What to do with extra screen real estate?

Question

I'm a big fan of screen real estate. I love big monitors and multiple monitors. I ran dual 19" CRTs for years, and switched to dual 19" LCDs a few years ago. That's still what I run at home, but I recently started a new job where I wrangled a big hardware budget and promptly blew a bunch of it on twin 24" monitors. I really love these screens, but I feel like I'm not getting the most out of them.

Two big, widescreen monitors like these really feels like four regular monitors to me, since I can keep four web browsers or word documents open at the same time. I'll occasionally fill a whole screen with a single program (usually an IDE or Excel) but that's the exception. Problem is I'm having trouble using more than three windows at a time (yeah, I know, poor me right?). Either the extreme right or the extreme left of my screen just ends up getting neglected, either remaining empty or holding some Firefox instance that was related to whatever I was doing an hour ago. So I'm asking those with experience with enormous amounts of screen real estate (triple monitors or dual widescreens), what's the best way to put all that area to good use?

Edited to add: Lots of good answers, but I just had to accept mauriciopastrana's because Earthdesk is simply awesome. Thank you all.

Answer 1

Windows DreamScene

Answer 2

I keep 4 screens around me using a virtual KVM (that way if i need to show someone something I just pickup that specific laptop and go).

Whenever I have a "dead pc" (your situation) I go around it by using animated desktops, here's my latest: Earthdesk, its a realtime night-day world map with clouds and multiple projections (on a globe, mercator, etc). So far it's been great to keep track of hurricanes, even if at a glance.

cheers,

/mp

Answer 3

A couple thoughts to optimize your screen real estate:

• Rotate your monitors - Developers tend to need more vertical viewing space rather than horizontal as the majority of our code is going to be within the first 80 characters or so. Rotating your monitors will allow you to see more of your code and less whitespace. The same applies for documents and web pages. I guarantee you if you do this, regardless of how much vertical screen space you will have, you won't be shrinking the vertical size of your windows. It's amazing how used to scrolling down we are and how much time we can save by not having to do it as much.
• Dock your Windows taskbar (if you are using Windows) to the left or right. This takes up more screen real estate, but again, it sacrifices your horizontal viewing space in favor of vertical viewing space. Not to mention that if you're like me and like to have 10-20 different apps open when developing, it's much easier to see them all when they are lined up vertically rather than horizontally.
• Widgets - This one is a little shaky. There are plenty of Widgets you can use nowadays that will provide news, weather reports, notes, etc. If you have the extra space and you find these handy then why not?

Answer 4

At work I have 3 monitors, and I have an entire screen devoted to digital sticky notes in the form of PNotes. I use it to keep track of all the stuff I have to complete. I have a shortcut WIN+N to create a new note, and then just drag it onto the notes monitor. Hard not to get stuff done with all those notes staring you in the face.

Answer 5

Eclipse will let you tear off child windows into new frames.

Soaks up all the screen space you'll ever have.

Put the unit test window in that screen, Put the code's docs in the third Put your defect tracking system in the fourth.

You might want synergy now.

Answer 6

Hold onto it, the Screen Real Estate market is bound to rebound once the economy stabilizes.

Answer 7

I generally keep my code on my 24 inch monitor, and MSDN or other docs open on the other.

Answer 8

Eclipse will let you tear off child windows into new frames.

Visual Studio lets you do the something similar (if not with the same words).

And honestly, anything that will let you see more code at a time is a winner (e.g. the tall, narrow screen)

Answer 9

Just because you have the screen real estate now going to waste doesn't mean you won't find a use for it later. Just leave it blank, and some use will materialise.

Having said that you could use it for your email, a todo list etc

Answer 10

When writing code, I usually have my IDE on one screen and on the other I have command line, my tasks manager (OmniFocus), outlining (OmniOutliner) or mind-mapping software (XMind). I sometimes open a Javadoc on the second monitor as well.

When debugging, most of these go away and make room for the running application. The IDE stays.

I use virtual desktops (Spaces on Mac) for holding multiple configurations. I have a desktop for web browsing, for communications (email on 1st monitor, calendar, IM on 2nd), etc.

Answer 11

If you have a widescreen monitor and run Windows, I can't recommend WinSplit Revoultion enough.

Basically you press the windows key and a numpad arrow and it will doc your window to 1/2 of the screen. This makes organising 2 windows side by side very easy.

Answer 12

Maxto is a nice program for maximizing usage of your screen space.