Multiple Desktops

It's no secret or surprise that I greatly prefer Linux to Windows for a working environment. However, reality being the stubborn and uncompromising force that it is, I've found myself increasingly having to use Windows just to decrease the amount of friction in my life. Ideology is for the young.

That said, there are some things that Linux provides that I have sorely missed in Windows. One of those is the ability to have multiple desktops. That is, under Linux, I can have, say, four desktops active at the same time, with different windows open on each of them. Moreover, I can switch back and forth between them with a keyboard shortcut, or a mouse click in a special widget on the taskbar.

People who have only used Windows are always puzzled by this concept. "Why would you want to do that?" they ask me, with genuine befuddlement evident in their faces. The reason for having multiple desktops is that it allows me to separate my concerns, to organize my work into distinct places that help me keep my tasks straight.

Here's another way to think about it. Would you want to live in a house with only one room, where your refrigerator, your toilet and your bed were all within the same four walls? Unless you are pathological in some way, the answer would clearly be "No way!". However, that is precisely the predicament that Windows users are in every day.

Using four desktops, on the other hand, I can put email on one, iTunes and other media players on another, my current major task on a third, and still have a fourth desktop available if another important task pops up later in the day. When that second task pops up, I don't have to futz around minimizing windows and such to clear things away so that I can work on the new problem. I just switch to a new desktop, do whatever is needed to, then go back to my previous task's desktop. In the meantime, I can also handle a bit of email, and fiddle with iTunes to pick another playlist. And one is not limited to four desktops. There were occasions a few years ago when I made regular use of eight desktops, although that was really more a symptom of a problem with the way my job was defined (or rather, not defined).

Sure Windows let's you minimize and maximize individual windows easily. However, that does not really address the fact that a working context almost always involves two or more windows. For example, when I'm programming, I have at least one window running a code editor, and another where I can test the code. When I'm composing an email message or working on a document, I am usually looking at other email messages, documents, or web pages someplace else. When I'm updating my calendar, I'm looking at email, to-do lists, and the like.

Each of these sets of windows constitutes a working context. You use all of the windows in a given context, shifting your attention quickly back and forth between them. Having to minimize/maximize or shuffle windows around with mouse clicks is a big impediment to productivity. It is this problem that has made the use of multiple monitors more popular lately. However, multiple monitors are not really feasible for the laptop user, or for the budget-constrained.

The real problem arises when I want to go back to an earlier context that I was working in. With a single desktop, I would have to bring several windows back into view at one time, either by maximizing windows that I had previously minimized, or by riffling through all the windows open on the screen to get the ones I wanted back "on top", that is, in view. That is simply too much bother most of the time, so my productivity slowly drops as I lose track of where I am. In fact, I often found that I have had to open the same window two or even three times because I could not find it when I need it.

So, given the need to have multiple desktops in Windows, what are the choices? Lately I have taken to checking out the ever-growing pile of well-done posts at Lifehacker.com, which is an outstanding multi-author blog devoted to personal productivity. They have done several posts over the last year or so about tools for multiple desktops, or as they refer to them, virtual desktops.

The first of these tools that I tried was Virtual Desktop Manager, which was one of Microsoft's PowerToys. These are apps that you can find on Microsoft's website, but which come with this proviso:

We take great care to ensure that PowerToys work as they should, but they are not part of Windows and are not supported by Microsoft. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about PowerToys. PowerToys are for Windows XP only and will not work with Windows Vista.

Given that ringing endorsement, I thought it only fair to give it a try. Although the Virtual Desktop Manager did in fact more or less provide multiple desktops, it was flat-out buggy. In particular, it kept losing windows. I would open a window on one desktop, switch to a different desktop, and then later switch back, only to find that the window was gone, or at least invisible. I could see from the Windows Task Manager that the application was still running, but there was no way to access the window. I suffered through this for a few days, and then uninstalled it and went looking for something else.

