For only 8 - 10 windows, Alt-Tab is perfect, or, if you prefer to mouse around, a sideways start bar works well. (i.e., down the left, not across the bottom - a Windows start bar across the bottom of the screen where there is only room for two or three readable items is a guaranteed signal that the user is a moron who can't visualise more than two tasks at the same time. Or, if you like to think of it this way, a natural-born Windows user.)
For this OS/2 coddled baby, 8 - 10 windows is ... well, I'd just as soon run DOS and be done with it. I almost never have less than 20 windows open on a Windows box, more commonly 30-40 and alt-tab is not much help. On my OS/2 boxes 50 or 60 tasks is routine.
Under OS/2, this is very managable via a superb old $10 shareware tool called Taskbar. It's the thing that the Windows taskbar is a very poor copy of. Amongst too many other nice features to mention, Taskbar sorts everything in Z-order. This is brilliant and I have never been able to understand why there is, to the best of my knowledge, no equivalent under Windows.
The great thing about Z-order sorting is that you always know where your applications are - the most recently used one is (assuming you have the bar on the left) about 1cm up from the bottom left corner of the screen, the second most recently used app is a half centimetre above that, and so on.
If you are switching between lots of apps, using groups of two or three, this just can't be beat. For example, I tend to use Mozilla for on-line banking, Quicken for accounts, and Quattro Pro for prices all at the same time. I flip back and forth between them eight or ten times whenever I balance the cheque book, which takes five minutes nearly every day. Then I leave them open, but start doing something else. I'll probably have a different set of apps open: Quattro again, plus PM Fax to read supplier price bulletins, plus Acrobat for more detailed price lists, and PMMail for emailed stuff. I flick back and forwards between them, probably between four different emails too, while I update our internal price list and decide who to order from today.
Then I have a quote to prepare: Quattro for the prices, Describe for the ten-page document that we give to people thinking about systems, and Word to type the quote itself in. Maybe they have faxed a query, so I'll want to refer to that as well.
Then at home I'm updating my web page: PMView to look at the illustrations with, two or three web browsers to see the working copy, EditPlus to make changes to the text with, maybe Quattro if I need performance calculations, another copy of PMView to look at an alternative illustration with (side-by side with the first copy - which is the better shot?), plus numerous other things at lower priority: a half-dozen windows for Storage Forum and SR, various other web pages, maybe the manufacturer's specs page, Google .... the list goes on.
What I'm trying to get at here is that I (and I'm sure this is equally true of most users) tend to use apps in "families" of three or four, switching contexts between these different "families" of tasks every now andf then. Only Taskbar lets my computer do this in a completely transparent and effortless way.
With Windows, even with the help of Toggle Minimise, I have to try to remember that my present foreground task, the job I'm mainly working on right now, is 17th from the top, and the two main associated tasks are numbers 14 and 3. Hopeless. With Taskbar, without my even having to think about it at all, they are #1 #2 and #3. Vastly more practical.
And, ohhhh, for a Windows version of it.
Err, did I answer your question Doug? I think not. Yup, it makes icons in your system tray, one for each minimized task. And yes, NRG, it's a pain trying to hit the right one with your mouse button sometimes, especially if you have been associating with our good Bartender too much.
Damn it! What the hell am I doing inside? Today is perfect.
(Don't start bloody proof-reading, Tea, just hit SUBMIT and come outside with me. Please?)
(OK.)
