TopDesk 1.5 is now out.

Among other things, this release significantly improves compatibility with 3D-accelerated games, adds traditional Alt-Tab behavior to the Flip layout, improves compatibility with non-administrator user accounts, allows you to turn off transparency for minimized windows, lets you prevent TopDesk from temporarily restoring minimized windows when you unlock your machine, and fixes a number of bugs.

To find out what’s changed, visit the What’s New page, and to find out more about TopDesk, visit the TopDesk page.

We’re currently looking for beta testers for TopDesk 1.5, so if you’d like to take part please contact Support. We’re especially interested getting the beta into the hands of users who have used a previous version of TopDesk and have experienced one of the following issues:

• Incompatibility with games and other full screen 3D accelerated applications.
• Non-traditional Alt-Tab behavior while using Flip layout.
• Error messages when running TopDesk at startup.
• TopDesk failing to run after resuming from standby or unlocking.
• TopDesk failing to run under a non-administrator user account.
• Problems using the mouse scroll wheel during tiling.
• Desktop wallpaper changes not being detected.

For everyone interested in what we’ve added in TopDesk 1.5, the new features are:

• Improved Game Compatibility – TopDesk now automatically disables itself when other full screen 3D accelerated applications are open.
• Traditional Alt-Tab Switching In Flip Layout – TopDesk now supports traditional Alt-Tab switching between the two frontmost windows while using Flip layout.
• Reduced Memory Usage – TopDesk now stores data in video memory where possible, which means it uses far less system memory.
• Improved Video Card Compatibility – TopDesk is now runs on more lower-end video cards.
• Improved Application Compatibility – TopDesk now works with more applications.
• Compatibility With Non-Administrator User Accounts – TopDesk now runs under non-administrator user accounts.
• Improved Disable Behavior – TopDesk hot keys are now available for use by other applications while TopDesk is disabled.
• Configuration Minimized Window Transparency – Minimized window transparency can now be turned on or off.
• Configurable Restart Window Enumeration – TopDesk can now enumerate only visible windows when it starts/restarts, preventing minimized windows from appearing while resuming/unlocking a computer.
• Configurable “No Windows To Tile Or Hide” Warning – The “beep” TopDesk sounds when no windows are available to tile or hide can now be turned on or off.
• Bug Fix – Other applications are now prevented from stealing focus while TopDesk is tiling windows.
• Bug Fix – The mouse scroll wheel now works when tiling is activated using mouse hotspots.
• Bug Fix – TopDesk no longer crashes when Explorer crashes.
• Bug Fix – TopDesk no longer exits with an error message when delayed by other applications at system startup.
• Bug Fix – TopDesk now works better when locking/unlocking, resuming from standby or hibernation, and when using Remote Desktop.
• Bug Fix – Desktop wallpaper changes are now always correctly detected.
• Bug Fix – Hebrew/Arabic language windows are now displayed correctly.
• Bug Fix – The ESC key now cancels selection in Flip layout.
• Bug Fix – TopDesk now uses less CPU while disabled.
• Bug Fix – The window tile window title font size is now displayed correctly in Options dialog.

Edit: We’ve now filled all the places in the beta. I’d like to thank everyone for all the interest in the TopDesk 1.5 beta test, and apologize to those users who missed out.

Many users have complained that TopDesk prevents them from copying and pasting in Firefox. I’ve explained on more than one occasion that it’s actually a bug in Firefox (which Mozilla has known about for four years), but that’s generally fallen on deaf ears and TopDesk has continued to bare the blame. While I understand why users assign the blame to TopDesk (“it used to work and now it doesn’t, and the only thing that’s changed is I installed TopDesk”) it’s been a very frustrating problem for us.

That changed today when I stumbled across The NeoSmart Files and found a blog post that describes how they’d managed to rally the troops and badger the Mozilla developers into finally fixing the problem. According to Neosmart, the fix is included in the latest versions of Firefox 1.5.x and 2.0. After testing both versions out with TopDesk I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue, so it seems to be gone for good.