Next I tried Virtual Dimension, which Lifehacker listed as a 'Download of the Day' for 4/27/2006. It worked pretty well, and was nicely configurable. The basic application worked well enough that I never even got around to checking out a lot of the options that it had. Sadly though, it began to really annoy me. Once in a while it would simply close down a window. This seemed to happen most often with Windows Explorer, so there was no real harm done. Also, it had an odd penchant for opening new windows on the wrong desktop. This happened most often with Internet Explorer. When I was using Microsoft's Outlook Web Access in IE to access email for my new employer's mail, Virtual Dimension would sometimes open windows for new mail messages on the current desktop. However, most of the time it would open them on some other desktop, usually one where I had previously moved a mail message so that I could work with it. It took me a while to figure this out, because of course there was no indication that the window I wanted was already open somewhere else. One of the most annoying things was that for some applications (such as MS Access, which my new employer uses to track our time), Virtual Dimension would show the same window on every desktop, thus defeating the raison d'etre for multiple desktops.

My annoyance level got high enough that today I decided to try out another multiple desktop tool. I went back to Lifehacker and found another package called Dexpot, which was the Download of the Day for Dec. 28, 2006. It also had good reviews from other Lifehacker readers. Other good signs are that (1) it was produced by a German software company, who (2) gives away the product for free to individuals, but charges for companies. If they expect to charge for it, you'd hope that they would have spent at least a little bit of effort with software quality.

Dexpot installed easily. It has lots of configurable features that I've only begun to check out. The biggest thing for me, though, will be that it not lose windows, nor put them in the wrong spot. So far, so good.

Of course, I wouldn't have to mess around with any of this in Linux, whose window manager software works reliably, and which doesn't drop windows, move them around spontaneously, or make them show up in multiple places unexpectedly. Microsoft is still trailing behind, not providing features that other operating systems had years ago. I guess I should be grateful that the folks in Redmond haven't made it altogether impossible for third-party software vendors to at least attempt writing applications to make up those deficiencies in Windows.

Hiding In Plain Sight

I have a vision problem. Unfortunately, it's not one that can be remedied with an optometric prescription, laser surgery or medication. The heart of the difficulty is that sometimes I don't see what is right in front of me.

It seems to happen in any number of purely domestic situations. For example, my wife Mary tells me that there is a certain food container in the refrigerator with something in it which I will like. I go stand in front of the refrigerator for long minutes, peering high and low, moving things around, but, alas, I don't see it. I call Mary. She walks up, opens the refrigerator, immediately puts her hand directly on the invisible item (without moving anything), picks it up, and hands it to me. The same thing happens with some regularity for clothes in my closet, almost any kitchen item smaller than a gallon milk jug, and most items in our office. It also happens with tools and materials in my workshop.

A couple of days ago, I had a somewhat more serious episode of this selective blindness that troubled me. Because of the cancer I am recovering from, I take a number of drugs and supplements. Naturally, these come in bottles of various sizes, which run out at different rates. We try to keep ahead of that by periodically checking the levels, and then calling in refills to the pharmacy. After we pick up those medicine containers at the pharmacy, we put them in a special place so that we will be ready to switch quickly when the current nearly-empty containers run out.

On the Friday before Christmas, I went through this level-checking drill and realized that one of the meds I take, which comes in liquid form, was going to run out before the weekend was over. I called in a refill as usual. Later in the afternoon, when I went to pick up this refill, the pharmacist told me that the insurance company had rejected the refill request because it was too soon by at least a week. In other words, according to them, I shouldn't have run out yet. I explained that, whatever the insurance company thought, I would be out of that particular medicine in one or two days.

The people at the University of Michigan Cancer & Geriatrics Center Pharmacy have become great friends, and they always go out of their way to help us. The person there who handles the phone and the insurance went right to work, and somehow bludgeoned the insurance company into accepting the claim. It took twenty minutes or so, but I was glad to wait for it. I thanked my pharmacy friends profusely, tooks the meds, and headed home.

