Hide your shit

[anthson]

I just discovered this new program and it's the hotness. It lets you hide any open programs, including itself. No task bar icon, no system tray icon. It completely disappears and recalls when a customizable keystroke is tapped.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/wistinga/

Works a lot like RosMud does, but you can hide any program with it. Also good to know these kinds of things are out there if you're a boss with employees that game or surf/download filth at work.

[Rosuav]

I actually got the idea for that feature from a program that hides a window to a system tray icon that looks like the Task Manager one (system resources display). That particular program was a bit of a pain, though, for a couple of reasons:

* Alt-Shift (or Alt-Caps, can't remember which it was) is far too easy to press when alt-tabbing through windows
* You have to have focus on the window to hide - so if you first alt-tab away from the "naughty window", and your boss is there, you can't "finish the job" and hide it completely without bringing the window up first
* The task bar gets reorganized every time you hide and show a window. That may not be a problem to most people, but the way I work, I like to have the first 3-5 taskbar entries fixed, so I can always find crucial programs (eg development IDE is always second, and programming editor is always third).

Does Wistinga address those issues? (I can't check it out at present, as I'm at work.)

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by anthson
Also good to know these kinds of things are out there if you're a boss with employees that game or surf/download filth at work.

Absolutely there are. Have a read of what the RosMud++ FAQ has to say to bosses. It is always possible to be sneaky, and you can always try to out-sneak the other person. But if you get to that point, (a) why are you still employing this person, or (b) why are you still working for him? To an employer: If you can tell the difference between people who play games and people who can't on the basis of work done, then have a quiet word with those who aren't getting anything done. If you can't, then it obviously doesn't hurt your business, so let it go. The flip side: If you're playing games on work time, you'd better be really sure you're getting your work done, but if you are, go for it!

Everyone who threshes from work does so on the assumption that work takes priority. Isaviel goes to help her boss, Kravenar gets a callout, I have to go do parcels... always, work comes first. An excellent read on management-employee relationships can be found in the Hacker FAQ (http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/faqs/hacker.html - revised and expanded version http://jonathanscorner.com/writing/hacker/printer.html). Don't be put off by the name "hacker"; as the first entry in the FAQ explains, hackerdom is not about getting past security and fiddling with the bank's servers. In actual fact, you can be a hacker in a field other than computers; most Threshers exhibit some of the aspects of hackerdom. It's all about being a thinking, intelligent person, hired for your brains and not just dumb obedience.

[anthson]

Originally posted by Rosuav
* Alt-Shift (or Alt-Caps, can't remember which it was) is far too easy to press when alt-tabbing through windows

You get to set what you want to make the window go away or come back up. ctrl + alt + whatever, or shift, or any combination thereof.

Originally posted by Rosuav
* You have to have focus on the window to hide - so if you first alt-tab away from the "naughty window", and your boss is there, you can't "finish the job" and hide it completely without bringing the window up first

Nope. Hit the keystrokes anywhere at any time and it takes care of the rest.

Originally posted by Rosuav
* The task bar gets reorganized every time you hide and show a window. That may not be a problem to most people, but the way I work, I like to have the first 3-5 taskbar entries fixed, so I can always find crucial programs (eg development IDE is always second, and programming editor is always third).

Well, this one happens. When you minimize something with the program, then open it again, it gets tacked on to the end of the task bar.

Two out of three ain't bad.

[Rosuav]

Well, so long as it can be told to hide -this window- and -that window- but not -some other window-, then the reordering isn't an issue (I'd never want to scratch-hide my work, of course!). So, good!

BTW, since it DOES reorder the windows, I actually whipped up a little Task Bar Reorganizer which works reasonably well (you just pick what order you want the programs to come up, and it puts them in that order). Never released, but if anyone wants it, they can have it.

[anthson]

It hides based on words. So if you want to hide your surfing, use the word "Explorer" or "Firefox." Alternatively, you can choose to hide everything BUT open programs with certain words. So let's say you're majorly goofing off/mudding/gaming/porn downloading, but supposed to be data entering. Just tell the program to hide everything except open programs with the word "Excel" or "Quickbooks" or whatever.