More bang for your buck? More desk[top space] for your money!
Steve Revill, wearing his 7th software* hat rather than his RISC OS Open Ltd one, announced a new version of MoreDesk at the start of July – a version which brings a number of significant fixes and improvements, and builds upon the previous version (1.24, apparently – ahem!)
With MoreDesk, users can organise their windows over a space that is larger than the normal RISC OS desktop – a facility it provides by creating a grid of “desktop spaces”, any one of which can be on screen (i.e. can be “the” desktop that is visible) at any time.
Windows are easily moved between each desktop space, and each space can have a different selection of pinboard icons and different backdrop images – and, of course, it’s possible to get an overview of the entire thing. The obvious use of such a facility is to have different desktop spaces for different purposes, such as one for website development and maintenance, another for leisure purposes, and so on.
The complete list of changes provided by Steve in his announcement is:
- Fixed the SWI MoreDesk_ReadInfo (2) reason code.
- Added a new SWI MoreDesk_ReadInfo (3) reason code.
- Added an option to allow both Alt keys to act as an alternative to the Alt+Windows key combination for fetching windows.
- Modified various default configurations to be more like the way I’ve really always wanted them.
- Fixed a few bits where the demo build’s default configuration had gone stale.
- Now requires !Routines 1.48 or later, which fixes various (potential) bugs.
- The installer does a better job of merging pre-existing saved configuration with the released config.
- The ‘Ignore’ and ‘TaskSpr’ lists have been updated.
- Fixed a very long-standing bug where using the close window function on a directory would often result in the parent directory opening.
- Fixed both-alt key behaviour introduced in version 1.24, which didn’t quite work as intended.
- Fixed pre-existing alt-key handling bug.
- Micro window is now consistent in where it opens (rather than potentially jumping about).
- Accelerated the main window plotting by around 2% (in tests with around 100 open windows at 0.12 scale).
- Made the main window hint for window with input focus a tiny bit clearer.
- Added a configurable highlight in the main window for the top-most open window.
- Increased the micro window auto-close timeout on a desktop change by one second.
- Alt+Windows key-related stuff is now all on the same configuration tab.
- Extended the alt+windows key-feature with an optional fetch top-most window when there’s no alert window.
- Tweaked some of the graphics in the configuration window.
- Statistics window now includes a count of non-ignored (non-pane) windows in the current desktop (note: the pinboard counts as a window!)
MoreDesk is a commercial application, although there is a time (and number of desktop-spaces) limited demonstration version available to download. The software can be ordered for £14.99 by post (adding £2.50 to cover media and P&P if you want the software supplied on CD, rather than sent in an email). If you’d prefer to buy it online, using your credit card, the cost increases because the purchase is made from Share-it, which has to apply VAT (or a sales tax, depending on the country of delivery).
* Steve pointed out to me that it’s “7th software” and not “7th Software” as I originally wrote in my email to him, though he forgets why that is the case (case, geddit? Case. As in a lower case ‘s’. Hoho!)