Mary, who had not been involved in this particular refill request, put the new containers in the appropriate spot when I got home. A couple of days later, when I finally exhausted the current bottle, I went to get the next one. The refill bottle I had just picked up was there, but to my surprise I saw that there was also one more bottle. This was the one that the insurance company must have thought that I had. I swear that I looked in the refill spot before I called in the order. And it's not like it was one of a dozen identical little pill bottles, either. It was a relatively big container, roughly the size of a typical cough medicine bottle.

How could I have missed it? Why does this keep happening? How can I miss seeing items that are obviously right in front of me? Certainly it has to do with focus of attention, but what does that really mean here?

One could speculate that perhaps this selective vision has to do with how much one likes or desires the thing looked for. In other words, I would more readily see something I desire and less readily see something I did not desire. However, that doesn't really explain it. When I stand in front of the refrigerator, I am hungry and I desire food. In fact I desire the particular food I am looking for. Why cannot I see it? Similarly, I want to get dressed, so why can't I see the shirt I want hanging in front of me? I want to take the medicine because it is necessary for my health, so how could I possibly miss seeing it there on the shelf?

Upon reflection, I think this kind of vision error has to do with the degree of affinity or liking, not for the item looked for, but rather for the activity which the seeing is part of. I like food, for sure, but I dislike food preparation. It is almost as if, in my juvenile way, I'm still wanting someone to prepare all my meals for me. Mary in fact does the bulk of the food prep here and does a wonderful job of it without complaint. However, she does not and should not have to prepare absolutely everything I eat. I can manage at least a sandwich or bowl of soup without spousal assistance. The thing is, I don't like spending my time this way. I hate putting in more time preparing the food than it takes to eat it. My guess is that this dislike somehow negatively primes my visual recognition ability.

Mary, on the other hand, gets great satisfaction out of doing those very things I dislike so much. She has very little problem seeing things in the kitchen, the closet, or pretty much anywhere else in the house. Now that I think about it, our kids often suffered from the same kind of blindness while growing up, and likewise had to depend on her (e.g., "Mom, where are my shoes?" "You left them under the coffee table.")

However, Mary does have her vision problems, too. I realized this while helping her over the last number of weeks as she learns how to use Windows XP. She does not like computers, but she realizes that she has to be able to use them to some degree given the prevalence and usefulness of email, web browsing, etc. It turns out that Mary has this same kind of selective blindness when it comes to looking at the Windows desktop. I'll say something like "OK, see the little box to the right of the cursor?" or "Now click on the 'Move File' link in the left hand column", but those location descriptions are not useful for her. When Mary looks at the screen, she sees a confusing mass of text and icons. She does not see things that are right in front of her. Needless to say, this has been a continual source of difficulty for her in getting comfortable with Windows.

On the other hand, when I look at a computer screen, I take in the whole thing almost instantly, identifying all the points of interest without trying. I very rarely miss any important detail. In fact, at times I've been able to diagnose colleague's bugs or find typos in their prose with no more than a passing glance at a screen-full of text. You might say, "Ah, but perhaps it is just a matter of practice." Maybe, but I've always been that way with computers, all the way back to when I did my first programming in 1967 in a high school summer program. I took to computers like a bee to a field full of honeysuckle -- I needed no encouragement and no instruction. Obviously, I liked computers. I suspect that preference primed my visual recognition so that I always spotted salient details on a screen or printout very quickly.

So, perhaps one's ability to see things in a given context is modulated by how much one likes the activity that the seeing is part of. If so, what do you do when faced with an activity that you don't like to do, but that you have to do? The kind of seeing or blindness I've been talking about is an unconscious thing. Willpower will avail you little in fighting the unconscious. I'm not sure how I should approach my own issue in this regard. Now that I recognize this performance shortcoming in myself in certain domains, I can at least try to take it into account. For example, I suspect that slowing down will help. I am naturally inclined to hurry through activities I dislike, which aggravates the blindness problem. If I slow down so that I truly look, I'll bet I'll see more than I have been seeing. Also, "no man is an island" (Paul Simon notwithstanding), so I should also just accept the fact that my blind spots and Mary's blind spots are at least complementary.