BenBishop.me.uk

Deskloops is a product that has been in development a while and has always looked like an innovative way to work. Available only as public beta at the moment it redefines the way you navigate multiple programs in Windows to suit you. The product description does its job pretty well,

"Imagine yourself at the centre of a virtual loop where all the windows you use are spread out around you. Whichever window you need to view can be centred in front of you with a click of a button.

Take this idea and zoom into your pc environment. With Deskloops, all the windows you have open are aligned side by side in a loop-like order. No more countless windows arranged one on top of the other in a confusing manner. You can access all the information you need and navigate through it easily."

With a very small download, about 1.5mb, and a simple setup you are up and running very quickly. As the program begins, up pops a tutorial that does a good job of going through the excellent feature set that is available. Personally I probably felt that it gave a little too much information just to get started but the tutorial is available to view at any time by right clicking on the Deskloops icon in the system tray where other options are also configurable.

Instantly I am reminded of Yahoo Widgets (Konfabulator) and the program has a slick interface to it much same way as Yahoo’s product does or as if it was designed by Apple.

After clicking through the tutorial the desktop is setup with no further configuration required and immediately you begin to feel as though this could be the future of desktop environments on all platforms.

Navigating between windows in this horizontal loop can be done in one of two ways, in addition to the traditional ways of switching between windows. Firstly by moving your mouse to either side of the screen and right clicking, a chevron cursor appears, and the window loop sweeps smoothly in that direction. Moving the cursor up and down the side of the screen increases or decreases the horizontal scrolling of the windows. When the window of choice appears, moving your cursor back to the middle finishes the scroll.                    

Alternatively, clicking at the top of the screen brings into view the ‘Strip’ which displays a row thumbnails as a graphical representation of the windows you are working with. The horizontal loop can be navigated in similar fashion on the strip – moving your cursor to the chevrons that are already displayed at either side of the strip, then clicking to select the program you wish to work with.

The strip is more for organizational purposes though rather than for simply navigating back and forth between two adjacent windows or programs that you are working with. Moving your cursor over the thumbnails that are showing on the strip, the highlighted thumbnail or window appears with a descriptive label and icons to minimise maximise and close, thus saving time when you have 8-10 windows open (not included tabbed browsers like Firefox). While certainly not initially the biggest selling point of the product, for instance the rotating windows certainly has more immediate impact, Deskloops’ ability to save your desktop windows in their current state is fantastic addition. Whether for hardware or software configuration changes or simply shutting down at the end of the day, for some having to close a dozen windows to only reopen the next time you log on can be a real inconvenience!

Be warned this is a Beta release (version 1.3 can be found here) and isn’t yet perfect as a retail product would be. I have found issues with the loading/ saving of desktops (for instance generally only generic microsoft products save at the moment) and I believe there is an incompatibiity with dual monitors though a fix is promised. Taking up less than 10,000k of memory, as previews go though, this is a very impressive product that I can see being of benefit to proffesionals in different environments such as web developers, designers and programmers.

Where does the future lie in a product like this? Well put it this way, I really wouldn’t be surprised if Xilokit, the New York City based Software Company that developed Deskloops, gets relocated to Redmond. Microsoft would be the obvious choice if they were looking to flip and integration into Vista would be the natural outcome.