pf » Expose for Windows

I found yet another Exposé-like program, it has just been released apparently. It is called <a href="http://entbloess.nipaco.co.nz/">Entblöß</a>. It has a trial version, and the full only $7.99.

It can do a few things that the other clones don't do well, like Live Previews and complete customization, and it also has a new Alt+Tab window which shows small previews that can be enabled if you want it.

I just tried the app, and I must say that it works perfectly for me. I also tested a few others like Iex or Winglance but they are too buggy and too slow for me...

Unlike the others, WinPLOSION runs smooth and fast (had no crashes so far, however, testing since 2 days only..) and it seems to be the best Exposé-clone available for the Windows plattform at this moment.

Give it a try, I am sure you will love it?

..I just see I forgot to mention the name of the software I am so exited about: WinPLOSION :-)))

i also have tried winplosion and have to admit that it requires a bit more work to be a piece of software that can be charged for. its function is cool but its implementation is buggy. i've had issues with activating winplosion using the hotspots at varying times in my trial period. also it has a nasty hole which leaves programs running even after you have physically closed them down. inspecting the task manager after a session at the computer can reveal a whole range of programs you thought were no longer open sitting there, actively taking up memory and generally being fat with no purpose. the winplosion website has no support forums and an extremely thin faq, which is disappointing for a company that wants you to pay them for this beta software. thanks for this blog tho.. i have downloaded and installed iEx (even though the website is also thin on details) and am very happy with its performance so far. appreciate the info.

sorry but I don't agree with this post (which seems to me to be a posting of someone who just wants to market IEx). I am running WinPLOSION since 2 months now, and it outperforms IEx by far, sorry to say that.

And don't you think that paying 10 bucks is really not much money? I also had a question and the support of Winplosion answered within 1 day.

I am just sick of you nerds who just expect to be everything for free... WinPlosion works just perfectly for me, there are no bugs, no crashes, performance is great, and I feel like having no problems with it paying 10 dollar for this software.

I installed winplosion, didnt like it at all. It kills the main concept of expose.. the windows dont retain their relative position when they are "iconized". in other words, if i have a messenger window on the right hand corner of the screen, when i press the Win+1 key (expose all windows), then the messenger suddenly moves to the left hand corner. So if u have 30 windows opened up, its not predictable where the window will go when iconized and u have to actually "look around" for ur window.

The software is also quite buggy, Function keys dont work somehow.

WinPLOSION is buggy and not worth the cash YET. The next version should iron the bugs out and then it will be a killer app. Until then, I will continue using iEX.

Gee .. when are these Expose clones going to support a mouse ? I have a Logitech MX mouse with a zillion buttons and want to configure one of these clones to accept the buttons instead of using my F keys ... sigh ....

I tested IEx, Winglance and WinPlosion and my verdict is clear: WinPlosion is by far the best of these apps. The above comment about WinPlosion being buggy is a complete joke from my point of view. I mean, come on: IEx doesn't even offer a setup routine, and have you ever tried to install and to configure IEx. Well, maybe it is fun for some sort of freaks, but not for a normal person. Usually I want to download a software and use it right after the installation and not to hang around hours on some forums and asking questions about why I get errors like "..PrintWindow lib not found...". About WinGlance: it doesn't offer the same high performance which I experience when using WinPLOSION, also winglance doesn't have the fancy animation offered by WinPlosion.

So: If you want a stable running, fast and nice Exposé-clone for your Windows-machine, use WinPlosion.

Dave

WinPlosion is the way to go... try it... I been using it all the time... fast and stable... BTW, my system is P3 with Geforce 2, 768MB RAM... so if your system higher then my then should be ok

I agree, I purchased WinPLOSION some months ago when it was called WinExposé. It was buggy and not useful. HOwever, the new version WinPlosion 2.17 kicks ass (sorry the expression), it runs smooth and the animations are really beautiful and smooth. I am using it all time now and can't imagine living without it...

Cheers, Tracy

Seems like nobody actually read his comment ... are any of you who are pimping WinPlosion actually running a dual-monitor system?

Checkout TopDesk - http://www.otakusoftware.com - it handles minimized windows and has mouse hotkey support.

check this one out, not only fast but like pretty good. personally better than silly winplosion. http://www.onlinetoolsteam.com/WindowsExposer/

check this one out, not only fast but like pretty good. personally better than silly winplosion. http://www.onlinetoolsteam.com/WindowsExposer/

You must be kidding me... Better than silly WinPLOSION? I think the only one silly here is you, and I am pretty sure you are the lame guy who programmed windowsexposer.

