Dual Monitor Gripe

When coding in Erlang, all the documentation I use is browser based, so I like keep a Firefox browser window open in my second monitor that is dedicated to Erlang documentation.

However, to accomplish this, I need to:
1. Open the link in a new browser window (not just a new tab).
2. "Restore" the window.
3. Drag the window to the second monitor.
4. Maximize the window.

This works great, until I want to open a new browser window, in which case instead of opening to my main monitor it opens to the second monitor in front of my Erlang documentation.

To remedy the situation, I must:
1. "Restore" the new window.
2. Drag the new window to back to the main monitor.
3. Maximize the new window.

After all this finally my second monitor is useful and my browser is behaving correctly. This is an awful lot of steps just to browse documentation on a second monitor. The only other option I know of is to dedicate the use of another browser (IE in my case) to browsing in the second window. It works, but I'd much rather use the same Firefox browser in all my browser windows, with the same extensions, bookmarks, etc. Anyone know some tricks in this area?

This whole dual monitor thing just isn't as seamless as it should be. For example, while working in Visual Studio ('03), I often would like to view a project source file in the second monitor, but I can find no simple way to do it. This seems like a really obvious feature to me. Maybe Visual Studio 2005 fixes this?

So far, I've found using dual monitors to be almost as frustrating as it is useful. Hopefully this will start to go away as applications increasingly become multi-monitor aware, but for now I'd just settle for my browser to deal with it slightly better.

Posted February 16, 2006 2:31 PM

Comments

Use the (not free, but awesome) UltraMon utility.

It lets you drag maximized windows from monitor to monitor in one swell foop.

It also adds a per-monitor taskbar. These two features alone are worth the price!

Jeff Atwood, February 16, 2006 4:56 PM

I use an Apple powerbook almost exclusively and when in dual monitor mode is great. Currently saving up for the next 64bit Intel powerbook ;-)

Brendon Upson, February 17, 2006 7:56 AM

I use 2 computers with 2 different monitors, and run Win2VNC on my primary computer. It interfaces with a VNC server on the secondary computer so that my primary mouse and keyboard control both computers. When you move the mouse pointer to the left edge of the primary computer's monitor, it appears on the left edge of the secondary computer's monitor, and the keyboard and mouse control switches to that computer. I find it very nice to use the primary computer for development, and the secondary with a browser open to view the results.

Chris Bellamy, February 17, 2006 11:10 AM

I also use two computers & two monitors with a KVM switch. Handy to have a 2nd machine, 2nd network card, 2nd hard drive. Something to consider-

Seth, February 17, 2006 11:41 AM

Haven't tried Win2VNC, but there's something similar called Synergy. But Synergy works across windows, mac, linux... it's very cool sliding my mouse off the edge of my windows machine and seeing it pop up on my powerbook. And because you are running two machines, there are no funky "multi-monitor" issues to deal with.

Oh, and the different computers all sync their clipboards when Synergy is running.

Yum.

Chris Pine, February 21, 2006 4:02 AM

I have 2 computers, a dual head graphics car on the main computer, KVM switch and cables.
The dual monitoring works seamlessly when the monitors are plugged into the main computer. I want to be able to use both computers independently and when necessary dual monitor on the main computer. Have I got all the equipment I need and if so how do I wire it up to achieve my objective. Perhaps Seth could assist please.

Richard Evans, March 6, 2006 1:07 PM

I have answered my own question. The problem was simply that the KVM switch was not supplied with a power source and when I connected on the whole set up worked perfectly. Such a useful addition for serious computer users.

Anonymous, March 10, 2006 6:38 AM