Make your windows instance more like an "tiling desktop manager".

The guys at i3wm got a great tutorial on youtube about it here. And because TileWindow is inspired by i3wm I think it is a great way to get a basic knowledge of what "tiling desktop manager" is and what it can achive. TileWindow is in an early state and therefore lacks much of the cool stuff that i3wm got. But below I will list some of the feature that TileWindow do have.

When you first start TileWindow it will tile up all programs that it think it can handle. This could end up with lots of small tiles, especially if you got lots of windows on the screen.

TileWindow fakes virtual desktops (by hiding windows on other desktops) when the user switch between them. It currently support up to 10 virtual desktops.

TileWindow support putting an tile node into an floating node. this is great if you want an node floating above the rest.

TileWindow support stacking nodes.

If you decide to try TileWindow and you use the compiled version at AppVeyor you will get an default configuration file named tilewindow.config file.

If you check the tilewindow.config file from the link above you will find some default key bindings.

WIN+[arrow key] - Move focus to window located [arrow key] from current active window

WIN+Shift+[arrow key] - Move active window in [arrow key] direction. If the active window is of type floating you will move the floating window a few pixels in [arrow key] direction.

WIN+V - Change tiling to vertical tiling (and often create an new container node on the window node and thus make it possible to move another window into this new window/container node)

WIN+R - Show run dialog, great if you got disableWinKey set to true.

WIN+Shift+Space - switch between floating and non floating for active window.

WIN+[digit key] - switch between virtual desktops (WIN+1) to switch to first virtual desktop, WIN+2 for next and so on to WIN+0.

WIN+Shift+[digit key] - move active window to [digit key] virtual desktop.

WIN+Shift+Q - Close active window.

WIN+S - switch between tiling and stacking layout (stacking is currently in pre pre pre pre alpha something version...)

WIN+ALT+[arrow key] - resize active window in [arrow key] plane.

TileWindow is keeping track on all windows by creating nodes that can contain even more nodes.

The root node is VirtualDesktop node. VirtualDesktop nodes can only contain ScreenNodes. TileWindow will create one ScreenNode for each screen it finds on the system.

After that it is a mixture of ContainerNodes and WindowNodes.

This ones can contain other nodes.

VirtualDesktop and ScreenNode are actual based on this node

ContainerNode got an IRenderer that decides how the specific ContainerNode should structure the child nodes (for example TileRenderer for tiling, StackRenderer for stacking them).

This node always has an window handle connected to it and its purpose is to make sure that window behaves as TileWindow wants.

TileWindow consists of three parts, TileWindow, TWHandler and WineHook.

This is an dll written in c. Its main purpose is to get injected (with winapi SetWindowsHookEx) into all processes on the system. Because TileWindow is targeting 64 bit systems, we have to compile this two times, one for 32 bit opcodes and one with 64 bit opcodes. WinHook is hooking into WH_CALLWNDPROCRET and WH_KEYBOARD_LL. The later because we want to be able to disable win-key.

This is an console program written in c. It works as the glue between low level dll and C# TileWindow. It do this by setting up an named pipe" connection with TileWindow program and forwarding custom messages that Winhook sends it. As with Winhook we have to compile this in both 32 and 64 bit versions.

This is the main program, it contains all logic and handlers. It sets up named pipe listeners and starts both versions of TWHandler. Each message received on named pipe will be added to an concurrent queue. It will create an new side thread that will read from this queue and do needed logic based on the message.

Download both mingw32 and mingw64. Add both mingw32 and mingw64 bin folders to your path (important to have mingw64 before mingw32) Make sure mingw32 is installed to c:\mingw\ folder (or change tasks.json so they point to your mingw32 version)

Press F5.

When you first run TileWindow you will probably have to create an tilewindow.config file in same folder as your exe file (there is an example file in tilewindow\src folder).

• Visual studio code Extensions:
• Coverage Gutters
• .NET Core Test Explorer
• C#
• C# XML Documentation comments
• GitLens

TileWindow is currently using AppVeyor as CI server.

https://docs.microsoft.com/sv-se/windows/win32/winmsg/window-notifications