I just downloaded it now and I must say it is pretty crappy, it is slow and the animation is not smooth. Also it needs .Net..! How about making software which doesn't need the .Net framework? And finally it will not work on my Windows2000, only on XP. WinPLOSION runs smooth on both my crappy old notebook running Windows98 and even smoother on my Dell Dimension 8000 running Windows2000...

Cheers, Mira

My personal favorite is Entbloess. Its one of the best window switchers that I have found. Its very reliable, reasonably priced, and fast relative to all the others that I have tested. Plus, it works on both XP and 2k, which is a very rare feature. Go check it out: http://www.entbloess.com/

..I personally do not like Entbloess at all. They write about live updating windows, but in fact it is very slow only and doesn't look very nice. Also it is by far not that fast as WinPlosion, at least on my machine. And again, and I already wrote it before: WinPlosion works on Win98-XP, so please don't tell me that entbloess is the only one running on Win2k becasue that is just not true!

Mira

..I personally do not like Entbloess at all. They write about live updating windows, but in fact it is very slow only and doesn't look very nice. Also it is by far not that fast as WinPlosion, at least on my machine. And again, and I already wrote it before: WinPlosion works on Win98-XP, so please don't tell me that entbloess is the only one running on Win2k becasue that is just not true!

Mira

well, who could tell me which Expose clone is the best for Windows....??????

waaah, I have no idea

WinPLOSION (http://www.winplosion.com/) is by far the best, Carl. It is the fastest and has the smoothest animations and best quality of the preview-window. The other clones are mostly buggy and not very fast, also some of them (IEx and Entbloess) will be discontinued (check their forums on their websites), WinPLOSION will be continued for longtime, those guys are working on live previews not etc.

Cheers, Mira

Tried WinPLOSION. It's junk. The developers have no idea what they're doing.

Sorry but this previous comment is junk itself. Dear mister "Anonymous" must be either blind or an idiot.

WinPLOSION is definitely not junk, it is by far the best Exposé-clone available for the MS Windows plattform, it offers great performance and smooth animations.

Try for your self: www.winplosion.com

Cheers, Mira

I fully agree, the above comment seems to be written by someone who has some "personal" problem with the product WinPLOSION (in other words: I am pretty sure it will be someone from another company who tries its luck in making some kind of an Exposé-clone for MS). From my point of view I prefer reading the "why" a product is bad, not only a statement "that a product is bad", without further explanation...

I personally use WinPLOSION and I am fully happy with it, it is really fast and the animation is smooth.

Regards, Paul

WinPlosion seems to work relatively well, but I have experienced a couple of issues (using the 2.17 trial). I've tried the software on two different xp machines and have experienced the same issue with the show minimized windows option. Basically, even with the option checked to display the minimized windows, the software does not always display all minimized windows, which lowers the usability in my opinion. Also the desktop shortcut seems to be a bit sluggish compared to using the window key-d shortcut key or the quicklaunch show desktop icon. The animation appears to be very fluid and the preview window quality is very high. The software is very close to being great, but I'm not sure it is good enough yet to purchase. Just one man's opinion.

The original Exposé doesn't support minimized windows at all :-) Maybe you shouldn't expect too much from its Win32-clone WinPLOSION regarding minimized windows (something which works fine for me, you just can't start WinPLOSION *after* you had minimized windows, because the app had never the chance to take proper screenshots of it). I think porting this is pretty hard to Win as Apple has the Quartz-Engine, something which is missing in Win...

Regards, Paul

<h1>You are invited to visit the sites in the field of... </h1>

I love expose on the mac and I've been looking around a lot for the best windows clone. Winplosion is fast and pretty stable on XP, but I couldn't get it to work at all on 2K and the display minimised windows doesn't work either. iEx didn't install, I'm damned if I'm installing .NET just for Windows Exposer and in the end Entbloess won for me. It's stable and is far more customiseable than many others. True, it can be a sluggish in full quality mode, but disable some of the options to make it work like WinPlosion and it's just as quick, not to mention the live preview and working minimised windows function which are excellent. I'm not interested in any of these companies, just the best software and on balance, with current available versions, Entbloess has it.

I don't agree with the above statement. The so called "live windows" of Entbloess is a joke, it isn't live at all. From my point of view WinPLOSION is by far the best of the available Exposé-clones, none of the other apps has the same quality and speed/performance which is offered by WinPLOSION.

