USING THE DESKTOP ORGANIZER Multi-monitor support. Touch, Keyboard or Mouse Control. Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows 7. Compatible with TaskView and virtual desktops. Free evaluation trial period before purchasing. Contents What is Emcee?... 2 Actions in Thumbnail View... 3 Starting Emcee and Activating the Thumbnail View... 5 Replacing TaskView with Emcee... 5 What if I Don t Want Thumbnails Grouped into Piles?... 5 About Touch in Emcee... 6 Using a Touchpad... 6 Emcee on Multi-Monitor Systems... 6 Dragging Apps Between Displays... 7 Keyboard and Mouse Controls in... 7 Thumbnail and Zoom Views... 7 Picking the Active Thumbnail... 7 Actions in Thumbnail View... 8 Actions in Zoomed View... 9 The Settings Editor... 10 Using Hot Corners with Windows 10... 12 The Emcee Log File... 12 Installation... 12 From this To this with one keystroke, touch or mouse gesture. 1 P a g e
What is Emcee? With more multi-tasking of desktop apps and Windows Store apps, your Windows 10 or 8 desktop, like the one below, is more crowded than ever. Finding the window you need, when you need it, can be tricky. It is not obvious at first glance, but the desktop shown is running 11 desktop apps and 9 Windows Store apps, some visible, some obscured, some minimized. Windows gives you some ways to find what your looking for: (press ALT/TAB) & use the taskbar (below, left), or in Windows 10 you can use TaskView (below, right). Emcee gives you a better way: one customizable keystroke or mouse gesture brings up thumbnail views of all your apps, both desktop and Windows Store, in one convenient, easy to manage view 2 P a g e
This is the Emcee Thumbnail View. Every running app is represented, minimized, maximized and even those from other Windows 10 virtual desktops (can be turned on or off). The "Settings icon in the upper right corner will bring up the settings editor, allowing you to customize many aspects of Emcee's behavior. Thumbnail view shows thumbnails of each desktop application running on your machine. The thumbnails are arranged into "stacks," grouping windows from similar applications. For instance, all Microsoft Office windows can be grouped in a single stack. This feature of Emcee is fully configurable: you can specify which applications get their own stack and which applications to group. At the bottom of thumbnail view on your main monitor is an App Bar containing a thumbnail view of each screen-height Windows Store (WS) App running. When not needed the AppBar doesn't appear & the entire display is used to show windowed app thumbnails. The Settings editor lets you override this behavior and display WS app thumbnails in their own stack, or grouped with desktop apps. The Windows Logo icon in the lower left corner brings up the start menu (or start screen) and the TaskView icon in the lower right corner brings up Window 10 s TaskView display. Either removes the Emcee thumbnail view first. Actions in Thumbnail View Among the actions you can take from the thumbnail view are these: Navigate among the thumbnails with keystrokes, mouse gestures or touch. "Zoom in" to view a larger thumbnail for any app window -- full size when possible. Spread out the thumbnails in a stack, zooming in to larger views. Activate any app, with the option to minimize all others. 3 P a g e
Rearrange the "Z-Order" of applications on your desktop (control which windows appear above or below other windows). Terminate any app -- desktop or WS. Minimize all desktop applications. Restore all desktop applications. Bring up the start menu or TaskView. Drag thumbnails from one monitor to another to move the underlying application to that monitor. Drag using touch or press-and-drag with left mouse button. Emcee provides a mouse interface, a keyboard interface, and a Windows Touch interface 1 to most actions. As noted above, you can zoom any thumbnail to full size, or you can spread out and zoom an entire stack of thumbnails. This is called the Emcee Zoomed View. From the zoomed view you can Return to thumbnail view. Activate any zoomed app, with the option to minimize all others. Terminate the app underlying the zoomed thumbnail. Zoom in on one zoomed thumbnail when you have spread out an entire pile. When run from Windows 10, Emcee supports Window 10 s virtual desktop capabilities, with the option either to include only windows from the current desktop in the thumbnail view or to include windows from all desktops. 1 Windows Touch works on Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10, but requires a computer or tablet with multi-touch capabilities. 4 P a g e
