81–90 of 336 posts
> It was first introduced for Windows 95, I had no idea it was there for that long! Honestly, from their perspective it probably makes sense to keep it separate from the main OS if they like keeping it open source.
This reminds me of one of my favorite features from the Mac: Quick Look — press space to instantly bring up a big contextual preview window of the selected document in the Finder. You can bring it to Windows with this useful open source tool: https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook
I found that IT at work wouldn't let me install powertoys because they didn't like the Awake feature. Please bundle these in of allow us to install them one by one.
(disclosure: former Microsoft employee (now at GitHub) who knows the PowerToys team)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
win2k was peak windows; all it needed was 64-bit support and cleartype
And support for high DPI displays, and Bluetooth, and modern Wi-Fi, and probably a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting!
I use PowerToys just for the easy key remapping, which I wish was a built-in feature in more keyboards. Works very nicely as a simple alternative to AutoHotKey. My RSI has gotten a lot better by just remapping Caps Lock to Ctrl. If any PowerToys feature deserves to be added to Windows, it's gotta be the Keyboard Manager.
Back when I used to use Adobe Fireworks there was a shortcut for flattening the current selection, I believe it was cmd+ctrl+shift+Z and I'm pressing this hundreds of times a week and eventually it gave me RSI.
After this happened I remapped it to cmd+F, luckily the app had the ability to do that but honestly I consider it important enough that the OS should provide it. I know a lot of windows users point to AutoHotKey but it's a horrible janky feeling hack and requires you to write actual scripts.
Fancy Zones makes my day-to-day so much more convenient. I wish there was an equivalent in Linux that worked as well - I’ve tried a few gnome plugins but always been disappointed.
KDE has Windows-style snap-to-halves or quarters by default. If you’re happy with those basic zones, it definitely works well. I don’t know if there’s a way to configure more complex zones.
There are plugins (Window Management → KWin Scripts) that add options, I see Tiling, FlexGrid, KWin QuickTile, and several more.
At least windows explorer has some great extension utilities like File Menu Tools; a tool that can be configured to cover pretty much every file explorer extension usecase you can imagine. OSX and XDG (Gnome etc...) based systems have nothing close last time I checked.
Recent Finder versions relegate custom actions to a "Quick Actions" submenu by default, but you can restore an action to top-level by removing the "NSIconName" entry from the action's Info.plist in ~/Library/Services.
This reminds me of one of my favorite features from the Mac: Quick Look — press space to instantly bring up a big contextual preview window of the selected document in the Finder. You can bring it to Windows with this useful open source tool: https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook
I like powertoys, especially ‘fancy zones’! But Explorer is something I stopped using more than a decade ago when I encountered TotalCommander - that I cannot do without!!! The regex-supporting live-preview batch-filenaming utility alone is awesome. I work so much faster (with the keyboard) than will ever possible in Explorer! I could write for hours about the greatness of TCM, but as that’s a little off topic here I…
Fancy Zones makes my day-to-day so much more convenient. I wish there was an equivalent in Linux that worked as well - I’ve tried a few gnome plugins but always been disappointed.
KDE has Windows-style snap-to-halves or quarters by default. If you’re happy with those basic zones, it definitely works well. I don’t know if there’s a way to configure more complex zones.