Britte

by the way, you write that WinPLOSION isn't working on Win2000. This is not possible, the version 2.17 is on market since almost a year, and it was the first Exposé-clone which offered support of not only XP but also 2000 and even Win98. About minimized windows: also this is not possible. You just have to understand that all these Exposé-clones are working with screenshots which they take from the apps. So, if you started WinPLOSION after you had minimised windows it will not work of course.

Britte

Brit, Miranda, nad Paul all sound like shills for Winplosion. Notice some of them double-post and spell WinPlosion complete with lame capitalization: "WinPLOSION".

I have tried WinPlosion and can testify that well, I'm sorry, but it kind of sucks. The seam between it and your desktop is too obvious. In other words, it's obvious you are running another program, because of a flash or whatever.

I can't remember the details exactly (after having tried another version for linux) but I do remember that it's not worth using.

BTW, I just tried Entbloess and it's awesome. Too bad it's not free.

Well, I am sorry to tell this Kevin but I suspect that you are just working for Entbloess. Just telling that some app is bad and sucks without telling the people why is a completely worthless post and just shows that you are some stupid ashole making posts for the Entbloess software.

I just can repeat that WinPLOSION (and yes, this is how the product is spelled), is just great, it is by far better than Entbloess and every other Exposé-clone for Windows. Check it out for yourself here: http://www.winplosion.com/

Cheers, Britte

I'm currently using entbloess, and have used winplosion in the past. So time to add my opinion on this flame war...

The reason I use entbloess over winplosion is because it is more customizable. It runs smoother on my machine and quicker. Winplosion had me waiting for almost 5 seconds the first time I hit alt+1. HOWEVER, if I had to say one was smoother (by the time everything got loaded into memory) I would say Winplosion is smoother, but not by a great amount.

Entbloess is also more customizable. I also enjoy how it puts the title of document/program when you mouseover the window. It's live preview is only a joke with movie files. I've noticed that it live previews only on a mouseover with VLC.

It's easy enough to say one piece of software is "better" than another, but in this case they're nearly identical. Try both and just decide for yourself. Another thing to consider (and I am saddened by this) is that entbloess is becoming discontinued. Oh well, I like how it is, but it could be 'better'.

-- Slunk

I've just tried out all the lot here including Winplosion, Entbloess, Winglance, iEx, WinExposer, and TopDesk. My verdict is that I think that Entbloess and Winplosion are the best.

However, they all have their flaws, some more than others:

TopDesk: great app in its F9/tile feature. Works well and swiftly with window captions but in the Trial version theres no F10/F11 equivalent or configuration options! Only in the registered version. Well, what use is that to me? I want to test the full app not some crippled version. Add to that, the fact that it was using 31MB of system ram and it loses the battle. The resitered version has lots more options apparently but with the other competition here, im not paying the $10 to find out.

iEx: The good thing about this is that its free and despite what people say, is very easy to install. So you dont get a shortcut in your start menu, well boo-hoo. Easily fixed. However, thats about all the good things I have to say. Its exceptionally buggy and simply does not work properly. End of story. Screen redraw, screwing up my desktop.

Winglance: I liked this, and it had the lowest memory footprint of the useable ones, of less than 4MB ram. Unfortunately the F10/F11 equivalent features arent there, and I require those features. It does preview minimised windows though including ones in the tasktray, and also an exclusion list. Its a shame because it was reliable and quick with a low memory footprint. Price? $9.

WinExposer: Well, it looks like the criticism of this product is justified, which cannot be said of the $7 price. Charging for this buggy unfinished rubbish is ludicrous. At least iEx is free and so is relatively free of criticism. I already have the .net framework installed for lots of other apps but it still had a footprint of 18mb and was extremely slow (i have a P4-2.4ghz/512mb/radeon9600pro). Dont waste any time and money on this.

Entbloess: Wow. What can I say? It has flawless F9/F10/F11 implementation, with window captions. The F11 is smooth and there is no flicker. After disabling the ridiculous live previews and moving the preview quality from high to medium, it worked just as advertised and was very faithful to the apple implementation. I think the price is very reasonable at $7.99 too. The only downside I could see was that it uses a massive 23mb of ram.

