My Three Screens...

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Umm, I have not had any 3 screen set ups to play with, but I have configured two screens for a number of clients and I have never had the problem of a maximised application filling more then one screen.  I wonder why you guys get this.  I assume you're running Windows.  Of course if you're running something else then that's another question entirely.

There are multiple ways to make multiple screens strut their stuff in Windoze-- what else?  If one way o'doin' a thing is adequate, then 100 different ways is fantastic, right?  Right?    

(one of the principle differences between Windoze and Mac philosophies... )

"Eyefinity" is what Zono and I are implementing here, one of the "100 ways".  

The most basic way to utilize multiple-monitors in Windoze is to simply extend the desktop, something that was written into Windoze 95, way back in the day-- you had to have two identical video cards in those early days to get it to work reliably, though.  My success back in those days was mixed-- and CRT's (the vacuum bottle kind) were 'spensive, and often miss-matched, which only added to the "fun".

But extending the desktop basically created an extra space on the 2nd (or 3rd) monitor where you could put stuff-- but your basic Windoze controls all remained on the main (initial) screen, and if you looked at "properties", you'd see two (or 3) screens in there, each with it's settings, resolution, etc, etc.

Of course, to a video game who's software is usually written to the extremes of what is possible in hardware (at the time of it's creation), they typically ignored Windoze management and went directly to the hardware itself--

-- thus, ignoring the fact you had multiple monitors entirely, and concentrating on whichever was "first" in the hardware que-- not always the one you wanted, either --

--- back in the early days, this made for severe headache for dedicated gamers-- which card to buy?  Will it be compatible with my new game(s)?   Many of the "off brands" were not-- and your game would be forced back into that dreaded "software rendering" mode... <<bleah>>

Then the card makers actually had a brainstorm, and created a hardware layer for graphics, that "sat" on the hardware and permitted standardized methods of communicating graphics commands directly to the hardware itself.   This was a stroke of genius on someone's part-- I hope he or she is rich over it...

There were actually several, including OpenGL and Micro$oft's offering, DirectX among others.

Okay, that's a bit off-topic--

-- "Eyefinity" is an AMD-specific engine which lets you combine 3 identical-resolution screens into a single virtual one.  From Windoze' perspective (and more importantly, the game-engine's perspective), you have a single, giant screen, and it (software) is literally unaware (once you've enabled "eyefinity") that you really have multiple screens underneath the the eyefinity layer-- it apparently happens within the graphics card itself (them selves).

I believe Nvidia has a similar engine of their own, but several cards back, I switched over to AMD's engine and have not regretted it.  I forget why, now, but I do love Eyefinity.

The down side, as mentioned earlier, is that since Windoze thinks I have one giant, super-wide monitor, it spreads it's controls across all three screens:  my start button is in the lower-left corner of my left screen.  The task-bar sprawls across all three, and the system icons are in the lower-right corner of my right-most screen.

Not quite as handy, as when I had simply extended my desktop left-and-right, keeping the center monitor as the "main" (with all the windoze stuff confined to it alone), as I must turn my head slightly to see the start, the quick-launch buttons, and turn it the other way, to inspect the system status junk.

On the other hand, my task-bar is .... huge.  I changed from "stack similar tasks" to "keep everything separate" as I never run out of space in the task-bar, no matter how many windows I have open at once... makes switching among them easy.

Same thing for my system stuff:  I un-hid everything, letting it sprawl out to 1/3 of the bottom-- why not?  I have a whole center monitor that rarely gets used in the task bar anyway...  I find I prefer seeing all the system indicators, all the time, anyway-- I'd forgotten about that, from back in '98 days-- occasionally useful information gets obscured, when you hide them all up.

In fact?  Back in those days, when I first had a "giant" CRT of 17 inches, I routinely used a double-high task bar, just so I could see everything that was running....



Okay, boooring stuff is over now.   Y'all can come out and stop humming "la-la-la-la"...