While it’s great to see a community band together to get something done, it’s a bit disturbing to see the Mozilla developers leave such a show-stopper of a bug (and one that’s in all of their software, not just Firefox) in their software for four years. While it’s not possible for them to fix all outstanding bugs in each new version for Firefox, you’d think that something like not being able to copy and paste would be a serious enough issue to warrant their attention.

While we’re on the subject of Firefox bugs, I’m still looking for a proper fix for the bug that causes the “Find” bar to open automatically. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

TopDesk 1.4.2 is now out. This release mainly cleans up the rough edges around the new Flip3D mode. To find out what’s changed, visit the What’s New page, and to find out more about TopDesk, visit the TopDesk page.

TopDesk 1.4.1 is now out. Scott Hanselman had the idea that it would be cool if TopDesk emulated the upcoming Flip3D task switching feature of Windows Vista, and the suggestion was too good to pass up:

There’s some video of the Flip layout in action here, here, and here. For a list of the other new features in 1.4.1, including rotating tiling animation, check out the What’s New page.

TopDesk has been mentioned in the Wired Gear Factor blog.

TopDesk was recently featured on Digg. It was extremely interesting to read the comments, as they effectively gave me a large sample of users first impressions of TopDesk.

The major thing I took from the comments was that memory usage was a problem for some people. TopDesk has two modes, “Use more memory”, which is faster, and “Use less memory”, which is slower. As the first thing most people want to see after installation is the tiling animation, TopDesk is tuned by default to use more memory so that the animation is as smooth and silky as possible. The thinking behind this is that users get to see what they want as soon as possible, and if they’re still interested in TopDesk they can then tweak it to meet their requirements.

Reading the Digg comments though, it looks like what’s happening is that people are running TopDesk, tiling a couple of times, then going straight to the TaskManager and having a look at the memory usage. Have seen that TopDesk is using more memory than they’d expected, they write it off as “bad software” and move on to the next “cool util”. I’d like to think that if they’d only read the documentation they’d have a different opinion, but as we all know, no-one ever reads the documentation .

Obviously I’d rather they gave TopDesk more of a chance, so beginning with the next version of TopDesk the installer is going to make it clear which options are available in terms of performance and memory usage, and allow users to tweak them before they run TopDesk. Hopefully this will give users a better idea upfront of the choices that are available to them and a better understanding of the tradeoffs between performance and resource use.

Because we develop TopDesk, some people don’t like Otaku Software very much. Since the beginning, there’s been a steady stream of hate mail directed at our inboxes, but the one I just recieved has shot to the top of my “all time favourites” list. If you read between the insults and squint hard enough it actually kind of sounds like a compliment. I’ve reproduced it below for your viewing pleasure:

Dear Support,

It’s amazing how a team of engineers (namely the ones at Apple) can come up with a great concept like Expose and then a small company like you takes the idea, spins a total rip off of it, and packages it to try and make a buck. Companies like you are beyond the scum of the planet. Enjoy your hard-earned cash, you morons. I hope Apple sues the **** out of you.

Regards,

Unbelievable
mailto:whataripoff@nicejob.com

TopDesk 1.4 is out. This release fixes most of the minor niggles people had with the 1.3.x versions, and fixes the priority issue some users experienced with 1.3.7.

The new version of TopDesk also coincides with a redesign of our site. The directory structure of the old site was just getting too clunky to manage, and it would have cramped our style for some of the things we want to do in the near future.

Perhaps the most drastic difference in version 1.4 is that we’ve changed the trial version to a 30 day demo. Personally I hate time-limited trials and much prefer nagging/reduced feature trials. However, there’s a (vocal) group of users out there that loathe reduced features or nagging, and after using the TopDesk trial they tend to either blog about how much they dislike it (best case) or send us abusive emails (worst case). Lately it’s gotten to the point where we’re receiving a couple of not-so-nice emails about the trial every day.

While I have a personal dislike of time-limited trials, I’d rather have happy users than have things exactly the way I want. Hopefully the switch appeases those users who complained about the nags and missing features, and improves the overall user experience of the trial version. Having said that, I’m sure we’ll now hear from the group of users out there that loathe 30 day trials .

TopDesk 1.3.7 is out. A list of the new features and bug fixes in this version can be found here.