Manage the Multi-monitor Madness when Moving Mobile (Subtitled - Supporting the “pajama programmer”)

The Visual Basic Team - "Git Over Here": Making Your Windows Mind Their Manners (Matt Gertz) 

"Supporting the “pajama programmer”

Telecommuting is a great thing, and as the environmentally-conscious person that I strive to be, is something I wholeheartedly endorse when it can be done practically. My current job involves a lot of face-to-face meetings with people, so I don’t actually do a lot of it. However, I do work from home in the evenings (for example, when crafting blog posts), so it’s important to me that my setup for working from home is usable.

The challenge that I face is that my work machine is dual-monitor, whereas my home machine is single-monitor. Consequently, unless I make a conscious decision to move all of my windows to monitor #1 before I go home, many of the windows I need are off-screen when I remotely access my work machine from home. Choosing to “cascade” or “tile” the windows doesn’t work, since those commands don’t actually move windows from their current monitor. I can, of course, right-click on the relevant window’s icon in the task bar and choose “Move” to slowly move the window to monitor #1 with the cursor keys, but that’s a hassle. What I want is a quick way to say “git over here!” to one or more windows.

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We're about to move into a multi-monitor dev world at work and I thought this might come in handy, both for our team and to help us build applications for our users that provide intelligent multi-monitor (or smart movement between multi and single monitor) support.

Personally, while I have a second monitor at work, I rarely use it (I know, I know, I can hear you all already muttering under your breath about how multiple monitors have been shown to improve dev performance and generally make life easier... I hear you...). My problem is that I have two work environments. The office and the remote office (a room at home).

At work I have the room for a number of monitors. When remote, much less so. You see, I have little say in my remote desk layout as my cats are very demanding and require ample space with which to monitor my performance, watch the neighborhood from my window, lay in the sun, etc, etc. So no room from multiple monitors. And the mental context switch from multi at work to single when remote was just too much for my little brain.

Plus I have a number of apps that really are not too happy about the same context switch. They are semi-smart apps and remember their previous locations, which is cool, except they not quite smart enough to realize when their remembered position happens to be on a monitor that doesn't exist... doh.

Hence my interest in this post. Plus I really liked the subtitle... :)

BTW, the source for this project can be found here, MSDN Code Gallery - Temple of VB - VBGitOverHere - Moving your windows to monitor 1