@FullFlava:
I'm a keyboardy person myself, so I've set up the hotkey (Settings > Operation tab > 'Front') in order to use ThumbWin much like Apple's Expose.

penwan

I have been suffering repeated crashes with this program. I use a few minor resident programs of this sort, so I'm unsure of what is interfering with what, but I have to say that thumbnail-izing Outlook has turned into a show-stopper. But who knows what the reason is? I also use Dexpot and wonder what the affect of multiple desktops might do to something like this.

I'll have to check it out further when I hear of a more stable build. As it stands now, it DOES have lots of potential. I find that being able to drag around thumbnails in the same fashion that I do papers on my desk DOES have its advantages.

DocBadwrench

I don't see it very useful... I am more of a keyboardy person and would always go for Windows + D ... I tend not to use mice obsessivly...

andhapp

It seemed pretty useful, but I have a habit of using [Windows]+D to bring the desktop to the front and effectively minimize all windows, and doing that makes even the thumbnails disappear. It's a problem I've had with a lot of "taskbar replacements."

FullFlava

I just installed Visual Task Tips off the back of OZTARDIS' recommendation, for a comparison. I find VTT is more of a gimmick where as ThumbWin actually increases my productivity. (Using Vista Home Basic. It's pathetic.)

penwan

Well-put-together little program. Tip o' the hat to the finder.

penwan

I second Visual Task Tips. On a side note, Google Translate is no better than Babelfish at this point; that page reads as if it was translated by Jerry Lewis... drunk. (I think I just revealed my age.)

mistshadow2k4

Visual Task Tips works for me...

OzTardis

I'm running it with ObjectDock. It works pretty well.

I've had it crash on me a couple of times. This wouldn't be so bad, except that it covered the whole screen with a gray overlay that was on top of my Task Manager, requiring me to restart my computer.

If that happens regularly, this program is gone. But as long as it behaves itself, this seems really cool.

J. D. Harper (aka Blog Jones)

Hmm, I'm using ObjectDock at the moment with the normal taskbar disabled. Not sure what this would do to it.

da5id_nz

Be advised, installing the app into any location other than the default will render the context menus unusable. Thus no preferences, etc.

rcurrie

Interesting. Even YM may be thumbnailed or should I say scaled down. Great product!

Junkan

While it looks like it is Vista only on the website and in the video, I was happy to find that it is compatible with XP and 2000. Seems to be a great find!

Destrox

@penwan: You could be right. Had another look at ThumbWin after your negative comments & can see some benefits. Besides which it seems to use considerably less RAM than VTT. I found VTT's ability to resize thumbs on-the-fly with scroll wheel & the fact it worked off the taskbar (ie all windows, whether minimised or maybe just in background) rather handy.
But what's with the weird restore to background mode? Eg I minimise Explorer; I'm in FF, then click explorer thumb & it pops up BEHIND FF (& maybe whatever other windows I may have non-minimised).

OzTardis

@OzTardis: I've tried replicating the effect you've described (even changed some settings) to no avail. One thing I have noticed on this particular computer is that if a window is already open & maximised, selecting it through Thumbwin will bring it into focus but not in a maximised state. Slightly annoying that.

penwan

wow... something else to slow down the computer... yay. The whole point of having a taskbar is to know what you have open... thats why there are icons beside the descriptive titles....

atomicrabbit

Alt-Tab Thingy [www.nymtec.com] also does taskbar previews, as well as its usual function as an alt-tab replacement.

Stainless

This seems pretty useless in my opinion. Visual tooltips is about as "flashy" as I get, and I don't even need/use those 95% of the time.

xxdesmus

Windows 3.1... modernized! ;-) So, why would I want my minimized apps hidden behind my windows rather than in my taskbar?

bjhanifin

The Opera browser has a similar feature called Speed Dial -- basically a thumbnail holder with 9 slots. Whenever you open a new tab you have the option to click on one of the slots to go to the website. To populate it, you either drag an existing tab to a slot or enter an address for one. Of course, you can also use the new tab as you normally would.

I've grown fond of Speed Dial -- it's part of the browser so it's one less util to install, and it doesn't add to the overhead.

Paul-In-NJ