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NOTES ON XDESK 4.50

Here are the main news and the known problems:
a) this version is now working very solid on Vista - with User Account Control (UAC) either activated or disabled! If UAC is ON (default in Vista, now our (and Microsoft's) recommended configuration) you can run XDESK both in non- elevated and elevated mode - right now by default XDESK will install itself in the non-elevated StartUp mode, but you can now VERY easy change that from XDESK Settings / StartUp! The main reason why you might want to run XDESK in the elevated mode is that from the elevated mode it will see and work with both elevated programs and non-elevated programs - while a non-elevated XDESK might not be able to work with the windows from elevated programs (with the very first result that almost all those windows will be visible on all desktops, but there are also other side-effects); please remember that if you run XDESK elevated all the programs started from the AppBar will ALSO run elevated - you can toggle the start-mode to non-elevated if you press the < SHIFT > key when clicking on the AppBar button or we have a small XDESK registry setting to start those non-elevated by default!!!
b) T*View was seriously improved on both pre-Vista and Vista versions of Windows - but it is most spectacular in Vista as 'live T*View' - both TileView ( < WIN > + < X > ) and TopView ( < WIN > + < W > ) are created in a Vista-specific way and as a result are a lot faster AND THE PREVIEW IS 'LIVE' meaning for instance that if you have a movie playing in MediaPlayer and you activate T*View you can still see the movie playing (at a certain scale probably) !!! In Vista you might want to disable 'Extra size for selected tile' and eventually 'Show window names' under XDESK Settings / T*View and instead activate the new way to display the name of the selected window on a tooltip (the installer will do that automatically in most configurations); T*View is actually more powerful and complete than even the Vista built-in Flip3D (just try to compare how Flip3D handles a program with an open file dialog or some modal message) - and as a result soon we'll have a much smaller stand-alone program called XTileView that will provide just that features for people that consider virtual desktops and the other XDESK features too much!!! Users upgrading XDESK on Vista might also want to increase the size in pixels of the bottom-left XDESK hot-corner from the previous default value of 1 to something like 2 (the new default value for new installations) or even 3-4 on a bigger screen; also please note that with T*View active all the corners are now a quick way to cancel it with the mouse!
c) < ALT > + < ` > - the new hotkey added for XDESK quick task switcher (also known as the < ALT > + < TAB > dialog) is now the main way to activate that feature on Vista (with < ALT > + < ` > going backwards and < ALT > + < 1 > going forward in the list); colors were added to that feature to easier see when you will switch to another virtual desktop;
d) the "separate icons on each desktop" are now better remembering and applying the separate positions for desktop icons (but you can always use the "Desktop Icons Plugin" to save/load/arrange those!);
e) ALL the XDESK programs (including the main setup program) and DLLs are now code-signed (and our certificate is included in the package and installed by the default installation so that in the future your system will recognize programs signed with that certificate - the only immediate benefit is nicer elevation prompts on Vista - but the prompts are still there :) )

Known problems:
a) on a default Vista installation the support for the classic HLP help-file format is no longer installed by default by Microsoft - but if you follow the link provided by the new Vista Help program you will be taken to a Microsoft page from where you can install that program (you need to do that only once for ALL programs using the classic HLP format - and many people might have already done that - yet please see below the very first favor that we ask ... );
b) currently there is a small problem with the Windows Sidebar - a quick workaround is to create a permanent rule for that (using our Rules Wizard, with a rule like "*Windows Sidebar*") so it will be shown on all desktops;
c) another small bug is that on XDESK exit the Vista Start button is left a little strange (we are working on that);
d) another known problem is with Visual Studio - when that program is started XDESK will seem to slow-down to an extreme for about 2-3 seconds - we are still investigating that too;
e) there can be some problems with "separate desktops" under XP SP2 and newer, we are still investigating that; "separate desktops icons" also do not work yet under Vista.