Utilities for Multiple Monitor Users

On 6/5/06 6:46 AM, "Chris Gibson" wrote:
> I currently have two monitors on my Mac, and the frustrations I've
> run into are holding me back from putting the three monitor setup,
> sweet as it is, on the Mac. For instance, the menu bar always being
> on the one "main" monitor - I'm constantly having to move the mouse
> back and forth between monitors to use the menus. Or moving windows
> between monitors - again, it's a long draaaag to rearrange the
> windows. I shudder to think of all the dragging I'd be doing with
> THREE monitors!

You might want to give DejaMenu a try; it puts the menu bar's menus in a
pop-up menu right under your mouse cursor.

<http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html>

Chris, this isn't a software solution, but another way to look at the problem:

Keyboard Shortcuts.

It sounds like your biggest issue is the time needed to activate menu items. As monitors grow in size (and in number) the great attribute of the MacOS's consistent menu bar starts to become a drawback simply because of the distance involved between the window/document you're using and the commands that are in the menu bar.

As menus go, the MSFT Window's way of having a menu at the top of each window scales better with larger desktops, but does nothing to retain the power of muscle memory.

For the long-term solution you'll want to start learning your keyboard shortcuts. (All hail Jef Raskin!) Shortcuts allow you to use muscle memory commands to control your computer, and if you're a touch typist, those commands won't even interrupt your work flow.

You've also got the right idea with the 'right click to display the menu'/context menus. I remember somthing like that in the Radius Control Panels many moons ago. A quick Google search brings up nothing in this arena for me, but YMMV.

Some options:

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macgems/2006/05/shortcuts/index.php

On Jun 6, 2006, at 9:23 AM, rosso wrote:

> For the long-term solution you'll want to start learning your
> keyboard shortcuts. (All hail Jef Raskin!) Shortcuts allow you to
> use muscle memory commands to control your computer, and if you're
> a touch typist, those commands won't even interrupt your work flow.
>
> You've also got the right idea with the 'right click to display the
> menu'/context menus. I remember somthing like that in the Radius
> Control Panels many moons ago. A quick Google search brings up
> nothing in this arena for me, but YMMV.

And learn to use the contextual (right-click or control-click or,
now, two-fingers-plus-thumb click) menus.

Many applications now do a very good job of choosing the right things
to put into a given contextual menu, and if what you need is in that
menu there is essentially no mouse movement.

The "proper" interface--as seen in the famous visit to Xerox-Parc--
had no menu bar...it was all on-demand menus.

For that matter, MS Internet Explorer 7 beta (as of beta 2) has no
menu bar (and I must admit that in limited fooling around the
interface works for me). (MS IE 7 beta 1, I'm told, retained the
menubar but put it under some of the other stuff at the top of the
window.)

--
John W Baxter
jwbaxtermac.com

On 6/6/06 11:24 AM, "rosso" wrote:
> Chris, this isn't a software solution, but
> another way to look at the problem:
> Keyboard Shortcuts

If (when?) I get a chance to spend all my time on one platform again, I
think this could be a big help. My problem today is that I move between
platforms often, and I just don't seem to have the memory of my younger
self, and the various keyboard shortcuts don't "stick" in my mind as I jump
back and forth between platforms. Perhaps a generic way to access menus
would help (akin to the Windows "Alt" key approach), but then I feel a
little dirty - you know, trying to make my Mac work more like Windows!
(shudder)

> It sounds like your biggest issue is the time needed to activate menu
items

Certainly, menu access is a biggie, but the thing I find I really miss is
the ability to take any active window and move it between monitors with just
one or two mouse clicks or keyboard commands. In some ways, this might even
solve my menu issue, if I could just click on a window and move it to the
primary monitor to work on it, and then with another click move it over to
one of the side monitors when I'm done focusing on it. I know that with my
Windows machine with 3 monitors, I'm constantly moving application and OS
windows around from monitor to monitor based on the needs of the moment.
It's probably what I'm missing the most on the Mac right now, in fact, and
any utility to do that would be great.

Perhaps I'm missing the obvious on moving windows about...I'm not all that
familiar with AppleScript - is it multi-monitor friendly? Could an
AppleScript(s) be written to take the active window and move it from one
monitor to another?

  ..Chris..