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I have my bar on the right border (vertical) so it doesn't go to all 3 screens, it takes a while to get used to but it's actually quite usefull (more vertical space for windows).
--
To complement what Bob said, you can setup your screens individually (as I had before with my standalone card and my integrated card) or group them in eyefinity, which you do for games (it gives you that periphery that was blind before). Depending on the card you can do from 2 to 6 monitors in eyefinity (mine is capable of 4 which isn't that great because the center of the screen would be the bezels of the center monitors). Eyefinity is available since the HD5xxx series. With nVidia you need 2 videocards in SLI IIRC).

I'm considering ungroup during the week, and regroup in the weekends to be able to use each monitor as an individual entity, but for now it's just the price to play big. 

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Group/un-grouping is quite easy-- and I'm told (via forums) that you can make an icon on your desktop that goes directly to the settings.  Now, if someone would create a widget (aka Android operating system) that would toggle between grouped and un-grouped, that would be too cool...

... y'hear that Micro$oft?  Yoze guys are no longer innovating the desktop.  Yer all behin' and stuff....  <knocks on screen>  C'mon, I know youze guys are in there, watchin' whut we do and stuff....

<snerk>



-----


Re:  Vertical start-bar-- that's brilliant, actually.  Back on Win 95, I was running a vertical one for awhile-- on a 15" screen, you needed all the vertical space you could get... I may play around with it some more.  It'd be nice to have the start and the system stuff all on the same panel, I admit.

[Aggie]

... y'hear that Micro$oft?  Yoze guys are no longer innovating the desktop.  Yer all behin' and stuff....  <knocks on screen>  C'mon, I know youze guys are in there, watchin' whut we do and stuff....

<snerk>

They're behind on watching us, too...  that's why you know they are there.  Google's the real Big Brother, or so I'm starting to suspect.  Wait, who's that tapping back from behind my screen?   I'd better shut up and eat my fnords. 

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Among evil corporations Google is truly the less evil of them, or at least they try to be decent. Entities like Microsoft, Apple and Facebook no longer even pretend.
---
Microsoft stopped innovating long ago, they are in a lazy catch-up mode to their own peril (desktops are starting to be less and less relevant and the overwhelming majority of tablets don't use M$). They lost the dominance in smartphones and run the risk of becoming an irrelevant entity altogether.

[Aggie]

I am highly skeptical that it's possible to be the corporate behemoth that Google is and not be evil.  They do try to be other than purposely predatory, but some of what they've been doing lately makes me sick and suspicious.  A big corp (and prestigious, desirable employer) cannot possibly be composed entirely of benevolent individuals, and they have far too much access to far too much information for me to be comfortable with them.

I usually would rather deal with blatant, overt evil; it's easier to keep an eye and finger on.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I prefer doing business with partially evil than completely and unabashed evil, understanding that it is practically impossible to be a large corporation and not do evil (for example here in the States Costco seems like a decent company and I'm sure you can find stuff for them too, but never as much as the evil Walmart/Sams; the same applies to IKEA or other corporations that occasionally do good or -more accurately- less evil).

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

I agree with Zono's assessment:  Google at least makes the effort to not do evil, or to at least do less of it.  The other players in the computer game don't even pretend anymore.

And I also agree-- Micro$oft blew it, big-time, when they abandoned any serious efforts in the portable industry (music players, phones, tablets).   What is saddest of all?  M$ had had a working tablet/slate out years ago, but did not invest the capital (programming time) to really make that sing-- true, the hardware was not quite up to snuff, but there was little incentive to make it so, as there was no real slick OS that would utilize it.

Then along comes CrApple with their function always follows form the Electronic Feminine Hygiene Product iPad, and the idiots over at M$ go, "woah!  Look at that!  Shouldn't we be doing something similar?"  Too little.  Too late.  Again.

Meanwhile, the open architecture of Android/Linux continues to grow... and hardware makers (likely fed up with CrApple's draconian policies and Micro$oft's snail-like pace) have jumped on that bandwagon.

I think we've only seen the bare-bones beginning myself, of the innovations coming down the pike, from not-Apple and not-Microsoft...



There may come a day when neither of these giants matters in the personal electronics... 

/end rant

[Aggie]

I prefer doing business with partially evil than completely and unabashed evil, understanding that it is practically impossible to be a large corporation and not do evil (for example here in the States Costco seems like a decent company and I'm sure you can find stuff for them too, but never as much as the evil Walmart/Sams; the same applies to IKEA or other corporations that occasionally do good or -more accurately- less evil).

