The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

One of the only annoyances that I have with "living portable" is windows placement. I have a couple of apps that remember their window positions, which is nice and all, but at work I use a 24" widescreen monitor, while at home I have a laptop with a much smaller screen. The result is windows that find their way far off the screen.
I wrote a small hotkey (gotta love AutoHotkey) to move the active window to the upper left hand corner of the screen, and have also used Winlister (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/winlister.html) although it isn't' strictly portable.

Just interested to hear if others have the same issue and how you deal with it.

DasFX

I normally right-click on the taskbar button for the app, select "Move", then use Win+arrow keys to bring the app window back into visible space.

My Drill Instructors used to say "K.I.S.S." Keep It Simple, Stupid. I like that idea, Andrew... never realized you could use the arrow keys.

Dealing with window positions after switching to a different resolution? Why, there's Andrew's method that works flawlessly, but there's also an aid in case you've got a short fuse: Lots of beef jerky. Just bite down until the rage subsides.

There's an old app on Tin's Toys which I've used to wow the users when they lose a window: DeskLite. Here's a link - http://desktopian.org/lsapps/desklite.zip

It lists all open windows. A double-click on any list entry centers the window. And it's portable!

I know DM2 can do this with a hotkey as well, I'm looking into the exact command now. Unfortunately the window has to be active, so if you're like me and you have fungusClock set up for the upper-right area of the screen you're out of luck.

dasfx wrote:... and have also used Winlister (http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/winlister.html) although it isn't' strictly portable. ...

I've added WinLister to the DB. The configuration is now saved to a file, instead of the registry.

Checker wrote:I've added WinLister to the DB.

Thanks

@DasFX: Would you care to publish your AHK script?

usdcs wrote:@DasFX: Would you care to publish your AHK script?

dasfx last visited: 07 Dec 2007, 03:08

Whew! I didn't realize that!

I was just wrestling with this issue. Fortunately, it's solved for now.

Thanks!

There are two interesting applications to handle windows positions: AutoSizer and WinSize2.
I've got better results with the last one, athough it's not very intuitive.
The bad side is that none of them is portable, but perhaps good candidates to a wrapper.





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[Moderator note: further discussion of WinSize2 was split to a separate thread.]

It seemed strange that an AutoHotKey app was not natively portable...

This is a misconception that all AHK and AutoIt applications are not Portable, it's just the same as any other language, e.g. cpp is Portable until you request to write to the registry.

guinness wrote:This is a misconception that all AHK and AutoIt applications are not Portable, it's just the same as any other language, e.g. cpp is Portable until you request to write to the registry.

You're right about that, but I was referring to the fact that it is difficult to find an AutoIt/AutoHotKey application that does not offer, at least, the possibility of making it behave as portable.
Is it perhaps a matter of tradition among AutoIt/AutoHotKey developers?

It's pure coincidence that most AutoIt/AHK developers prefer to write to an INI file than the registry and it could be due to lack of knowledge too for some!

I personally don't (not because I don't understand the registry) but I prefer use an INI file, just the same as Opera does.