Have you ever wanted more control for positioning application windows in Microsoft Windows? Have you ever struggled setting up three different windows side-by-side? Do you have a need to look at multiple windows on the same display?

If you answered yes on any of the questions above, you will love a free application named “allSnap“.

In my opinion the developer behind this application, Ivan Heckman, is nothing short but a genius. It is also amazing that he offers this feature for free. So let’s look at what this app does?

• Snaps any window to another window or to the edge of the screen
• Snaps any window to a pre-defined virtual grid
• Allows you to constrain windows to the visual part of your screen

Here are some of the many reasons why you need allSnap!

• Every windows easily “snaps” to various regions of the screen, e.g. outlook up to your left, a notepad document to your lower right. The larger pixel resolution you have, the more useful allSnap will be for you.
• Easy compare documents side-by-side, e.g. a 3-way comparison
• Share a sub-set of your display area over webcasts (eliminates the need for changing your display resolution, see more about this below).
• Prevent windows from being dragged outside of the visual display area. When dragging a window, the window will simply stop when it hits the outside border of your display. This makes it very easy to drag a window to the corner of your screen, without having to “fine-tune” its position.

Sharing your screen over a webcast? I share my desktop area over webcasts to clients on a daily basis. During these webcasts my clients project the webcast on the wall in a conference room for all participants to see.

As you probably know, most projectors have a max pixel resolution of 1024×768. Even if the project can display higher resolutions, the “standard” choice is to stick to 1024×768. Otherwise the displayed text becomes too difficult for the audience to grasp. Why is this important to know? Well, if you are going to display your desktop to a specific resolution, you need to change your “local” display to the exact same resolution that your audience is using for their projector.

If you have ever hooked up your laptop to a projector, this is done automatically, usually using your FN + F8 key combination. If you are doing a webcast, it does not work the same way. Your webcast software (I use Microsoft LiveMeeting) will show your entire desktop and if your pixel resolution is higher than what the client’s projector is showing, they will only see part of your full desktop area.

Well, my native laptop resolution is 1920×1200, which is much higher than 1024×768. Running AllSnap on my machine, allows me keep my native resolution and share a pre-defined “virtual grid” area of 1024×768 pixels, while using the left-over desktop workspace to run other applications, which the clients cannot see. The client can only see the “virtual grid” area. This makes webasting a very enjoyable task as I can keep “cheat sheets” visible to me, helping me through tough presentation segments.

If you are not running AllSnap, this type of sharing quickly gets annoying, unless you have a really good eye measure! Without the “virtual grid” to help you out, you have to trust your eye measure as you are sizing your application windows for your webcast to exactly match within the standard 1024×768 pixel grid. This application has already revolutionized the way me and my colleagues are sharing our desktop information over webcast conferences.

One thing you need to remember when using the “virtual grid” is that the Windows Taskbar is not considered part of the grid so you must reposition your taskbar to the right hand side or to the bottom (default position). This is because all webcast applications starts sharing your desktop area using pixel start position of 0, which translates to the upper left corner of your screen.

Here’s an illustration on how I configured the “Virtual Grid” area.

Here’s an illustration on how I am using AllSnap to easily position windows side-by-side during a webcast.

Final note for Office 2007 users!

• When dragging an Office 2007 window the window does not snap. You work around this by “resizing” your window, as this feature snaps as expected. Any Non-Office 2007 and Office 2003 or older window snaps perfectly while dragging and resizing the windows.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE: www.allSnap.org.  Notice that there are TWO versions.  One for Windows Vista and one for Windows XP.

If you have any questions about this let me know. I love this tool and I use it both in Windows Vista and XP Professional. Cheers

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