On or about 6/7/06 11:33 AM, thus spake "Chris Gibson"
<chris.gibsongibsons.org>:

> the various keyboard shortcuts don't "stick" in my mind

You might like to try KeyCue. See my review:

<http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07690>

m.

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At 11.33 -0700 2006-06-07, Chris Gibson wrote:
>Perhaps I'm missing the obvious on moving windows about...I'm not all that
>familiar with AppleScript - is it multi-monitor friendly? Could an
>AppleScript(s) be written to take the active window and move it from one
>monitor to another?

A combination of AppleScript and a shortcut utility like iKey will be your friend for this.

Here's for example a script that moves and maximizes the current front window of any scriptable app to monitor #2 - I've assigned this script cmd-opt-ctrl-2 in my iKey setup:

-- requires Jon's Commands http://www.seanet.com/~jonpugh/
tell application "System Events"
        set appname to (name of first process whose frontmost is true) as string
end tell

set myscreenlist to screen list
if (count of myscreenlist) „ 2 then
        set myscreen to item 2 of myscreenlist
        set mybounds to bounds of myscreen
        if has menu bar of myscreen then
                set item 2 of mybounds to ((item 2 of mybounds) + 22)
        end if
        tell application appname
                try
                        if titled of window 1 then set item 2 of mybounds to ((item 2 of mybounds) + 22)
                end try
                try
                        set bounds of window 1 to mybounds
                end try
        end tell
end if



--
     Johan Sölve [FSA Member, Lasso Partner]
     Web Application/Lasso/FileMaker Developer
     MONTANIA SOFTWARE & SOLUTIONS
http://www.montania.se mailto:joh-nmontania.se
 (spam-safe email address, replace '-' with 'a')

On Jun 7, 2006, at 12:33 PM, Chris Gibson wrote:

> Perhaps I'm missing the obvious on moving windows about...I'm not
> all that
> familiar with AppleScript - is it multi-monitor friendly? Could an
> AppleScript(s) be written to take the active window and move it
> from one
> monitor to another?

Applescript can be used to move windows around via UI scripting. The
trick is that you'd need to hard-code the specific X,Y coordinates on
your whole desktop (all three monitors) for the edges of each;
there's no command to, for example, send the window to the edge of
monitor A.

As I don't have multiple monitors, I haven't tried doing anything
like this, but it's entirely possible. These scripts should get you
started:

-- This first script will return the x, y coordinates of your window
tell application "System Events"
        set theWindow to window 1 of (first process whose frontmost is true)
        set thePosition to position of theWindow
        display alert name of theWindow & ": " & ((first item of
thePosition) as string) & ", " & ((second item of thePosition) as
string)
end tell

-- This second script will set the frontmost window to the x, y
coordinates you configure
tell application "System Events"
        set theWindow to window 1 of (first process whose frontmost is true)
        set position of theWindow to {10, 15} -- Set this to the appropriate
x,y coordinates
end tell

My recommendation would be to set up a script for each location you
might want to send windows to, and then set up a keyboard command in
FastScripts Lite to make these scripts run with a keyboard shortcut.
Alternately, you could fire off the scripts from LaunchBar,
Quicksilver, DragThing, your mouse software, etc...

This script probably won't work for some applications which don't
properly report windows, and may generate errors and all kinds of
nonsense. Shouldn't damage anything, though.

--Nik

Would the AppleScript suggestions here work with Preview? (asked as a complete ignoramus regarding AppleScript). I too share the dual monitor problem but am happy to drag windows back and forth provided that I can maximise them with a single click. Preview doesn't maximise properly - in fact its window zooming behaviour is quite erratic whether using one screen or two (I'm sure in blatant breach of Apple's own interface guidelines). I really like Preview as a PDF viewer because of its lightning search capability, but having to manually drag a window to size EVERY time drives me nuts.

Peter T.

I'm not familiar with Chris Gibson's problem as I don't have multiple monitors. However, there may be a hardware solution to the problem.

I've used a trackball for so long I can't understand why everyone doesn't use one. In particular, I use a multi-button Kensington Turbo Mouse and more recently the Expert Mouse Pro. The former has four buttons and the latter 10 buttons that can be programmed to do a number of things. For clicking and dragging one button can be programmed to issue the "mouse down" command. Clicking again stops the "mouse down" action. Moving the cursor with the trackball is a breeze. With a flip of two fingers on the trackball one can move the cursor from one end of a monitor to the other and still have fine control for smaller movements.

