Split or divide your desktop screen into multiple parts

Posted on October 18, 2008 at 5:34 am

If you have a high resolution LCD flat panel at home and you are not using any kind of screen splitting application, then you are wasting your screen real estate big time! The best thing about having a high-end LCD screen is that you can see multiple windows at the same time, instead of just one active program at a time.

Of course, you can always switch between programs by using ALT + TAB or by simply clicking on the program in the taskbar, but there are many times when you need to be able to see multiple programs at the same time. There are two cool freeware apps you can use to divide or split your screen into multiple parts and therefore work more efficiently.

Earlier I had written about a program called SplitView, which let you split your screen, but it cost $30! But why pay, when you can get something better for free!

WinSplit Revolution is a very small utility that helps to organize all your open windows by tilting, resizing and positioning them so that they efficiently use all the space on your desktop.

Using WinSplit Revolution, you can quickly split your screen into two halves, thirds, fourths, etc. You can resize any window and move it to the left half of the screen, the top, the bottom, a corner, etc.

Then using either a virtual number pad or pre-defined hotkeys, you can quickly bring up a window to full-screen or switch to another window.

The program is nicely implemented and has a good number of useful features:

Automatically handles window resizing, moving, closing, etc
Quick access via global hotkeys and virtual numpad
Automatic startup and update
Drag and drop windows into different sections
Fusion between two windows (splits two program vertically and allows you to use a middle bar to adjust the size)
Mosaic mode – Splits the screen into 9 equal parts and will place one window into each section. If you have less than 9 windows open, it will adjust the size of the mosaic to make the windows larger.

GridVista is the second program that allows you to divide or split your Windows desktop screen into multiple parts. I mentioned WinSplit first because it seems to have more features than GridVista.

You can again use it to split your screen into halves, thirds, etc just like WinSplit, but it does not have a virtual keypad. Simply drag a window into any of the sections and it will maximize to the full size of that section.

You can then maximize any of the sections to full screen either via clicking with the mouse or via hotkey. So if you have a large LCD monitor, over 20” or so, then you should definitely check out either of these programs.

Overall, both programs work well in XP and in Vista, so you can play around with both and see which one works out better for you. Enjoy!

» Filed Under Free Software Downloads

Comments

One Response to “Split or divide your desktop screen into multiple parts”

Larry said on : January 23rd, 2009 at 7:28 pm

Does this software allow you to view two PowerPoint presentations, in slide show mode, at the same time?