Review: Whip windows into shape with WindowSpace's keyboard shortcuts

WindowSpace 2.5 WindowSpace might have a slow learning curve, but once you master it, you can truly become the master of your desktop.

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WindowSpace grants you the ability to intricately control windows with dozens of customizable keyboard shortcuts. These range from your regular window-snapping and moving windows between monitors, to fine-tuning a window's position on the screen, resizing, rolling up, transparency toggles, and almost anything else you can dream of.

WindowSpace's UI is one big settings screen.

Aside from keyboard shortcuts, WindowSpace can enhance each window's title bar with additional context menu items and mouse actions. These, too, are pretty flexible, letting you decide which menu items you want to add, and even how you want them to appear in the context menu. In addition, you can set title-bar buttons such as the close, minimize and maximize to perform new actions when right-clicked or middle-clicked.

Unlike most other window managers, WindowSpace takes the focus off simple window-snapping, providing only elementary features in that arena, and instead sets its sights on giving you the best control possible over your windows. In WindowSpace, the Snapping tab is all about your windows' behavior when they're moved next to each other. Will they automatically snap to each other, or will they overlap, making it harder to place them side by side? In other words, WindowSpace makes it easy for you to arrange your windows however you want, but doesn't necessarily do it for you.

In lieu of buttons, WindowSpace adds configurable context menu items.

The program's lack of real interface could be confusing at first, as is the amount of settings you need to read and go through before you can even start setting things up, but if fine-tuned control is what you're looking for, WindowSpace is a solid option. It costs $25 after a 30-day free trial.

Note: The Download button will download the software to your system.

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Review: Master Gmail's Keyboard Shortcuts with KeyRocket

Engineers love keyboard shortcuts. So, like most Google products, Gmail offers you the ability to do pretty much anything with a keypress, from composing a new message (c for compose) to going back to the main list of emails (u for up). These keyboard shortcuts are one of Gmail's best features: they let you compose, archive, forward, and reply to messages, move between labels, search, and more, all without reaching for your mouse.

Alas, they're also hard to learn. After enabling keyboard shortcuts in the Settings screen, you can hit "?" to get a semi-transparent overlay listing all shortcuts. For some people, looking at a long list isn't the best way to learn–and KeyRocket thinks it can do better.

Every time you use the mouse to do something your keyboard can do, KeyRocket would let you know.

Veodin's KeyRocket for Gmail sits in the background as you use Gmail, and quietly watches your every move. As soon as you tick the checkbox next to a message (to select it), it pops up a discreet notification letting you know you could have just hit "x" on your keyboard to do the same thing. When you hit the Reply button, KeyRocket informs you that "r" would have worked just as well.

Because the messages are contextual, they are much more useful than a help sheet: You learn in bite-sized chunks, and only about those functions you actually use.

KeyRocket makes key combinations easy to understand.

KeyRocket isn't perfect: Ideally, it should be able to tell when you already know a shortcut, and just prefer using the mouse now and then for the same function. KeyRocket shouldn't tell me about the "#" shortcut in the one time I use the mouse click the button, just the first few times.

Still, despite this minor flaw, KeyRocket is an excellent learning aid for Gmail.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into your Chrome browser.

Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
More by Erez Zukerman

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Review: Update Your Shortcuts With Broken Shortcut Fixer

Expatriate Scotsman now living in Wurzburg, Germany, freelance writer, frustrated future bestselling author, obsessed bibliophile. Other interests include trying to understand The Architect in the Matrix movies, decrypting codes and ciphers, and trying to persuade my landlord and my wife to let me have a Highland Cow for a pet.
More by Mark O'Neill

With the plethora of free software available these days, we all install and then uninstall a huge amount of stuff. The problem with this is that quite often, a lot of shortcuts and other detritus is left behind, clogging things up and making things a mess. The problems aren’t confined to uninstalling, either. When you move things around in your computer you often end up breaking shortcuts pointing to the old location. You may not immediately realize that, and later when you need the file or program, you click the shortcut only to get the dreaded "the item has changed or moved" error. Luckily, there's one free piece of software that can help with these scenarios: Broken Shortcut Fixer.

A shortcut is a link which allows you to start a program or open a file from a different location than the directory that program or file lives in. So for example, you may have Microsoft Word in the Windows folder but a shortcut link will be on the desktop, so you can start a new file right away.  But these shortcuts are only good if the file it points to stays in place. If you move it, the shortcut link is broken, because it is still pointing to the old location.

Broken Shortcut Fixer is a small free app that scans your computer drives, looks for shortcuts and then determines if they are broken or not. If they are broken, it tries to fix the shortcut by looking for the target file or program and linking the shortcut to it. If they can’t be fixed, it displays it in a list for you to review so you can decide if it can be fixed manually. If all else fails, it gives you a big delete button to blast them off into digital oblivion.

To find broken links, just choose your drive in the lower left of the UI, and click “scan shortcuts”. Any shortcuts that the app was unable to fix will appear in the main section for you to review and delete.

To use it, you start up Broken Shortcut Fixer and choose which computer drive you want to scan.  Then press “scan shortcuts” and let it do its work. Since I had just reinstalled my entire Windows system, it only found one broken shortcut. Maybe I should have tested this the day before when my system was the digital equivalent of a junkyard.

As I said previously, when it finds something, it attempts to repair it first, using the Windows Link Resolve method. If it can't reunite shortcut with the intended program or file, you are given a list, so you can examine them and decide which ones you want to keep and fix yourself and which ones can be zapped.

This is a very handy program, worth keeping on the computer and running every now and again, alongside your anti-virus and anti-malware. There’s nothing worse than clicking a link and being told the program can’t be located. Occasional use of this program means you can banish those moments forever and keep on top of your shortcut repairs.

Note: The "Download" button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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