The Turbo Mouse comes with the MouseWorks software, which is used to program the buttons and adjust the cursor acceleration. One of the actions that can be programmed into any button is called Pop-up Menus. I haven't used this feature so I don't know if it would fit your requirement. However, MouseWorks can be downloaded from the Kingston web site for no cost and installed. MouseWorks is useless without the trackball, but the help file describes how to program the buttons. You could at least see if Pop-up Menus would help resolve your problem. The OS 9 version of MouseWorks actually has more features than the OSX version, including one called "Instant Menus". Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a manual, per se.

http://us.kensington.com/html/1385.html

I haven't used anything other than a Turbo Mouse so I can't make any comparison with other trackballs. Compared to conventional mice they are a bit pricey at USD 100 for the wired version and a bit more for the wireless version. To me it doesn't make much sense to use a wireless version. The beauty of the trackball is that the device as a whole doesn't have to move and has a smaller footprint than a mouse pad. The only disadvantage compared to a conventional mouse is that care must be taken to prevent foreign matter, especially hair, from being deposited on the ball and subsequently interfering between the ball and the rollers that pick up the motion of the ball. Such matter is easily removed but can be a nuisance especially after one has had a haircut!

At 08:45 06/14/06 -0700, bearepj wrote:
>I haven't used anything other than a Turbo Mouse so I can't make any
>comparison with other trackballs.

I too much prefer trackballs. I can't speak for all other trackballs, but
most are much inferior to the Kensington products. I've given up trying
anything else despite some frustrations with Kensington.

Edward
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

The MouseWorks software also works with Kensington mice. For their 3 and 5-button mice, some additional click gestures are supported: to wit, clicking both front buttons or (if they exist) both side buttons. Also, one of commands supported is displaying an application list at the mouse point. Until  command-tab supported easily changing and displaying all application in the center of the screen, I usually programmed the two-front button simultaneous click as the application menu.

Based on the code Nik posted, here's a couple of applescripts to move the current window between monitor:

Basically, the script first determines where the current screen's positioned, and then add or subtracts the current screen resolution to it.

You'll have to specify your current resolution in the beginning of each script, and then you'll probably want to tie it to a keyboard combination for easy/quick usage. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to add to the script and have it "sniff" for the users current resolution, rather than manually specifying it, but I'm guessing that would slow down execution a bit, so I've opted for manually setting this up in the code.

Hope this helps someone - I was using Geekbind to accomplish this, but it's recently started erroring out a lot, so this thread, and Niks code helped me out a lot! Hope these scripts prove useful to someone other than myself

- Tony

BTW... The applescript seems to be kind of "falling apart" visually in this message, but should compile okay in Script Editor (which will re-format it when it's compiled)



MOVE TO LEFT:

tell application "System Events" -- setup current resolution details -- These will have to be changed if/when the resolution changes set resolutionX to 1600 set resolutionY to 1200 -- 1st, determine current X & Y Positions set theWindow to window 1 of (first process whose frontmost is true) set thePosition to position of theWindow -- display alert name of theWindow & ": " & ((first item of thePosition) as string) & ", " & ((second item of thePosition) as string) set currXPos to (first item of thePosition) set currYPos to (second item of thePosition)

-- Now we move the window 1600 pixels to the left tell application "System Events" set theWindow to window 1 of (first process whose frontmost is true) set position of theWindow to {(currXPos - 1600), (currYPos)} -- Set this to the appropriate x,y coordinates end tell end tell





MOVE TO RIGHT:

tell application "System Events" -- setup current resolution details -- These will have to be changed if/when the resolution changes set resolutionX to 1600 set resolutionY to 1200 -- 1st, determine current X & Y Positions set theWindow to window 1 of (first process whose frontmost is true) set thePosition to position of theWindow -- display alert name of theWindow & ": " & ((first item of thePosition) as string) & ", " & ((second item of thePosition) as string) set currXPos to (first item of thePosition) set currYPos to (second item of thePosition)

-- Now we move the window 1600 pixels to the left tell application "System Events" set theWindow to window 1 of (first process whose frontmost is true) set position of theWindow to {(currXPos + 1600), (currYPos)} -- Set this to the appropriate x,y coordinates end tell end tell