Starting Emcee and Activating the Thumbnail View When you install Emcee, a start tile is automatically added to the Windows application list; look for the Emcee icon, shown here. You may pin this shortcut to the Windows start menu, to the task bar and/or create a shortcut on your desktop or whatever "launcher" or "dock" you may use. You can always start Emcee and activate a thumbnail view by clicking on one of these icons. By default, Emcee remains active, but invisible, after you first start it in a session. If you click on one of these icons again, the resident program activates the thumbnail view. In addition, Emcee watches for the following key combinations and mouse movements, which can trigger display of the thumbnail view: Press the Emcee hotkey by default, <CTRL><TAB> -- or a different hotkey that you specify using the Settings editor. Move the mouse cursor into the hot corner, (specify using the Settings editor). On a touch enabled monitor, touch-drag one finger into the hot corner. [Requires hot corners be activated in the Settings Editor]. Click or tap on a launch emcee shortcut on your desktop, start menu or start screen. You can use the Settings editor to customize Emcee's hot key and to control whether these mouse gestures are used. If you would rather Emcee not remain resident and be started anew each time you click on it's shortcut icon, then edit the shortcut to include the command line argument -onetime but remember that this will disable hotkey and mouse gesture activation of the thumbnail view. In the Settings editor you can also configure Emcee to automatically start each time you log on. Replacing TaskView with Emcee An option in the Settings editor instructs Emcee to replace TaskView. If this action is selected, Emcee will be activated instead of TaskView on the WIN/TAB key press, on a swipe from the left edge of a touchscreen, a three fingered swipe up on a precision touchpad or a click on the TaskView icon on the task bar. TaskView will still be accessible, but only by clicking the TaskView icon on the Emcee display. What if I Don t Want Thumbnails Grouped into Piles? When Emcee starts, it s default mode is Stacking Mode, with app thumbnails grouped into piles if (a) they are instances of a common application, or (b) according to the rules specified using the Settings editor. But Emcee also supports Simple Mode, where grouping isn t used and each thumbnail is displayed individually. You can toggle between Stacking and Simple Mode using the keyboard, mouse and/or touch actions described on page 9. This Instead of this. 5 P a g e
About Touch in Emcee The simplest touch gestures recognized by Emcee are single-finger gestures. Move a single finger around on the screen to drag the mouse cursor to a new position. Tapping on the screen with one finger and is has the same effect as clicking the left mouse button. Emcee also supports some Windows Touch two-finger gestures: Two-Finger Tap gestures, Two-Finger Pinch or Spread gestures, and Two-Finger Flick (Swipe) gestures, and something called press and tap, where you place your index finger on the screen and then tap with your middle finger. A chart illustrating all these gestures is available on Microsoft s web site at msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd940543(v=vs.85).aspx In the instructions below, the touch equivalents to the keyboard and mouse controls described are displayed in blue surrounded by curly brackets, for example, the gesture used to zoom, placing two fingers on the screen and moving them apart, would be described as { Two Finger Pinch } Using a Touchpad Emcee is configured to recognize standard gestures from a multi-touchpad, but whether it will on you PC depends on the specific driver settings of your touchpad. In most instances it should recognize single-finger taps and mouse drag gestures, and two-finger flick (swipe) and pinch and spread gestures without any special configuration of your machine s touchpad driver. Emcee on Multi-Monitor Systems If your setup has a multiple displays then by default Emcee will display thumbnail stacks for desktop apps on the monitor where they are displayed. An option on the Settings editor will let you turn off multi-monitor mode and display all thumbnails on the primary monitor. 6 P a g e
