Otaku, Cedric's weblog

Utility of the week: TaskSwitchXP

I enjoyed playing with Entbloess but more for its aesthetic value than its practicality.  With TaskSwitchXP, I might have found a task switcher that is actually better than Windows' default one.

TaskSwitchXP has many features, but there are really two that I already started getting quite used to:

• A bulleted list of the available tasks, as shown above.  Windows' default task switcher only shows you icons of the tasks, and will only display text when you put the focus on one of them.  With TaskSwitchXP, you can see the name of the tasks right away and navigate there in a completely foolproof way (you can also use the mouse and multiple selection).
   
• Being able to move any task to the system tray.  Not all programs let you minimize them in the tray and end up taking up an entire slot in the task bar, which can become sparse pretty quick.

You don't really realize how much you depend on task switching until you try another utility than Window's default one.  And when you do, the first thing you really want is for the behavior to be exactly the same.  Not only do I use Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab a lot, I now have very precise expectations on the stacking order of my windows.

I use both Windows XP and Linux at work, and I realize this fact the hard way every day whenever I try to task-switch on KDE.  Not only is the task switcher ugly and very hard to use (very small icons), it uses a stacking order logic that I still haven't been able to completely figure out.

As far as I can tell, TaskSwitchXP is completely compatible with the default task switcher and it also adds interesting features like being able to switch only between the instances of your current window (for example, you are in a FireFox window and you want to switch to another FireFox windows).  The default hotkey for this functionality is a bit awkward, so I 'll probaby want to change it (TaskSwitchXP is completely configurable), but once I have found one that I want, I will probably start using this feature a lot.

I'm curious to revisit this choice in a few weeks and find out if I have gotten hooked to it.  In the meantime, try it, it's small, inconspicuous and completely free.