Switch to and create new desktops under Win2K, WinXP

• Download demo project - 86.7 Kb

Introduction

After working with systems like Linux, I was surprised about the missing feature of virtual desktops under Windows systems.

Nevertheless they ARE supported by MS, but there is currently no tool to work with them. All tools (like Stardocks tools, NVidia tools) are limited by one very important feature: if an application on an active screen is blocking, the whole switch is impossible. So I wrote a little program to handle virtual desktops. There is also a configuration dialog, used to configure the default shell of a desktop. Normally this is the explorer.exe, but you can also define other programs. Just select the executable and possible parameters used on startup of the shell process.

The main class handling all the related stuff is encapsulated in CMFDeskTopHelper.

Also, there are some helper classes for:

• creating single input window,
• processing the registry,
• parsing input keys and
• getting hotkey values.

Comment

The sources are not well documented (and not completely new, the Platform SDK also provides a similar program, btw), and also full of crappy code. But you can use it as a base code to develop your own application.

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)