Hi! I want to present a great application that I've developed. SmartFlip is a replacement for the Flip3D function in Windows Vista.
It places the windows on a circle (it's actually a ellipsis combined with a parabola ),
You can select to which window you want to
flip by using the keyboard or the mouse. You can use as a trigger a keyboard key (you can even replace Flip3D, so that SmartFlip
appears when you press Win+TAB) or a screen region (for example, the left corner).

Because it's build using WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation), I could "copy" some
of the features Mac OS X Expose has. For example, when you place the mouse over a window, the title of the windows appears
with a nice glow effect . Another useful feature I implemented is that you can display only the windows related (created by
the same program) with the active one (which has focus).
Another important thing is that you can fully customize SmartFlip.

Notice that this is a "beta" version and it may contain bugs. If you find one, or have any suggestions, please post it here.
You can find a small documentation in the zip file that comes attached to this post.

Edit:
Here you can watch the program in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYX6YboNA4c
And here is a direct link to the application (for those who don't have a Neowin account): http://smartflip.110mb.com/SmartFlip.zip

DOWNLOAD !
Click to view attachment

Here are two screenshots:

Click to view attachment
Click to view attachment

PS: the next version will include voice recognition
You can improve a little the drawing speed if you set the background opacity to 255.

Looks awesome.
I don't have vista on my PC anymore, since atm I want all my HDD space for XP, although when I do get vista when it comes out, this may well be one of the first things I download and install.

Works great! 2 things: it doesn't find Remote Desktop Connection program, while Vista's flip does (EDIT: it won't find minimized Windows). There is some delay when I first try to rotate windows. Other than that, excellent!

It works for me with the Remote Desktop Conection program. And it always finds minimized windows ! The only window that it doesn't find is WinDVD, but
Flip3D doesn't finds it either .

Edit: I updated the application. Now it blocks any key press when it's running. So it prevents you from starting, lets say, Explorer when you replaced Flip3D.

Cool app!

A couple things I noticed...
1) It's really really slow if I turn on the "Show window titles" option, and "animate on show" doesn't really work, just adds a delay it seems.
2) There's no option to show the desktop window in the list, as Flip / Flip3D do.
3) I have a hunch that you are marking your application window as maximized... and that you should not =)

Let's start with the first problem. When you set the "Show window titles", it may be slow because it usses WPF to display the titles, which
needs a good graphics card. Probably you graphics card is not powerfull enough.
It should show how the windows come to their place, try this with, let's say, 3-4 windows. When you have many windows,
DWM API it's too slow too update so many window.

Until the final version (probably one week after Vista ships), I will provide a feature to display the desktop icon too.

In the current version it's maximized, but i'm going to modify it.

Final note: thank Microsoft for providing this very "powerfull" way to handle window thumbnails. You can only use them in 2D, and moving them is very slow, even on a good graphics card.

wow cool...another app i will watch and use once a few more updated builds come out

Well, my graphics cards is a 7800GTX... so I kind of doubt that is the problem Could be a performance interaction with something else I'm running, hard to say without knowing what your code is doing.

Yeah... that will work better for Ultimate users



Well, the 2D thing could change at some point, who knows. As for performance, that could be a matter of how you're using the API. Unfortunately there is no managed code interface so if you're using WPF it might take some work to get the best performance out of it with WPF (especially since it's an HWND-based mechanism).

Oh - and I forgot to ask... Any plans to release the source?

I have an old FX 5700LE, so I tought that the performance problems are caused by it. I just made a simple app that displays a text with glow, and I noticed it's pretty fast when it's animated. Maybe it's someting wrong in my code, I will check it tomorow.

I really hope they will make the 3D API public. The window updating it's not slowed by WPF. At the beginnig, I made the same sample application in Win32 and in WPF. I haven't notice any difference in update speed, so I moved foreward with the WPF implementation.

If you have other suggestions, please let me know .

And the source code (~7000 code lines) ... I haven't decided yet if I make it public

Man, best Windows program ever seen!

Nice app. Good work

indeed, nice.

nice and working well, thx for this one :-)

Overall, it looks really nice. I'm running it on my Thinkpad T43 and it seems really smooth. I really like the ability to scroll through windows created by the current app. When working with Matlab, I often end up with many figure windows, which can be a pain to sort through.

The only problem I'm having is that I can't seem to scroll through the windows using tab or shift-tab. I can right click on windows to zoom them, but tab seems to do nothing. Am I do something stupid?

thanks

awesome thanks!

Other then it being slow on my Geforce FX 5900XT, it's awsome

Watch it. It'll show up in a Microsoft feature somewhere along the line if you do.

Nice looking app btw.

If you can do this.. is there anything stopping you from creating a fully hardware accelerated expose?...??....?

Hey i downloaded it but when i try to open the program... it just shuts down even before it starts. Windows say it does not work... do i need to run this program with some other one or what.

if you have vista it should work out of the box i think. at least it did here...

See the app does not work for some reason. It gives me this right when i click on it.Click to view attachment i have duel screens but i don't think that would do anything

maybe it does matter resp. it has a bug related to dual monitor displays. have you ever tried to run it without the second monitor activated?

ya it still does not work with or without dual...