Winplosion: This has similar functionality to Entbloess only not as well implemented. The F11 is flickery and the F10 sometimes has to be pressed a couple of times to get it going. Like Entbloess it gives windows a sense of proportion and doesnt give them all the same size, but the windows dont have any captions,the transparency and animations arent as smooth and the window positions arent logical. My winamp might be in the bottom left but on Expose its at top right. Not good. However, these things arent that important to me, such cosmetics and I think I'll be using this over Entbloess because it takes only 7mb of system ram and is a fraction faster (until I get some more ram!). Price? $10.

And no Im not a sycophant of any of these products, or the author either or on any commission.

Kudos to surfboy's summaries above.

After searching for some time for a good Exposé clone I've been quite happy with WinPLOSION. It's not perfect and it's a bit flakey if you try to show all windows just after opening one and such, but it's smooth and, as has been mentioned, isn't as resource-hungry as some of the others.

As to the Function key/keyboard shortcuts gripes, I can't comment on them. I just don't care about them, wouldn't use them, and don't want them -- I really have only wanted the Hot Corner abilities in my upper left and lower left corners. I also don't care much about the Live Updating of windows -- a static thumbnail is just fine thanks.

Sooo... WinPLOSION is probably the best place to start for anyone looking for an Exposé clone. None of the clones are perfect, but right now WinPLOSION seems to be the best bet. Hopefully they'll continue to improve it (v2.17 right now) and it'll make further strides in stability and working out some of the graphical flakiness. After that try Entbloess if for some reason WinPLOSION isn't meeting your needs...

-- Primis.

I check in to this thread quite often. It seems to be nothing but fanboys and employees/friends of companies coming in to scream their certain product.

Look. A mac is a mac for a reason. Windows does NOT have Quartz or Core Image technology to pull of these tricks. After trying winplosion (which came closest), i like TopDesk best. Its smooth, and you're not missing too much w/o live previews. The things the trial CAN do, it does well..so you know the full version should do all that you require.

I don't even know the web address, so you know i'm not pluggin' anything.

Frankly, i'd say buy a damned mac mini and get your Expose fix over with.

Winplosion works for me, definitely worth the money. Animations could be smoother, but whatever.

Entbloess is like holy effin beautiful. It's eye candy central. Possibly a better implementation of expose than the original! Doesn't work with my dual head setup though, it freaks out with the 2nd monitor. If it ever gets fixed for dual head, I'll be all over it.

Note hardware capabilities aren't something I can really test. Neither taxed my machine at all, although the memory footprint was bigger with Entbloess.

OK, first off, I read ALL the reviews, and it seam to me the top two programs were WinPLOSION and Entbloess. These programs got very mixed reviews, it seamed more people liked WinPLOSION though. I tried both....

And what surpised me... Wow! I can't belive all the "WinPLOSION" fans out there. Have you guys tried Entbloess 2? It blows WinPLOSION out of the water! In the ability of all the settings, the quality, the smoothness, speediness, everything. In some respects, it's BETTER then Expose! (Not the quality of the video, because nothing could ever come close, but the customizability of it.)

SO I did a PRO/CON test on both programs.

WinPLOSION:

Pros: - Ability to customize hot corner size - Ability to adjust animation - Ability to turn off animation - Ability to save or not save screenshots in memory - Ability to turn off or on minimized windows - Ability to exclude applications (in list form) - Ability to "take settings to default"

Cons: - Usually very slowly to react - Usually very buggy in the quality/speed/smoothness and flickered all the time! (as surfboy said, flickery) (some of the problems were fixed by "alternative capture method", whatever that is) - Desktop hot corner/key seamed to freak my display out, very flickery and slow! Especially if you hit it twice to get back to your windows. - Slightly lengthy startup (Longer then Entbloess 2) - NO title displayed (Heck Entbloess displays the title AND you can customize what the title looks like!) - It ate my system! As I was typing this with WinPLOSION, my text was actually being delayed, it was practically bringing my system to a halt, and my machine is fairly fast, but not screaming. (a Pentium4 2.8GHz with 512 PC-2700 DDR RAM and a ATI RAEDOM 9200 w/ 64mb of ram) - Windows do not highlight on mouse over (Expose does it, Entbloess does it, why not WinPLOSION?) - NO Ability to turn off hot key operation

Entbloess 2:

