of rotating wallpapers and make the current one the default wallpaper.

Display Fusion comes with window management features as well which have been specifically designed for multi-monitor systems. Windows can be easily moved between computer monitors including maximized windows. It is furthermore possible to position windows on the same computer monitor. It is for instance possible to center a window on the current monitor or to snap it to one of the monitor’s edges.

One main benefit of Display Fusion Pro is the ability to configure custom window sizing and moving hotkeys. Other interesting features include Window Snapping with the option to exclude applications from it or maximized window dragging between computer monitors.

The newest Beta of Display Fusion Pro enabled another long requested feature to the application. Users can enable a taskbar on every computer monitor. The feature is still beta but it already provides two possibilities for users. The first is to display a Display Fusion Taskbar on additional monitors that is showing all windows like the taskbar on the main computer monitor. The second option is to only display the windows that are open on each monitor.

Jon Tackabury is regularly updating his website Binary Fortress with new information about Display Fusion and other software projects.

Five licenses for Display Fusion Pro are up for grabs. Just reply in the comments and let us know that you want one.

As the name suggests it makes use of the ALT key. Whenever that key is pressed windows can be moved by pressing the left mouse button anywhere in it. This will save some miles of mouse movement per month for many users.

Alt Drag comes with the additional feature to snap a selected window to the screen borders or visible windows on the desktop to make better use of the screen estate.

The software itself is portable and supplied in 7z format unfortunately. You need to find an unpacker that is able to unpack the 7z format. The functionality becomes available as soon as the application is started.

The program icon is located in the System Tray. Alt Drag used about 3 Megabytes of computer memory and 1 Megabyte of virtual memory on a Windows XP SP3 test system. Those are pretty good values for a handy application like this.

Update: AltDrag has been updated to version 0.9 by the developer in February 2011. A beta version of altDrag 1.0 has been released in July of the same year. Both versions sport several new features including support for Windows Aero, new AutoFocus and AutoRemaximize options, new mouse actions, the ability to scroll through windows with the mousehweel or a new configuration user interface.

The configuration utility will be merged with the main application making the initial program configuration more convenient. It is likely that the new version will be released soon.

It did not take long until Aero Shake was ported to the Windows Vista and Windows XP operating system. A beta version of the software program was released by the software developer and is available for download on the homepage. The software requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0 or higher.

The functionality is immediately activated after installation and execution of the software. It works extremely well for a beta software and mimics the window management of Windows 7. The only difficulties during the test involved double-clicking a maximized window which should normally reduce the window to its previous size but it seems that the application sometimes tried to maximize it again.

The free tool Grid Move places an icon in the system tray after installation, a right-click opens a menu with the options and predefined templates such as desktops that are separated in two, three or four even grids. You would then do the following to place the windows in the grids. Left-Click the upper-left edge of the title of the window and grid mode should be automatically enabled. Holding down the left mouse button lets you move the window into one of the available grids and the window will be automatically resized to fit the grid.

If you are not satisfied with the default templates you may choose to create your own templates which might not be necessary for most users but great for certain applications that use custom window sizes. The help files provides enough information to create your own custom grids, I did not take a closer look at this option because I’m happy with the default templates.

You may enter grid mode using two different methods as well. The first uses the middle-button of the mouse. If you click a title with the middle-button it will automatically enable grid mode. Drag the window to the edge of the screen and keep it there for a while. This will enable grid mode as well.

Grid Move is a nice windows management tool which makes working with windows easier.