Depends, for me; if I'm voting with my feet and cash money, then I agree with you completely.   Local producers / retailers when possible or practicable, then lesser-evil corps, and the big evils as a last resort.  I'm willing to pay a bit more to support better products and business models, if I can see the reasons or benefits of doing so.  There are hidden costs in some things that will get you in other ways in the long run.

With technology companies, especially those dealing with data and providing 'free' services, I start to get suspicious of what the real cost is, and where it's hiding. With Google in particular, I am getting paranoid about putting my eggs in one basket, particularly because I use my real name on some of my email accounts.  I use several of their services, so they could put together a detailed profile of who I email, what I talk about, what stocks I follow, what I search for (I generally stay logged into my Google account), the news I read, my home address and phone number...  this would constitute a breach of privacy, but presumably it only takes a few brilliant and well-connected employees (i.e. most of the Google staff, I suspect) to carry it out.  

Needless to say, I don't play the Facebox or Tweeter or any other social networking services.  

_{yes, I'm aware that it's dead easy to put together a digital fingerprint for someone these days, even without using one uber-provider, but that fingerprint would not likely be as detailed in terms of personal info.}

In addition, I mysteriously had a gmail account shut down last year with only a vague explanation to the effect that I may have violated some undisclosed policy; to get the account back, they wanted me to provide a cell phone number (NO!) or take a longer route of emailing someone and begging for a reason and presumably forgiveness (NO!).  I DO NOT care to provide additional conformation of my identity on an account that was set up purposefully for anonymity. If I was given a proper reason for why the account was shut (jacked by spambots, an unintentional faux pas on the Google Finance message boards - I have suspicions in that direction - or whatever) I might have had a greater comfort level, but in forum terms it was the equivalent of a ban-without-warning and I didn't care to play that game.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The irony is that if you really try to play the anonymity card you will raise red flags, because those who take the care to try are frequently on the wrong side of the establishment law, not a criticism but just a statement of fact. The sad truth is that while digital life started as a boon for anonymity no longer is so, and your very valid concerns are seen as a backward attitude towards it (do you wan't pedophiles and terrorists to roam free on the internets?!?! ).

On that regard your distaste for google is quite reasonable although IMHO just a matter of opportunity, had the MSs and Apples of this world be in the same situation they would likely abuse that power much much more (and let's not even mention Facebook).

[Aggie]

Yes, I agree.... I quite liked Google originally (and still do like them, I suppose), but they are too big to be good now. I am no fan whatsoever of Microsoft and despise Apple's approach - good business model, but damned if I'll bow and kiss arse the way they like their zombies fanboys.

_{If the internet ever goes full-identity, I may gracefully bow out.  Or flat-out flounce.  It's significant that even here, our trusted little backwater of the internet, it would be difficult for a random user to find out my identity without going under deep cover as a Toadfish. Hell, even if you google my full name (it's completely unique in the world) all you'd know is that I mountain bike and studied environmental science, possibly a defunct phone number, and maybe read a little between the lines about my family.}

OTOH, my opinion of Bill Gates as human being has improved as he's moved away from M$ and towards philanthropy; it's worth noting that much of his personal fortune was made not just from Joe Consumer but from holding the corporate cubicle-hell computing world for ransom.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I suspect Mr Gates' philanthropy had more to do with the taxable benefits of his wife's (apparently) compassionate idea, although to be fair, as time has passed it would seem that he has embraced it on the understanding that economic growth is clearly linked to education.

As for how many backs of business partners were stabbed to make his fortune, you could write entire libraries with his shrewd exploits.
---
On the same topic, it's incredibly how similar Gates, Jobs, and Zuckerberg are and have been, starting with how each screwed their immediate business partners as their businesses started. Ahhh, that gray line between narcissism and psychopathy...

[Griffin NoName]

Strikes me there is a gap in the market for a likeable service. A nice cuddly friendly one with no privacy issues. Unfortunately, gap though there is, I don't think it would work. I am feeling jaded by connectivity as so rarely do I connect to anyone I ever wanted to see again.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Update:

Desktop backgrounds.  When you're as anal-retentive as I am, the desktop background can't be just any old thing.