This is awsome can't wait to try it out when I install Vista this weekend.

Not workin so hot on my laptop with ATI graphics...very slow.

Can you assign a mouse button to trigger it?

I'm sad too that it's so slow, but I can't do any more improvement. As I sad already, thank Microsoft for providing this real "fast" Thumbnail API. I hope in SP1 they will provide some way to have direct and faster access to the thumbnails.
Until then, you could try to disable some animations.

Right now it doesn't support mouse button triggers, sorry.

I'm not running Vista at this point in time but even so, very cool!

I think it looks good and works well ,maybe a bit slow but thats ok.

Hi! I want to anounce you that in 1-2 weeks you should expect a new version of SmartFlip. I have now a new computer (Core 2 Duo E6300 at 1.86Ghz, Geforce 7600GT) and i couldn't belive how fast is SmartFlip on it, compared to my old one (P4 3Ghz, Geforce FX5700LE). The animations are very fast and smooth, even with 30 windows opened on my display with 1650x1050 resolution .
I will try to finish the trigger system, correct some bugs and optimize for dual-core.

Now I think you should have a computer with at least the below specifications (or an Experience Index of 4 or more)

Interl Core 2 Duo / AMD Athlon64 X2
1 GB RAM
GeForce 6600GT / ATI x1600
And, of course, Windows Vista with Aero enabled .

Cool, please add an option to assign a mouse button to trigger it

no effect on my pc with a GF6200, Intel P3 1.4Ghz, 512MB SDRam PC133

might just be too old...

Sorry man but I still like Flip3D better than this.

What part of the WPF API did you use to grab and draw images the windows in real time? Or more to the point, where did you find the information on how to do that?

I've been searching all through MSDN but with no success.

This looks cool. I'll keep it in mind once I get Vista.

Great program, call it Flip2D

Dude, nice concept and program but it is damm slow on my AMD 3200+ , 1.5 Dual Channel Gig, and Nvidia 6800 Ultra 256 MB.

By default you should aim for a default base performance of Flip3D, and not every one has dual core procs. Good program bad performance.
Removed it, for now happy with flip 3D.

Very much like the "ring" plugin for beryl.

You should look into implementing "hot corners", they (and other useful window management features of beryl) is what made me switch to ubuntu. Either way good job!

Hmm, I don't think the perf is the fault of the thumbnail API... I'll have to play with it myself and see how it runs for me in native code. I think your problem might be the mixing of it with WPF, which probably has some adverse performance implications given how the thumbnail API works.

Hi,


How do I flip windows with my arrows?

damn this is slow

i can't wait for a Galaga version of Flip3d where you can shoot the window you want in the bonus round!

Bug: a little too robust in retrieving windows to display. When I use it with Photoshop open, it grabs each palette and document window within Photoshop as separate windows in the Flip view.

Flip3D, however does not, so it must be possible to differentiate. I also had some instances where it failed to takeover from Win-Tab properly... no seeming rhyme or reason.

Anyways, thanks for this contribution to improving task management in Vista!

I think what your describing happened to me to. For some windows it duplicates them.. like Skype. It'll show two Skype windows despite their only being one (which doesn't happen in Flip3D). Also it seems in some programs it won't switch over. I noticied this in class when I had Opera (internet browser), OpenOffice Writer, GAIM, and a few other windows opened. I couldn't switch from the Opera window to the Writer window with this. It would stay stuck on one or the other. I would have to click off it, or minimize for it to work.

Hello, I was linked here from the Anandtech forums.
First of all, great program!

I have ran into a few bugs though:
1) the aforementioned performance problems - I'm running on a 1.8Ghz P-M, 1.5GB, ATi X600 laptop, yes I know, it's not exactly a performance machine, but Flip3D is able to render silky smooth

2) Mouse trigger problems - I have a logitech mouse with a button bound via logitech setpoint to document flip, which activates flip3d in the "ctrl+windows logo+tab" mode. When i set smartflip to take over the flip3d key bindings, pressing the mouse button would activate both flip3d and smartflip (led to some interesting results)

3) using the mouse scrollwheel to scroll through the windows, It would scroll 3 windows at a time (I have my scrollwheel set to scroll 3 lines at once), this does not occur in Flip3d.

All in all, great program, and I hope you continue to develop it and see if you can address some of these issues
Thanks!

Works great here, no performance issues at all, but I do have:

AMD 64 X2 5200+ @ 3.0Ghz
2GB DDR2 @ 500Mhz
Geforce 8800 GTS

Anyways, yes that wold be great if the desktop was an option just like in the orignal.

this looks great, the plus it looks usefull, unlike flip 3d

works just fine on a core2 duo@2.0ghz, 1gb ram and gf go 7600 laptop.

p.s. you were saying something about the source code?

This is actually working great on my laptop (Macbook Core 2 Duo 2Ghz, Intel GMA 950 graphics) except for one major issue...

The window I select isn't brought to the foreground! It just starts flashing in the taskbar! Kinda ruins the usefulness of it...

Works great here, with one issue, if I select F9, SmartFlip starts, and then I can't uset Tab or Shift-Tab to cycle, The focus remains on the application it was running....