How in the Tech

Regain Screen Real Estate with WinRoll

By Adam Myers ⋅ June 12, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Customization

Costs on high resolution displays for your computer are constantly falling all while the size and resolution increase. It’s difficult to think back on the days of the 15″ CRT and 800×600 resolution – both available if you were lucky – and not shudder at the hit your productivity would take if you were forced to return. Back then applications were almost always run maximized to fit as much as possible on your screen. Today, the idea of running every application full screen is rather foreign. We’ve all become multi-tasking demons with many windows open at once, overlayed or staggered across our 23″ wide-screen display.

One unique solution to the limited screen real estate of yesteryear that was popularized, at least for me, by Linux window managers was the ability for open applications to roll-up into their title bars. This left just the thin sliver of the application displayed and was a boon for serious multi-tasking.

WinRoll 2.0 brings this functionality to all modern versions of Windows. The free opensource application, written in assembly of all things, is extremely light weight – taking just over 500K of memory when running. The utility resides in the tray and can be toggled on and off with a simple click of it’s icon. When enabled, applications can be rolled-up with a right-click on their title bars. To apply the affect to all open applications you can hold down ALT while clicking. To me, this is less obtrusive than minimizing applications to get to a buried application window or a file on your desktop.

Try it out and let me know what you think!