If I ran the zoo
When I got here, I was surprised to find that pretty much everyone has two monitors.
It turns out that's because you do a lot of back-and-forth fact-checking, and having two screens saves a lot of aggravation.
One of the primary resources I use (there are 5, at least) is accessed by Remote Desktop. Right now, I have 15 windows open. Three of them are personal. I have 7 tabs running in my IE 7, all of which are datasources. Three monitors would not be excessive.
The problem is that Alt+Tab is a computer, in that it does what you tell it to do, the same every time. So I can type in the document I am editing, then switch to a source document with comments in the RD environment by alt-tabbing. However, once I am in RD, I am in it, and I alt-tabbing only changes the order of the three windows open on that computer. Which is totally logical, and how it should work if you think about it. But when for 15 years you have learned that hitting alt-tab again would take you back to where you were, it's AAAAAAARGH maddening. Because this is mistake I make approximately once every two minutes when I am performing this task.
If I ran the zoo, we would take the nifty eye-tracking focus that high-end cameras have, and use it to track which window I am LOOKING at and when I hit alt-tab, go to that one. There are implementation problems with this. There has to be a trigger, or the flicker of my eyes back and forth would change my window focus dizzinly, but it can't be soley eye-dependent, or I would never get to windows which are totally covered by others. But I think it must be possible to do something like this, before I decide to clothe myself in the torn innards of lcd screens.
It turns out that's because you do a lot of back-and-forth fact-checking, and having two screens saves a lot of aggravation.
One of the primary resources I use (there are 5, at least) is accessed by Remote Desktop. Right now, I have 15 windows open. Three of them are personal. I have 7 tabs running in my IE 7, all of which are datasources. Three monitors would not be excessive.
The problem is that Alt+Tab is a computer, in that it does what you tell it to do, the same every time. So I can type in the document I am editing, then switch to a source document with comments in the RD environment by alt-tabbing. However, once I am in RD, I am in it, and I alt-tabbing only changes the order of the three windows open on that computer. Which is totally logical, and how it should work if you think about it. But when for 15 years you have learned that hitting alt-tab again would take you back to where you were, it's AAAAAAARGH maddening. Because this is mistake I make approximately once every two minutes when I am performing this task.
If I ran the zoo, we would take the nifty eye-tracking focus that high-end cameras have, and use it to track which window I am LOOKING at and when I hit alt-tab, go to that one. There are implementation problems with this. There has to be a trigger, or the flicker of my eyes back and forth would change my window focus dizzinly, but it can't be soley eye-dependent, or I would never get to windows which are totally covered by others. But I think it must be possible to do something like this, before I decide to clothe myself in the torn innards of lcd screens.