Day Changers are those tools you stumble upon that make an impact on your day to day Salesforcing. Today's Day Changer is one that helps me maximize the use of my laptop screen.
When I was with my old company, I fully embraced the power of multiple monitors. When I started, I had a 15" CRT beige box. When I left, I had a triple-headed monster. 21" widescreen monitor in portrait mode on the left for coding, 21" widescreen center monitor, and a 19" square for email/reference.
Anyway, now that I'm on my own, I don't always have the luxury of multiple monitors. I work off of a laptop and at best I get to work at my desk with an additional 21" lcd. Most of the time, I'm working off of my laptop's 13.3" screen.
Ouch.
Granted you can get by, but it's hardly efficient. Shortcuts like ALT+Tab are useful, toggling windows and keeping my hands on my keyboard, but I need more.
I'm a big fan of the virtual desktops found in many of the linux flavor. A quick CTRL + Alt + left, right, up, or down and I'm on another desktop with its windows exactly where I left them.
However, try as I might, I've yet to find equivalents for all of the tools I use on a day to day basis. But what if virtual desktops existed for Windows?
That's where Dexpot comes into play. A quick download, install, and a few key key assignments later I was good to go. The tool is quite flexible and offers several additional plugins like Dexgrid and Dexcube for additional eye candy.
You can configure additional desktops if needed, but I easily get by with 4 in a 2x2 grid. My top-left desktop is usually the Force.com IDE/Eclipse. Top-right is a Chrome window with multiple tabs (all within the same SF instance). Bottom-left is usually the Developer Console or a Debug Log window for testing. Bottom-right is my leftover desktop - maybe another Chrome window, Evernote, Notepad++, whatever I need.
I can keep everything logically organized on these additional virtual screens and without taking my hands off the keyboard, I flip over to another screen and quickly switch back. Adding an additional key and using CTRL+ALT+Shift and an arrow key, I can move the active window over to another virtual desktop.
If you do have multiple monitors, you can utilize them as well. Or not, by turning disabling Dexpot for those displays.
Bonus Tip #1: Windows key + arrow left or right to resize and snap a window.
Bonus Tip #2: There are shortcomings of the above shortcut key. For instance, monitor orientation is not taken into consideration. Snap a window to a portrait mode monitor and you end up with a long thin column of a window. Not too useful. That's where GridMove (http://jgpaiva.dcmembers.com/gridmove.html) comes into play. You can create custom zones and assign keyboard shortcuts to snap windows into each. For example, on my 19" square, I broke it up into 2 rows; the top half dedicated to Outlook and the bottom equally split between Evernote and Notepad++.