And since going to Eyefinity, Windoze thinks I have one giant 5760 by 1080 pixel screen, and insists on stretching images to fit (or simply centering them, leaving the left and right screens blank).

I had been using a freeby Display Fusion, but it was just as confuzzuled as Windoze is, so I uninstalled it as useless here.

What to do-- then it hit me:  Winoze would cheefully center-and-stretch whichever photo I chose for my background.... I simply needed a photo that was exactly 5760 by 1080 in size... simple, right?

Well..... not... quite.

Somewhere along the way to UpgradesVille, Micr$oft dropped the ubiquitous but easy to use Photo Editor... and it apparently does not run properly in Win764 (my current version).  I'm loathe to switch back to XP (I could, but it doesn't like the 3 screen setup very much, and it seems confused by 8 gigs of RAM, too... neither here-nor-there).

So what I needed was a replacement.  To The Internet-Cave, Robin!  (or something like that...)

I tried  a couple of freebie programs, but discarded them as soon as I opened them-- insufficient resolution, not large enough, etc.

I settled on two:  Artweaver and Fotografix.   Both are free.  Artweaver had a paid version, too, and not that pricy (as these things go).   I've only ever dabbled with Fotografix, which I only installed after a successful build using Artweaver.

Along the way, I found this wonderment: Comparison of raster graphic editors.  A treasure to be sure.

That lead to the two I ended up using.

Artweaver is a complicated son-of-a-gun, though, I'll give you that-- capable of magical spells and weavels I'd never imagined, if you want them.   Alas, it's picky-picky to use-- no right-click helpful context menus for example¹.

But eventually, I got it to work, first starting out with a blank picture of the requisite size (5760 x 1080 pixels).  I forgot to set it to black, and paid for that later...

.. but with some fiddling about, I eventually managed to import² the four photos I wanted, into a nice layout.  

Which I saved both as Artweaver's native form (for later editing) and again as JPEG, suitable for Windoze³.

And viola!  Under Windoze "customize personalize my desktop" I was able to navigate to the correct directory, and choose the background.  And it just worked.

Which is when I noticed that betwixt each photo, it was all ugly-white... my color scheme kinda depends on black...  so back to ArtWeaver, happy I'd saved it as native... and I attempted to paint everything not-a-picture black.  No joy.  A bit of fiddling with layers did not improve things.  I suppose I could have put a shape-thingy around each pic, but it was easier for me to simply draw opaque black rectangles around all the whitespace, overlapping these (black boxes) as needed... until all not-a-picture was nicely blackened.  

Back to Windoze, and I had to select some other picture, then re-select my edited photo⁴.

Next time?  I'll begin with an all-black base... or all blue or whatever color I want for 'between.    

So, it worked.  

After I'd finished?  I decided to try the other proggy I'd downloaded-- it's kinda cool-- no install, you just unzip, and open it-- it just works.

I tried opening my artwork, to see if it could handle 5760x1080, and it had no issues with it.  I'll use it for my next background pic, and report back.


Bottom line is this:  I have a unique photo on each of the 3 screens (well, on the right-hand one, I have two side-by-side), with a lovely black space between each picture, suitable for storing those ever-accumulating desktop icons.



<sub>________________________________________________

¹ a CrApple influence?  or patterned off the overly complex Adobe PhotoShop after which this is modeled?  Cannot tell...

² by way of surfing to the photo directory what had my pictures using Windoze Explorer, then opening each in Paint (still plugging along), then select-all, copy, then paste that into Artweaver, which opened a new image.  Then, I had to select that, and finally paste into my main picture-- which was in the wrong place-- so I had to re-select the newly-pasted item, and choose "move tool" to get it to move to where it ought to be... as I said?  Pick-picky-picky, but it worked eventually.

³ ignoring the obligatory warning that I'd lose hours of valuable stuff by going to JPEG....

⁴ as windoze is apparently too stupid to recognize it'd changed...... stupid windoze...
.... i'd bet money Apple would've noticed, and auto-updated even if I didn't want it to...</sub>  

[Griffin NoName]

How irritating - glad you found a way round it.