Dragging Apps Between Displays If you depress the left mouse button with the cursor over a thumbnail, you can move the mouse to drag the app to a different monitor. On a touch display, you can drag a window with a single-finger drag gesture. When you release the left button, or lift your finger, Emcee will move the thumbnail to a stack on the new display and move the underlying app window to that display. Windows Store apps can be dragged to a new display only if they are displayed in stacks instead of on the App Bar (a Settings option). If you are running Windows 8 or 8.1, Emcee will only allow you to drag a Windows Store app thumbnail if 1. NUM-LOCK is turned off, and 2. The Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing option is turned off on the Visual Efects tab of System->Advanced System Settings->Performance control panel page. No such restrictions apply under running Windows 10 or Windows 7. Keyboard and Mouse Controls in Thumbnail and Zoom Views Picking the Active Thumbnail When you hover the mouse pointer over a thumbnail it will be visibly highlighted, and if it is a desktop app thumbnail it will be displayed on top of it's stack. Mouse actions always operate on the thumbnail beneath the mouse cursor. But keyboard actions operate on the highlighted, active thumbnail. To select a thumbnail with Windows Touch, move the mouse cursor with { Single-Finger Drag } To facilitate keyboard control over which thumbnail is active, some keyboard shortcuts have been provided: <RightArrow> or <Tab> Key Navigate to the next thumbnail stack: the top app on that stack will become active. The <Right Arrow> key will navigate among Win8 App thumbnails. { One-Finger Flick Left } or a { Two-Finger Flick Left } over the App Bar. <LeftArrow> Key Navigate to the previous thumbnail stack: the top app on that stack will become active. The <LeftArrow> key will navigate among Win8 App thumbnails. { One-Finger Flick Right } or a { Two-Finger Flick Right } over the App Bar. 7 P a g e
<UpArrow> or <DownArrow> Key Navigate up or down within the active stack: a new thumbnail becomes active and is displayed at on top of the stack. Changing the active thumbnail does not affect the relative position of the underlying application on the desktop. Actions in Thumbnail View [Left Button Click] outside of the "Desktop Background Thumbnail" { One Finger Tap } <ESC> Restore the desktop (or Win8 App) view, making no further changes. [Left Button Click] over of the "Desktop Background Thumbnail" { One Finger Tap } <CTRL>M Minimize all desktop and Windows Store apps and restore desktop view. [Middle Button Click] over of the "Desktop Background Thumbnail" { Press and Tap } <CTRL>D Minimize all Windows Store apps but not desktop apps and restore desktop view. [Left Button Click] over of the "Windows Start Icon" { One Finger Tap } <WIN> Restore desktop view and bring up Windows Start Screen. <CTRL>[Left Button Click] outside of "Desktop Background Thumbnail" { Two-Finger Tap } <CTRL>N "Normalize" (display) all desktop Window including minimized ones. <ALT>[Right Button Click] not over a Thumbnail <ALT>Z Toggle between Stacking Mode, with thumbnails grouped into piles, and Simple Mode, with each window displayed separately. { Two-Finger Spread } Switch from Stacking Mode to Simple Mode { Two-Finger Pinch } Switch from Simple Mode to Stacking Mode The mode change is persistent it remains in effect until toggled back by the user or the Emcee application is terminated and restarted. 8 P a g e
Note: The keystroke actions below operate only on the active thumbnail or its stack. The mouse actions operate on the thumbnail underneath the mouse cursor. The touch gestures operate on the thumbnail where you touch. [Left Button Click] over Application or App Thumbnail { One-Finger Tap } <ENTER> Select the App underlying the thumbnail and restore the desktop view. <CTRL>[Left Button Click] over Application or App Thumbnail <CTRL><ENTER> Select the App underlying the thumbnail, minimize all other apps, and restore the desktop view. [Middle Button Click] over Application or App Thumbnail { Press and Tap } <CTRL>K Remove the thumbnail and request that the underlying app window terminate. It is possible for an underlying app to veto this request, especially if it is executing with a higher level of administrative privilege than Emcee. <CTRL>[Middle Button Click] over Application Thumbnail { Two Finger Tap } <CTRL>B Push the thumbnail to the bottom of it's stack and push the underlying desktop app to the bottom of the display Z-Order. [Right Button Click] over Application or App Thumbnail { Two-Finger Flick Up or Down } <CTRL>Z Zoom to a full-size view of the thumbnail, darkening the background around it. Another click or <CTRL>Z will restore the thumbnail view. <CTRL>[Right Button Click] over a Thumbnail Stack { Two-Finger Spread } <CTRL><SHIFT>Z Spread out all of the thumbnails in a stack (and zoom them all to a larger size) so you can see them all. Actions in Zoomed View [Left Button Click] over Zoomed Thumbnail { One-Finger Tap } Select the App underlying the thumbnail and restore the desktop view. 9 P a g e
