Create a 3D desktop for Windows XP and Vista using Madotate

Posted on January 17, 2008 at 7:08 am

Madotate is a cool program that you can use to add a third dimension (3D) to all of the windows on your PC desktop. Madotate allows you to take any window on your screen and flip it, zoom in and out, or swivel it like stacking books on a shelf. The program is free and takes up almost no resources, which is surprising since it has to do with 3D! Most 3D desktop apps take a lot of resources and a high end graphics card.

The program was written by people in Japan and later translated over to English. Once you have it installed (which simply requires running the EXE file), Madotate adds a small button to the top right of each window, directly to the left of the minimize, maximize and close buttons.

Once you click the button, your window is suddenly transformed into a 3D version that you can swivel in any direction! You can use the left mouse button to move the window around in it’s current state. You can also control the angle of the swivel by holding down the right mouse button and then moving up, down, right or left. This program is seriously cool! You can stack your windows into a neat little stack at the edge of your screen like shown below!

If you can’t see it that well, right click on the window and swivel it till the angle is more suitable to you.

The other really cool thing about the program is that when you move a window close to an edge of the screen, it will automatically switch and create a hinge against that side. Above you saw pictures where the windows were on the left side of the screen, now take a look if I drag the window to the bottom of the screen:

The window creates a hinge to the bottom side of the screen and I can now swivel my window back and forth farther or close to me. This same closer and farther perspective can be accomplished by using the mouse scroll button. You can also use the page up and page down keys to perform the zooming also. This actually makes a truly 3D environment as the window is moving along the z-axis plane.

Check out how I made one window move “farther” into the distance while one is “closer” to me:

Another cool feature is the ability to make the windows transparent. You’ll see the window tray icon in your taskbar, right-click and choose Settings. On the Display tab, choose Transparency for 3D effects to add that extra coolness to the program!

Each window also has a title bar so that you can also determine which window it is by simply reading the title. This is useful if you have a couple of Internet Explorer windows and can’t tell which is which! You can also assign hotkeys for switching to 3D mode for a window or showing the menu options.

Overall, Madotate is an awesome program that packs a huge punch with a small footprint! It only eats up about 5MB of memory, which is nothing compared to most apps. Since it’s a EXE file and requires no installation, you can take around with you on your USB drive and run it on any computer without making any changes to those computers! Sweet! Source Appaholic

[tags]3d windows, madotate, 3d desktop, 3ddesktop, vista 3d desktop, xp 3d desktop, 3d desktop effects[/tags]

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads

Comments

2 Responses to “Create a 3D desktop for Windows XP and Vista using Madotate”

Relequestual said on : January 17th, 2008 at 3:02 pm

I must ask you to update the link as the website has moved
All the same content can now be found at appaholic.co.uk!
thanks

Rel

rambhai said on : January 19th, 2008 at 1:05 am

thats cooool man its like aero ~~~but in xp am i correct mate~???thast cool man i alwasy wanted to use aero but my system doesnt support vista~~thanx mate