Pros - HUGE amount of customizable settings (almost unwieldy, could even be a CON in some eyes! Not simple enough to use or streamline?) - Ability to Disable/Enable program (to turn it off without closing the application) - Quick startup - Ability to clear resources - Dynamic help window (VERY helpful for first time users, especially with the amazing amount of settings) - AND ability to turn off the dynamic help window. - Ability to turn off/on system tray icon - Ability to turn off/on program start on windows startup - Ability to customize the "preview" options, gives you the ability to customize if it captures windows that it already has captured, capture all windows all the time, or none at all, or only ones that have changed size. This helps balance performance with functionality for all types of computer speeds. - Ability to update foreground window, or at intervals - Enable live previews or not (this DOES work, as Slunk noted, like my music player was moving along, but windows media player video did not display) - Ability to adjust quality of captures - Ability to turn off/on regions into account (ie: the locations of your windows) - Ability to change screen captures method, "print window" method, or screen whenever possible. - Change/Add background image, use desktop image, no image, OR background color - Adjust spacing - Ability to turn off animation, slide animation, fade animation, OR both slide/fade - Ability to change font of title, shadow, outline, font color, etc. - Ability to turn off/on hot keys and corners - Customize minimized windows in FOUR different options: show caption bar only (MY personal favorite, takes up less space, and u can still access them), restore all, restore all AND THEN minimize, OR don't show at all. HOW AWESOME!!! - 8 HOT spot locations! All corners AND in between corners. - Hotspot delay control (Instant -> Delayed) to help with accidental activation - Very smooth and and fast desktop hot key/corner NO FLICKER!

Misc Notes on Entbloess: SOMETIMES I was able to control the program once all windows were shown. Which I thought was REALLY neat!! For example, I could tab between fields in certain programs, or go to next track in iTunes, or arrow down in my messenger buddy list. However sometimes the tab and arrow keys would tab or arrow through highlighting the captured windows. Not sure if this is a pro or con because it seamed very inconsistent. I thought it was really neat to be able to control the programs inside their screen captures. However I could only do it sometimes, and when I could, I could not tab or arrow between windows, which ALSO was a nice feature. Hmm! Couldn't decide if it was a pro or con, because it was not consistent. Both features were nice. I just wish it would do both at the same time, and all the time.

Cons: The intermittent (problem?) thing above in "misc." I honestly could not find anything wrong with this! It's a great mimic of Expose. That said, one more con... It's not Expose!

I can't comment on the "function keys" much either, I use my hot corners.

..the exactly same comment as above can be found on www.download.com. This said, I think this huge story above is written by someone who is working for the company which is selling Entbloess.

Personally I don't use any of those programs, I am loving my Mac. Sorry guys...

Interesting comments, haha. WinPlosion is VERY flickery, Entbloss is NO FLICKERY, hahahah, you people must be kidding me. So this is called objective journalism...

Well, I personally do use WinPlosion and I like it. Already the first version of it worked fine for me, when v.2. was published I received a free upgrade, so, why should I change?

Best, Thomas

Is it common for developers to post to sites like this endorsing their own apps and putting down the competition?

Get real, go out and buy Tiger!

Alright, I've tried Winplosion, Exposer, Topdesk, and Entbloess.

Winplosion *looks* very good, but it's very unreliable, and "show minimized windows" option never works.

Exposer looks good. Not as good as Winplosion, but it isn't as fast and doesn't show minimized windows.

Topdesk looks good, but it's S=L-O-W. I also don't like the fact that you cannot change most options in the trial version. Bad idea, guys.

Entbloess is excellent. Not perfect, but it's fast and reliable, unlike some of the other Expose clones. It works perfectly with minimized windows, and it has a ton of options to customize its behavior. The preview image quality is excellent, too. The only thing I can complain about is that it makes all preview windows except the one the cursor is hovering over transparent, and there is no option to change this. I would prefer that all preview windows be opaque. However, Entbloess is definitely the best I've tried. I'll report back after playing with it a bit more.

Shit. Disregard my previous comments about Entbloess. I have discovered that it does not work reliably with a large number of windows, by which I mean more than ten.

*sigh*

Well, it's back to waiting for Longhorn for me. Or maybe I'll bitch at the Winplosion devs. If they spent more time fixing their software and less time making shill posts, Winplosion might be worth buying.

Heres an option:

Buy a Mac. Far better, and this feature is built in to the OS, and it works, no problems.

