Manage Open Windows via Shortcuts or Keyboard

It's great that Windows lets us open several application and folder windows simultaneously, but it can be tough to manage all the windows competing for screen space. Fortunately, Windows provides some relief: Right-click the taskbar and choose an option to tile windows vertically or horizontally, or to cascade them (which arranges all nonminimized windows in an overlapping stack). Don't like the result? Right-click the taskbar again, and choose Undo Tile or Undo Cascade.

You may find it faster to tile or cascade windows from your keyboard, or to give each of these commands its own Quick Launch or other toolbar icon. You can do so with a suitable one-line script.

Open Notepad or another text editor, and type the line (new ActiveXObject("Shell.Application")).CascadeWindows(). Choose File, Save As. Navigate to an appropriate directory and type a name like "Cascade.js"; include the quotation marks so Notepad won't tack on its default .txt file extension. Click Save. To test the script, open Explorer and locate the icon for the file you just saved. When you double-click it, the open windows on your desktop should cascade.

To create scripts that will tile your open windows horizontally or vertically, repeat the steps outlined above but replace CascadeWindows() with TileHorizontally() or TileVertically(). Save each of these variations as its own separate .js file.

If you want to have quick access to your scripts, use the right mouse button to drag the files from the Explorer window and drop them into an appropriate submenu of the Start menu, onto the Quick Launch toolbar, or onto another toolbar. When you release the mouse button, select Create Shortcut(s) Here. Henceforth, you now tile or cascade all nonminimized windows just by clicking your shortcuts.

Note that if your computer associates JavaScripts with Notepad or another text editor, it won't run the script. To fix that, after you've placed the shortcut into your menu or toolbar, right-click the shortcut and choose Properties. Make sure the Shortcut tab is in front, and click the beginning of the Target text box. Type wscript.exe and a space. Click OK.

If you want to tile or cascade windows with a keyboard shortcut, you must place the shortcut icon either on the desktop or in a menu within the Start menu hierarchy. (I put all such shortcuts in a menu called 'Keyboard Shortcuts' so I can easily find them and change them later.) Right-click the shortcut icon and choose Properties. Make sure the Shortcut tab is in front. Click in the 'Shortcut key' box and press your desired keys. Windows forces you to have at least two modifier keys (from among Ctrl, Shift, and Alt) unless you press a function key or a key on the numeric keypad. Be aware that the keystrokes you choose will no longer work in any Windows application. Click OK and you're done. If you later decide to eliminate the keyboard shortcut, simply come back to this dialog box, click in the 'Shortcut key' box, and press Backspace. Then click OK and restart Windows.

If you launch your scripts from the Quick Launch toolbar, you'll probably want to give them distinctive icons so you can recognize them quickly. If you don't have any appropriate icons, you can use a shareware icon editor to make your own. One (admittedly basic) freeware tool is Gary Hodder's Icon Editor 2.1.

After you create and save your icon files (or find an existing icon that suits you), right-click one of the shortcuts in the Quick Launch toolbar and choose Properties. With the Shortcut tab in front, click Change Icon. Click Browse, select your icon file, and then click Open. With the icon selected in the dialog box, click OK twice. Repeat these steps for each of your toolbar icons. To give each Quick Launch icon a meaningful tool tip, right-click it and choose Rename. Type the text you want to see when you hold your pointer over the button (see FIGURE 2). Click OK.

From now on, whenever your windows get unruly, press one of your shortcut keys or click one of your Quick Launch icons. If you change your mind about the result, you can undo the new window arrangement by pressing Ctrl-Z immediately afterward. Note that the undo keystroke will not work if the last active application uses Ctrl-Z for its own purposes; the alternative method is to right-click the taskbar and select Undo Cascade.

• See more like this:
• Windows,
• ScanDisk,
• Disk Defragmenter,
• utility,
• shortcut,
• keyboard,
• maintenance,
• tile,
• cascade,
• font,
• sampler,
• icon,
• desktop,
• IconSaver