MSDN Magazine - December 2007 - (Page 15) both windows on-screen at once without the need for incessant Alt+Tabbing. While Windows® has long supported multiple monitors, the Windows Shell has never really been adapted to handle more than one screen. The main drawback is that only one monitor can contain the taskbar and thus it houses the icons for all of the apps on all of the monitors. As a result, the taskbar becomes cluttered and searching for a particular application can be frustrating as there’s no visual relationship between an application’s taskbar icon and the monitor it resides on. Fortunately, there are third-party window management tools designed to vironments. One such tool is UltraMon version 2.7.1 by Realtime Soft. The UltraMon Smart Taskbar extends the taskbar across all screens and locates application icons in the appropriate taskbar. UltraMon also adds two buttons next to each window’s Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons: Maximize to desktop and Move window. The Maximize to desktop maximizes the window to stretch across all of the monitors; with a single click, Move window sends the window to a different monitor. Other features include the ability to stretch wallpaper across all monitors and to launch a screen saver that spans all monitors. UltraMon also provides an API that can be accessed through the Windows Script Host. UltraMon is an affordable, lightweight program that greatly enhances the multiple-monitor experience. If you regularly use two or more monitors, you owe it to yourself to give UltraMon a try—you won’t be disappointed. Price: $39.95. realtimesoft.com/ultramon A notable exception is Head First Design Patterns by Eric and Elisabeth Freeman (O’Reilly, 2004), which covers all of the essential design patterns in an entertaining manner. It dispenses with pages of boring text and replaces answer sections, a variety of diagrams, and heavily annotated code snippets. Gone too are the canonical examples. Instead of using employee or productrelated examples, Head First Design Patterns illustrates how and when to use a particular design patterns through silly applications involving pizza, ducks, chocolate, and gumball machines. Despite the book’s somewhat cartoonish layout, it is full of useful information. Head First Design Patterns introduces and describes design patterns from the perspective of a common problem all system architects have faced at one time or another: how to add new functionality to an existing object hierarchy. It presents a duck simulator application as an example and steps through the concerns and challenges. It then delves into the strategy pattern and how to implement it to address this challenge. Later chapters cover other essential patterns: the decorator, the observer, the factory, the singleton, the iterator, the adapter, and more. When designing software, the same sorts of challenges arise again and again. Design patterns provide architects with a repeatable, proven way to tackle these problems. Head First Design Patterns makes it fun and easy to learn some of the most useful patterns and how to apply them. Price: $44.95. oreilly.com Have Fun Learning Design Patterns books on design patterns. Design patterns are general, high-level solutions used by software architects to solve common software design problems. The problem is that most books on design patterns stodgily enumerate key patterns, dryly explaining when and how each is to be used. Send your questions and comments for Scott to toolsmm @microsoft.com. Scott Mitchell, author of numerous books and founder of 4GuysFromRolla.com, is an MVP who has been working with Microsoft Web technologies since 1998. Scott is an independent consultant, trainer, and writer. Reach him at Mitchell@4guysfromrolla.com or via his blog at ScottOnWriting.NET. All prices were confirmed at press time and are subject to change. The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Microsoft. Toolbox december2007 15 http://oreilly.com http://realtimesoft.com/ultramon http://www.dynamicpdf.com http://ScottOnWriting.NET http://www.cete.com
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