Help: Windows task switching is horrible

Comments

1. Ctrl-Tab works in most apps, like for switching tabs in Firefox. Also Ctrl-[number] switches to the tab in order from the left. Most of this also works in Adobe and Macromedia stuff. If this is what you mean with instances.

   Jacob Rask on 30 Mar 05

2. Check the Windows PowerToys for XP. There is a task-switcher, made as an exercise for a MSDN lesson, that provide a good experience in this particular domain.
   And it always works.
   If you are looking for an Expose-like, there are numerous clone in the mac-mimic crowd, in which I prefer Expire.

   Nicolas Delsaux on 31 Mar 05

3. I use taskswitchxp (taskswitchxp.sourceforge.net/) which I’ve found good and has lots of customisation options

   Ricky Moorhouse on 31 Mar 05

4. Jacob: “in most apps” isn’t good enough for me. I want a shortcut that switches instances across the board.

   Nicolas: I briefly tried the Powertoys switcher but 1) it’s slow and 2) it only switches windows, not applications.

   Ricky: TaskSwitchXP is marginally better than the PowerToys switcher and open source, but it basically does the same thing as PowerToys.

   What I want to make clear - and what almost all of the commenters on this post don’t seem to understand - is that I want something that switches applications, not windows. For example if I have two PowerPoint windows open and two Windows Explorer windows open, I want to hit a shortcut and switch between two choices: PowerPoint and Windows Explorer. Then after I switch to an app, I want to use another shortcut to switch between the windows of that app only. (This is the way the Mac app/instance switcher works.)

   Joshua on 31 Mar 05

5. Alt-Tab reliably switches between applications in a Windows environment.

   Within applications, Ctrl-Tab switches between instances in everything I’ve used EXCEPT MS Word. Since the latest version of Word opens each instance as a separate application, Alt-Tab suffices.

   Susan Carley Oliver on 7 Apr 05

6. Again, Alt-Tab does not switch between applications, it switches between windows. If it switched between applications, there would only be one Word icon in the switcher when I had multiple Word documents open and hit Alt-Tab. But there’s more than one icon, there’s several: one for each window.

   And Ctrl-Tab does not switch between instances in everything I’ve used. If it doesn’t work in everything, there’s no point to using it as far as I’m concerned. Interaction must be consistent for it to be useful.

   Joshua on 7 Apr 05

7. Hiya Joshua,

   I’m baffled as to why you’d want to switch application instances rather than windows. Why would I want to task-switch to Word, when I can task-switch to a specific document I’m working on?

   In pre-OSX days, Apple took ridiculously long to copy the Windows task-switcher. I had to rely on the 3rd-party Task Switcher extension for the longest time. Then when Apple finally copied it (OS 8?), they screwed it up! Rather than cycle through tasks in the order you’ve viewed them, it cycled through tasks alphabetically, making it impossible to flip back-and-forth, effectively rendering it useless. Hopefully that’s been fixed in OSX.

   On Windows, applications that contain their windows (e.g. Photoshop and Firefox), rather than showing them on the taskbar (many apps give you a choice), let you use Ctrl-Tab to cycle through windows in one direction, and Ctrl-Shift-Tab in the other direction. But lamentably, this has the same problem I described above — you can’t switch back-and-forth.

   I could never see the point of the OSX dock showing application instances, rather than document windows. Didn’t years of OS HCI research prove that users think in terms of documents rather than applications?

   Come to think of it, MacOS ignored this principle way too long. Again, I don’t know if this is fixed in OSx, but how often have you seen non-geeks close windows but forgetting to close applications, then not knowing why they run out of memory?

   Francois Jordaan on 12 Apr 05

8. Francois: I think you’re right in saying that users do think in terms of documents rather than applications, but if that’s the point of the Windows task switcher I think it fails. Say I have five Word documents open and I want to switch to the one of them. In Windows, I have to remember the name of the document that I wish to view. There’s an extra step in OS X, as I have to switch to the application first and then the document, but it allows me to flip through documents visually in every Mac application. And there are years of HCI research that shows users will identify something by its appearance before they’ll ever remember what its name is, which by the way is why Expose has been so popular.

   To your second question, I have seen many non-geeks close windows but forget to close applications, then not knowing why they run out of memory. However, this is the forward thinking behind the Dock: users shouldn’t have to think about how many applications they have open; they should only think about what windows - or in the case of OS X, documents - they have open. While this way of thinking makes a lot of sense in terms of interaction (see The Humane Interface), it doesn’t do well in practical terms because most computers lack the memory for users to simply ignore how many applications they have open.

   Joshua on 12 Apr 05

9. For me, by far the most important purpose of a task switcher is the ability to flip between two documents, regardless of their app, instantly and without taking my eyes off the focus of my work in either of them.

   At any one time, in my work, I’m working simultaneously in 2 or 3 documents, almost invariably in different apps. Powerpoint and Explorer. Explorer and Textpad. Photoshop and the file system. I flip back and forth continuously between them, without taking my eyes off the screen or fingers off the keyboard. Almost subconsciously.

   At the moment it sounds like Mac OSX won’t let me work this way out of the box. I could be wrong. But I couldn’t work with that.

   Make no mistake, I think enhancements like representing tasks by mini-representations rather than names or icons, and OS features like Expose, are excellent and I can’t wait for Windows to copy them. (There are 3rd-party utilities for it, just like I had to rely on 3rd-party extensions on the Mac to do task switching years ago.)

   I should also caveat by saying that most PC users don’t have alt-tab hard-wired into their brains like I do. In fact, many don’t know of it. It pains me to see them mousing to the taskbar or moving windows around. People like these would benefit from Expose. I almost always work with windows maximised, to reduce distractions and clutter and scrolling, and I tend to keep my hands on the keyboard, so I don’t use the mouse so much to switch apps. Other people don’t seem to mind spending a significant % of their day moving and resizing windows.

   Francois on 13 Apr 05

10. If you want to switch between separate documents in microsoft word you can use …

    [Ctrl]+[F6]

    someonewhoreadsthemanual on 15 Apr 05

11. in windows, I use two small applications to mime the effect of Expose (Mac) / Kompose (Linux) : it’s called TopDesk (http://www.otakusoftware.com). The second application is from Microsoft: Alt-Tab Replacement, yes that’s the name (http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx) I hope these will improve your workflow on Windows. Mac has a different philosophy/paradigm that I like/respect a lot!

    cheers and happy interaction with your machine.

    khalil amar on 4 May 05

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