Software Review: Sticky Windows

Sticky Windows is an application which is very clever and also quite useful. Imagine if you work with a lot of windows a lot of the time. If you want to get rid of a few to claim back some precious screen real-estate, but you don't want them gone completely, you could just minimise them to the dock, right?

My only problem (and its one you get used to I guess) is that its not that easy to identify a particular window amongst many if you have a few in the dock. Plus when you open one, if you re-minimise it, the window will go right back to the end, so its not in the same place it was last time.

You could also use the 'Hide' context command, but thats rather too "all or nothing" for my liking – sometimes you have multiple windows from one application open, and perhaps you only want to hide just one or two of them?

The solution is Sticky Windows. Once this little application is up and running, you can drag a window to the edge of the screen, where upon it is transformed into a tab, along with an icon and name, like the one shown in the small screenshot above.

Clicking a tab displays the window instantly, clicking it again hides that window. To remove the tab, just drag it off the edge and it will vanish in a poof of smoke. You can move the tabs along the window edge, and tabs can be created on either side or the bottom of the screen.

I find it much faster than minimising to the dock, if you have a *lot* of windows open, as you control where the tab is, and can go instantly back to find the specific window you need.

The only downside with Sticky Windows is that there is no Universal binary yet, and although it will run on an Intel Mac, when you try to create a tab, the window itself doesn't disappear. Hopefully an updated version will be along soon.

Developer: Donelleschi Software
System Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3 or Mac OS X 10.4 – PowerPC only
Download Link: http://www.donelleschi.com/stickywindows/
(943.8KB disk image)

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