teccy.com

One of the few things I’m looking forward to in Vista is the 3D Alt-Tab mechanism. Well, now that’s available on XP thanks to TopDesk from the good people at Otaku Software. Click the link to see what I’m talking about if you don’t already know. Give the trial a run.

Something to watch-out for is if you have another application, like the Microsoft Alt-Tab Replacement PowerToy, then that will have control of Alt-Tab and prevent TopDesk from working. The solution is simple; remove or disable whatever else you've been using!

An additional benefit for users of Logitech mice with a task switch button is that the program doesn’t have to respond only to Alt-Tab. So what? Well, this provides an opportunity to get away from the <cough> functional task list provided by Logitech by re-mapping the mouse button to a key combination in the mouse driver and then telling TopDesk to use that combination to activate. Once that’s done, all the task switching gets done using the same cool technique.

All this for about £5 a go! Can’t be bad. Now if only Linux had the same kind of thing…

In case you’re wondering, alt-tab won’t work as a key combination for the mouse button because you’ll switch away from the software before it can record it. Which is why if you do this make sure to re-map the mouse button before configuring TopDesk or you’ll have the same problem.