I got an interesting email from a reader of this blog with an interesting suggestion for a Windows 8 refinement.
It involves the manipulation of windows within the OS.
This is from Tyler Jackson.
So I know you guys aren’t Microsoft or anything, but I think I have a good suggestion for Windows 8. So Windows 7 introduced the windows snap feature (which I think is very useful), but I think it can be improved!
So say you snap two windows to opposite sides of the screen, with hulu on one side and a news article on the other. Well, on most widescreens, you’ll notice that the video that is playing on the hulu window doesn’t really need the amount of space that windows gives it when you snap the window to the left. So to reveal more window space to the news article, you have to drag the hulu window to a small size, then drag the news article window again making that window larger.
Wouldn’t it be convenient if you snap two windows to opposite sides of the screen, then have a feature where you double-click or right-click the middle of where the two windows meet, and have those windows be “glued together” in the middle so you only have to drag the window once and it drags both windows at the same time. So that when you drag one window smaller, the other window is automatically resizing itself, making it larger.
Also, going with the same idea, dragging a window to the corner of the screen making it 1/4 of the screen size. Then having four windows in four corners, having the feature mentioned above, making it so you could click and drag in the middle of where all four windows meet and having all four windows automatically resizing themselves when dragging/resizing the windows.
Hope that made sense..?
Anyways, I don’t see any “suggestions” link on microsoft’s website and I figure I’d at least throw the idea out there on the internet somewhere, and I thought this would be a great place to do it. Let me know what you think.
Yup Tyler, Microsoft arent looking for suggestions but we’ll take em. Thanks dude.
What do you guys think of Tylers idea?
If you have any ideas for Windows 8 that you think are cool, share them with us.
that’s a solid idea, with one click being able to manipulate the width of both windows. I’m not exactly a fan of the 4 window idea, but i guess a large part of that is my screen size is only 1280×800 pixels, and a quarter of that is already less than my cellphone resolution, which would be pretty worthless. One thing I would love to see in windows 8 would be an option next to minimize/maximize/close buttons (or just by right-clicking on the top bar) that would allow you to set any window to always appear on top. I often want to put something like a hulu/youtube window on top of my current window, and still be able to work in word or whatever. Just like the mini itunes player, just available for any window you want.