Seems like WinPlosion will finally have live updating windows in version 3: http://www.winplosion.com/livewindows/

entbloess is the closest thing you can get to expose'. if you've ever used expose' then it's not realy hard to set up entbloess. i just set it up to mimic my expose' settings. if you have trouble with skipping or slow performance then set it for low quality previews. after all, the point is window switching, not reading all windows at once. i can't give an opinion on keyboard shortcuts, as i find it much easier to use hot corners. slide the mouse to the top right and select the window i want. after all, you don't use the keyboard to select your window, so why bother removing your hand from the mouse in the first place?

besides, who hasn't slid the cursor back and forth on the screen a million times when bored? ^_^

winplosion is nice, but it's not close enough to expose' for my tastes. i still haven't tested winexposer, but i don't want to waste a single one of my preview sessions in entbloess (i hate that name). btw, you get 100 uses in the demo. man. and it's 7.99 usd. so anyways, yeah, if yer stuck in windows, just use entblahblahblee.

although i agree with matt. buy a mac. quit using windows. you'll cry when you find out how much nicer the hardware and OS.

apple 0wnz j00.

no, i'm not gay ^_^

not implying that apple users are gay, but that people who say things like "0wnz j00" tend to be so.

peace.

btw, just tested with 24 windows opened. noticed slight slowdown when moving the cursor over the window, but not enough to make a difference.

oh and it will ALWAYS take a few seconds when loading new window previews. that's just life.

1.2ghz P4 512 meg of ram

video card may have something to do with my success with entbloobloo though. 256 meg of ram on it. forgot the clock speed. i think it's like 255 or something. too lazy to look it up. i think ram is, i dunno. i don't really care right now.

oh and i don't have many services running. lots of freed resources.

maybe you all just suck ;)

haha kidding.

anyways.

mac user's opinion over.

I tried all kind of Exposé-clones now, but all in one Winplosion (www.winplosion.com) works best for me. Entbloess gets second rank, but it sucks at performance if you have more than 5-6 windows open, and I have a fairly fast hardware with a 6800 card 256 MB Ram... Winplosion offers on my computer always the same fast performance, and it doesn't take much Ram.

You guys drive me crazy!

All that "this is better and smoother" speech... You should understand that the development team of a small application like a taskmanager replacement are very small. I guess 1-3 developer... That also means that they have a limited number of computer to test and optimize their software. Maybe the developer team of Entbloess uses systems with an AMD CPU and a nVidia graphics card... And the team of WinPLOSION uses Intel and ATI... Their applications are optimized... For their system, but maybe not for other configurations. One app runs smoother on one system, on another system it's the other one. It would really make sense, if you guys not always complain about performance and missing smoothness but just tell your personal experience AND your hardware configuration!

Looks like WinPLOSION is for sale:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/7/prweb260467.php

Just saw it on Yahoo-News.

Cheers, Lisa

gee.. i wonder why ppl still buy windows shit and want to make it look like mac.. If you decided to buy windows its because in your way of seeing things it was better then a MAC so.. why do you want to make it look and feel like the mac? wasnt it better??? ahahahaha, get a life, get real, get a mac and start to live with some quality products

No wonder that YOU wonder... hehe.

I'm currently using entbloess and I'm quite satisfied about it, it does everything I want it to do. I think TopDesk would be even better but I don't want to pay for the full version to see wich one actually is better. Has anyone tested the full version of TopDesk??

grtz

Anyone tried the freeware Expire? It seems the developer has lost interest and hasn't been working on it anymore. Works for me. It's OK.

Hi all, Just read the reviews and realized... If you ignore the posts where people give the web address of the products I think thread is much more intelligible (do these companies realy think that we are too dumb to use google to find something).

Also if anyone, and I mean ANYONE, has tried any of these with a dual monitor setup and been successfull please let us know.

Cheers all, Ben.

P.S. The reason I don't have a mac is because I'm cheap 'n' poor and macs are great and expensive (may be looking into a mac mini soon, but they came out about a month after I bought my PC)

Winplosion works fine with dual-monitor setups. They only seem to have problems when you are using two videocards, but two monitors on the same card is no problem. At least it works fine for me.

abeman: The new TopDesk trial (v1.3.5) lets you change all the configuration options.

I've found a problem with WinPlosion on a dual monitor setup. It only works if the resolution is the same on both. I have a laptop running at 1024x768 and an external monitor running at 1280x1024 and the external monitor goes blank when I activate WinPlosion. Works fine if they're both at 1024.