<CTRL>[Left Button Click] over Zoomed Thumbnail Select the App underlying the thumbnail, minimize all other apps, and restore the desktop view. [Middle Button Click] over Zoomed Thumbnail { Press and Tap } Remove the thumbnail and request that the underlying app window terminate. It is possible for an underlying app to veto this request, especially if it is executing with a higher level of administrative privilege than Emcee. [Right Button Click] over Zoomed Thumbnail in Spread Pile { One- or Two-Finger Flick Up } Zoom only that thumbnail to full size [Button Click] over background { One or Two-Finger Flick Down } or { Flick Down } or { Two-Finger Pinch } <CTRL-Z> or <ESC> Return to Thumbnail View. The Settings Editor When Emcee is in thumbnail view, clicking on the "gear" icon in the upper right-hand corner, or pressing <CTRL>S will activate the settings editor. The Settings editor provides three "tabs" to control activation, layout and stack composition. 10 P a g e
The Activation & Start-up Tab provides control over activation methods, the hot key, whether labels are displayed for windows, controls thumbnail behavior with respect to virtual desktops, logging, where to display WS app thumbnails and whether to replace TaskView or enable multi-monitor use. The "Start Emcee at Log On" is convenient for one reason: it starts Emcee with elevated privileges. If you don't do this you may find that certain desktop apps, such as the Windows Task Manager, can't be controlled by Emcee actions. The Appearance tab gives you some control of how thumbnails are arranged in thumbnail view, lets you specify the fill color used surrounding the desktop background icon and control label font sizes. The App Groups & Exclusions Tab gives you control over how thumbnail stacks are created. By creating App Groups you can specify which desktop apps to combine in stacks. The <Excluded Apps> group allows you to specify that some desktop apps should not appear in the Emcee thumbnail view. 11 P a g e
The app name is simply the portion of the program name proceeding the ".exe" and is not case sensitive. When you click "Add App to Group" Emcee will allow you to either enter a new name, or to choose a name from a list of currently active desktop apps. If you add an app to the Excluded Apps group it won t appear in the thumbnail view. In addition, hot corner behavior may be affected a hot corner activation will not occur if the cursor is above the window of a desktop app in the Excluded Apps list. This was added to help prevent the errant activation that was observed by several users during full screen game play. Using Hot Corners with Windows 10 When using the mouse activation methods, the following considerations should be noted. If you use hot-corners activation, it overrides Windows s usual response to moving the mouse cursor into that same hot corners movement. Thus, under Windows 10, Emcee will not allow you to specify a lower-left hot corner, because it interferes with the Windows Start icon. The Emcee Log File Emcee writes to a small log file each time it activates the desktop view. Examining this log file may be helpful in specifying desktop app names in App Groups. This log file can be found at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Emcee\Emcee.log However, writing to this log file can be disabled from the Settings Editor. Installation Emcee is installed by the Windows Installer using the installation executable you downloaded at purchase. Detailed information about installing and licensing Emcee can be found on our support page at www.emceesoftware.net/support. Emcee requires.net 4.0 or higher, which comes installed with Windows 10. It also requires this Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2013. Since Emcee is a 32-bit application it requires the 32-bit redistributable. The installation process should install this on your system if a compatible version is not present, but in the event of a problem you can download this component for free from Microsoft at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=40784. Download the vcredist_x86.exe version. 12 P a g e