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Keep maximised windows away from sidebars
Reserve desktop space for sidesbars with Desktop Coral
Programs such as Google Desktop and the Yahoo Widget engine are great at displaying important information down the side of the screen. Unfortunately this information is often obscured when windows are maximised.
The solution is Desktop Coral. It reserves a portion of the screen that is not used by maximised windows so they do not obscure important information such as emails and battery status.
The first time it starts it must be dragged to one side of the screen to specify which one it will protect.
Once this is done, windows will not appear over the area protected by Desktop Coral when they are maximised.
The settings window lets you adjust the size of the coral as well as transparancy settings.
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Spoke too soon
In my previous comment I described how I was using Desktop Coral to "guard" my Windows 7 gadgets from maximised windows. When you first start Desktop Coral it moves the gadgets out of the way, but you can drag them over it again. What I didn't realise is that you have to do this every time you start Windows (despite having the "Preserve Desktop Icon Locations" checkbox selected). This renders Desktop Coral useless for this purpose, so I've uninstalled it. Also, I was wrong to attribute it to Tim Smith - my apologies. It goes right back to 2005, in fact.
Posted by Steve Thackery, 06 Nov 2009
Great for Windows 7
A great feature of Vista was the sidebar, which created a "guarded" zone on your desktop, into which you installed your gadgets. This zone was not covered up, even when a window was maximised, so your gadgets remained visible - and clickable - all the time. In a moment of madness Microsoft removed this feature in Windows 7, letting you install gadgets anywhere on the desktop. For some people that is useful, but the problem is you can no longer "guard" them from being covered up. You can, of course, set gadgets to be "always on top", but that is usually dreadful, as maximised windows then maximise UNDER the gadget, causing all sorts of problems. Microsoft introduced Aero Peek in Windows 7, which makes all your windows transparent so you can see your gadgets. This is fine but for two problems: firstly, you can't just glance at the gadget, you have to steer the mouse to the corner of the screen first; secondly, even if you can see a gadget, you can't click on it as it instantly gets hidden again as soon as you move the mouse away from the Aero Peek corner. I use a BBC News reader in the sidebar, and frequently want to click on an interesting headline. Therefore I need my gadgets visible and clickable at all times. Tim Smith's Desktop Coral seems to do exactly what I need. It "guards" a strip of your desktop so that windows can't maximise over it. Initially it moves the gadgets out of the way, but you can drag them back into position again and they'll stay. I've only just installed it, but so far it seems stable. It has removed a really annoying niggle with Windows 7.
Posted by Steve Thackery, 06 Nov 2009