I agree with most of the comments here. I tried winPLOSION, TopDesk and Entboess and I have to say that the one I keep for good is winPLOSION. More simple and lighter than the two others, it has the only features that matter and works great. Second choice would be Entboess, which looks nicer, has more features, but does something I don't like, meaning it reorganizes all the windows at every exposure and requires all the windows to be maximazided in order to run smooth. I like both, and both have some defects. My choice is WinPLOSION just because it's fast and this is what I ask such a program first of all. And TopDesk? The way it uses screen space is not the best, you've got tiny windows and lots of empty space around them, this exposé didn't seduce me at all.

Ben: TopDesk works fine with dual monitor setups.

I totally agreed with you comments about ignoring certain posts. TopDesk, Entbloess, and Winplosion are all available as trial versions, so I'd suggest that if you're looking for this kind of utility then the best thing to do is try out all three to see which one suits you best.

honestly said I think the previous posts of "James Stewart" are the first ones we can ignore. Just read his posts and you will quickly realize that he is just spamming here for Topdesk.

I personally do use WinPlosion. Regardless what people say, it still is the one tool with the best performance and the best windows-placement-algorithm.

Sorry if there was any misunderstanding Jamie, but I'm actually from Otaku Software, the guys who make TopDesk (my own blog is http://www.otakusoftware.com/blog).

I'm here to answer any questions people have about TopDesk, or respond to any comments people make about TopDesks features. If someone asks a question about TopDesk or related to one of TopDesks features on a blog, I'll respond to it if I can help out (you can check out my comments in other blogs by searching for "topdesk" in any blog search engine).

I don't want to get involved in any tit-for-tat about which application is better, as I think its best for users to decide for themselves. If a user prefers another application to TopDesk, that's fine. If they want to tell others that they think another application is better than TopDesk, thats fine too. Each to their own, as they say :).

hi, topdesk is definitly the best one. it totally copies the orginal expose look and functionallity. how mucb is it? 9$!

It's funny that so many of the pro-winplosion messages mention performance and smooth animations. You jerks should spend your time improving that crap product and not reading blogs.

I tested iEx, Winplosion and Entbloess2. Only in last i found possibility of drag-and-drop...

I've tried all programs and all i can say is that iEx, Exposer, WinGlance is pure BS. They are not even worth trying. If you want a good expose-program try entbloess, winplosion or maybe topdesk.

Ive tried Winplosion, Entbloess2, IEx and Exposer and come to my own conclusion that Winplosion "seems" the best in terms of how slick it operates.

I disagree with the fact that griping and moaning is counterproductive tho. If you write software and sell/give it away you must be ready for constructive and non-constructive criticism, thats what makes to improve your product (if you're that way inclined).

As for the whole Mac/PC debate well thats been raging for years now and I choose to use Windows, not because its better but because there are plenty more games and software out there. If you're in to DTP and graphics then the mac is the thing for you.

The reason we want our Windoze software to look like Mac is because we like the look and feel, not the more limited choice of software and potentially hefty price tags for an equivalent Mac.

Apple have done a grand job, lets hope that the developers of the products listed above keep developing and take some of our comments onboard and someday we might have an expose equiv worthy of comparison to the real thing.

Looks like the guys of Winplosion are offering some kind of christmas-giveaway or so... There is a Flash game called "Cupgame". Just pick the cup which hides the ball. If you finish the game (15 levels) you can win a free license of Winplosion: http://www.winplosion.com/cupgame/3cups.html

Game is fairly easy :)

Thanks for this thread, it let me know about a few more programs i wasn't aware of.

I've tried them all now and the only ones worth considering are

WinPLOSION TopDesk Entbloess

WinPLOSION : needs more work. Try getting it to work with Aqua Dock ... it doesn't !! And it can't be placed on the exclude list either because of the space in the process name. Konfabulator needs to be placed on the exclude list to work. I found this to be the least polished of all the apps.

TopDesk & Entbloess are much better looking products, although I don't like the way Entbloess brings windows to the foreground - not smooth.

I guess none of them are perfect yet.

Apple handles this issue by making the windows smaller in Expose. they just get smaller and smaller and all fit.

MAC developers put a lot of work to create nice applications such as Expose. Why can't the Win version just work in the same way?

Expose can be opened in two ways: by briefly pressing the function key (e.g. f2) and at that point expose will stay open until a window is selected or the same function key is pressed again (same as in win versions but not in winPlosion!!). The second and best way to open the original Expose is by keeping the selected function key pressed. Expose will stay open until the same key is released. NICE & Smart! Strangely this second option was not picked up by the Win imitations.

