September 22, 2009
Multi-monitor configurations are great but I think they leave out some usability aspects that could really make life easier for the keyboard user. When I was just using dual displays I really wanted keyboard shortcuts to do the following:
* Move a window from one screen to the other.
* Swap what is seen on each display.
When I moved to 3 monitors my needs changed a little.
* Shift a window to the screen to the left or the right, rotating around.
* Swap a display with the one to the left or the right.
* Shift all displays to the left or the right.
This would make it extremely fast to move the window you are currently working on to your primary display, then push it back to where it came from. Or swap the contents of your right screen with your centre screen if you need to shift your work focus for a while.
As far as I know this is not possible with Windows, Mac or most Linux configurations. However, I believe using FVWM as your Linux (ok, *nix) window manager will make this all possible, at least my experiments with dual screens have been positive. I'll update this blog with various functions that should make all of the above achievable.