Actual Window Manager adds new ways to handle program windows via new title-bar buttons. In addition, it introduces new general desktop operations. This is a great addition if you feel that the Minimize, Restore, Maximize and Close buttons are not enough for you.
Once you have installed this application, it will sit in the system tray and you will soon notice there are new buttons on the upper-right corner of every window. These new buttons are Minimize to System Tray, Stay Always on Top, Apply 20% Transparency and Move to Virtual Desktop. Additionally, there is a button from which you can access the rest of the program’s functions. This is actually the default setting, but you can click on the program icon at the System Tray to customize many other features, including what buttons to show. The icon there also lets you activate or deactivate specific functions.
The configuration window has a navigation pane, where functions are grouped, but you may still find that there are too many options. This is definitely not the kind of program you feel comfortable with from the start. Instead, it might require you to study its interface a little bit. You will then notice that you can use general settings for all the windows or, conversely, you can specify what actions are available for a specific application. Not all actions have visually noticeable effects as some of them will influence the given program’s behavior. These include changing its priority or running it as a different user.
Apart from controlling window behavior, Actual Window Manager allows you to use multiple monitors with even different screensavers for each monitor, different desktop profiles and various virtual desktops. Although this program includes many of the features you have ever wanted Windows to provide, the reverse effect is that it definitely makes the system more difficult to interact with. So, while many advanced users could welcome the new changes to their systems, I do not think beginners would find them agreeable. Fortunately, you can select only those functions you want to use.
In order to access the multiple functions, you can use keyboard shortcuts, but in my opinion, most of them would be rather worthless because it is virtually impossible to remember all of them.
In general, Actual Window Manager adds functions that many users will find useful. However, one thing I did not really like about Actual Window Manager is that it noticeably reduced my system’s performance, so much so that it sometimes made my system freeze for a little while.
v7.0 [Mar 14, 2012]
- Configuration window has been revamped.
- Desktop Divider feature has been added. It allows sub-dividing the entirelarge desktop or each monitor into several non-intersecting areas (tiles).You can create as many custom tile layouts as you need and activate them on the fly as circumstances require.
- Multi-monitor Taskbar: The Mixed mode is added. In this mode, taskbar on the primary monitor shows all running applications on all monitors, whereas taskbars on secondary monitors show only applications running on their corresponding monitors.
- Multi-monitor Taskbar: The option is added to disable the preview thumbnails completely.
- Mirroring: The ability is added to run a mirror full-screen.
- Mirroring: The ability is added to adjust mirror's parameters on-the-fly via right-click context menu. Also, you can toggle a mirror full-screen and back using the Alt-Enter hotkey.
- Compatibility mode is added for the Lock Mouse and Ignore Deactivation hotkeys (try to activate it if these hotkeys do not work by default for a particular game/application).
- Commands to save/restore the order of desktop icons are added into the Desktop's context menu.
- Windows 7: The option has been added to control the height of rolled up Windows Explorer windows (either roll them up completely or leave the breadcrumb navigation bar visible to distinguish rolled up folders better).
- Compatibility with Windows 8 Consumer Preview is improved.
- Compatibility with Windows Snipping Tool is improved.
- Compatibility with TechSmith's Snagit is improved.
- Compatibility with GOM Media Player is improved.
- Compatibility with Gyazo is improved.
- Multi-monitor Taskbar: Compatibility with Winamp is improved.
- Multi-monitor Task Switcher now reacts on mouse clicks.
- Actual Window Manager is now compatible with virtual video devices (like those added by MaxiVista or iDisplay).
- Further improvements of compatibility between Scroll Inactive Windows and Volumouse.
- Virtual Desktops: The Independent mode is improved.
- Classic window snapping is improved: now it does not snap to maximized windows and to the borders of windows, which are partially or completely covered by other windows.
- The "C" command line option has been modified: now it expects a fully qualified name of a folder that contains alternative configuration files to load.
- In some rare cases, window settings did not re-apply after modification.
- Some window settings re-applied after saving the configuration even if they were not modified.
- Excel 2007/2010 workbooks did not activate after clicking their corresponding buttons/preview thumbnails in secondary taskbars.
- Active Excel sheets did not minimize on clicking their buttons in secondary taskbars.
- Context menu did not work in the thumbnail previews for inactive Excel sheets.
- Outlook 2010 left a blank button in the taskbar after launching from a pinned button.
- Internet Explorer 9/10 shortcuts did not pin to secondary taskbars when being dragged from the Address bar.
- Sometimes buttons disappeared from secondary taskbars.
- In some cases group buttons in secondary taskbars displayed the icon of some window in the group instead of the application icon.
- Multi-monitor Taskbar: In some cases multi-row taskbar lost its height after changing its properties.
- Windows 7: Delays for hiding/unhiding an auto-hidden taskbar differed from the system ones.
- With the Auto-hide feature enabled, Multi-monitor Taskbar got auto-hidden when placing the mouse within a preview thumbnail.
- Being in both Auto-hide and Locked mode, secondary taskbar got hidden even if it was clicked.
- Start menu on secondary monitors had no proper right border in some cases.
- Start menu did not appear after pressing Win/Ctrl-Esc if the mouse pointer was on a monitor with no taskbar.
- Windows 7: Icons were cut in secondary notification areas in the Windows Classic visual theme.
- Overlay icons on taskbar buttons disappeared after moving a window to the primary monitor and back.
- Taskbar buttons for windows in the new version of Google Talk showed in wrong taskbars.
- Aero Peek invoked immediately after moving the mouse into a preview thumbnail, without any delay.
- Sometimes tooltip showing current window position displayed incorrect values.
- Crashes in dwm.exe happened occasionally.
- In some cases, Control Center might crash upon reloading the configuration.
- When launching Actual Window Manager after Stardock DeskScapes, Windows Explorer crashed or became unstable.
- With Actual Window Manager running, capturing a video in TechSmith's Jing made it crash upon closing.
- Windows 7: Sometimes Actual Window Manager crashed when creating the secondary taskbars.
- Control Center might crash when starting the wallpaper slideshow if the number of slideshow files changed since the last launch.
- Actual Window Manager crashed when trying to toggle the Virtual Desktops Switcher.
- Virtual Desktops Switcher had numerous problems in the Independent mode.
- Multi-monitor Background parameters did not update after switching the Background Mode only.
- Windows 7: Desktop profiles with cloning could not be activated in the Control Center (via hotkey, at startup, via tray's menu, etc.).
- Windows 7: Photos screen saver, being run in a multi-monitor mode,got frozen on a first image, if the "On resume, display Welcome screen" option was active.
- Upon launching Actual Window Manager, title buttons in maximized windows shifted down if the Multi-monitor Taskbar was active.
- Title buttons did not appear in the Windows Media Center window.
- Additional commands did not appear in the Windows Media Center window menu after switching its window back from full-screen.
- Windows that were minimized to the tray/screen via window menu command did not restore via Unhide submenu.
- Saving the configuration changed the active virtual desktop to a first desktop in the list.
- Hand tool interfered with the gameplay in some games (such as Cogs).
- Wrap the Desktop feature did not work on a monitor where Internet Explorer window was maximized.
- The Remove Taskbar Entry action worked unstable.
- After unghosting a window with the "Unghost temporarily" key combination,the window could not be ghosted back.
- Maximizing a window pinned to desktop in a multi-monitor system made it span the entire desktop instead of the current monitor.
- Configuration windows stayed out of sight when they were located on a secondary monitor and the monitor got disabled.
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