As previously mentioned here, there are only 3 Win utilities worth mentioning: entbloess, winplosion and topdesk. For its simplicity my favorite is topdesk but anyone serious about using this tool, should install all three and pick the one that better suits his needs.

One other rather radical solution would be to get hold of the leaked version of OSx for X86 processors eg PCs. By all accounts it does work on the newer processors that support SSE2 and SSE3. Split your hard drive and install OSx on the second partition. That way you can have a dual boot system and everyones happy :)

I wonder of theres an expose equiv for Linux?

I found this while looking for a decent Expose clone, and all I can see are people saying "there isn't anything perfect" and poeple saying "lies, lies, download winsplosion!", the winsplosion people all have the same opinion and little to no evidence, it just makes me think they are maybe the same person/employee of winsplosion :/

I'm going to just try them all.

I like topdesk. Winplosion tried to install spyware on my computer (unless that is a false positive.) Anyway, nothing beats the original Expose on OSX

I agree with Neil, above. If you're not gonna buy a Mac, and you don't want to go and TRY all these and see which one YOU like the best, then install the leaked OS X. Of course, this is a little more work...

It's times like these I wish I didn't have an AMD processor! :)

To all the pretentious MAC users...

Like I am going to just throw away my Windows machine to buy one of your overpriced yuppy machines just for one feature (expose).

You know if I bought a Mac I guess I would just have to go without any good games (since they all come out for Windows-- BTW Doom3 sucks).

You know there is a reason Macs are the minority of computers... because they are too full of themselves to really be a "computer for everyone"... that's because they only cater to YUPPIES who have the money to spend on their products.

If Apple really wanted to bring their Wonder-OS to the masses then they wouldn't make you buy one of their "purty" machines. I can build a FAST system way cheaper than buying their stuff.

You know I don't give a S__T about the aesthetics of the hardware if I can only run a minority of software on it AND have to pay more for it. And I'd rather support the market of third party hardware manfacturers anyway than give all my money to Apple so they can continue to overcharge me.

(BTW I use MacOSX as a graphic designer... it's only better because of the design of the OS... but MacOSX is still way slower than Windows... why do you need dual processors just to run a freakin' GUI at full speed).

I'm sure to rile up some Mac freaks here but you can't avoid the truth... I'll deal with the spyware because Windows is just more fun to use. Macs are best for boring work (only if you have the most expensive (fastest) model, I can still work FASTER on my Windows machine although the GUI is more intuitive on MacOS)... that's it.

And why can't I delete certain items out of the trash (or just immediately delete files with moving to trash) in MacOSX instead of having to empty the WHOLE trash. That's stupid.

TopDesk 1.4 still the best so far...winplosion suck..not worthy to buy .T_T

To the guy that wrote the last anti-mac comment...

You sound like a 14-year-old whining about how "Mine is better than yours" ... People have a choice, it's up to them whether to use OS X, Windows, Linux, or whatever else they want.

Sure, Windows may have more games, but games are certainly not the reason I buy a computer...

Windows may have more Applications, but just look at how badly most of them are written...

If you want features provided by OS X, then buy a Mac... If you don't, then stop ranting on like someone's just stolen your favourite toy.

I have a variety of systems (including OS X, Windows and FreeBSD) for the simple reason that I make use of features provided by each of them.

Use whatever works for you and stop complaining.

hmmm this one's spanned a year already... and mostly either severely off-topic'ed (mac vs. pc war) or pretty biased opinions. I think people should just look at the very start of this discussion and go back to the original topic. We're looking for a port of an amazing feature on OSX so people can use it for the XP. I don't understand why Mac fans even browse these comments and post immature comments like "if you like it, then buy a mac, moron". As far as I can see, this discussion shouldn't even concern them because it's for XP users. It just doesn't make sense... if anything, it only adds to fuel to fire that should not have started in the first place. Besides, there is really nothing wrong with wanting a feature from one OS to work on another.

surfboy wrote:

"TopDesk: great app in its F9/tile feature. Works well and swiftly with window captions but in the Trial version theres no F10/F11 equivalent or configuration options! Only in the registered version. Well, what use is that to me? I want to test the full app not some crippled version. Add to that, the fact that it was using 31MB of system ram and it loses the battle. The resitered version has lots more options apparently but with the other competition here, im not paying the $10 to find out."

I just tried F10,F11,F12 as well as F9 with the trial version 1.3.7 and everything works great. What version were you running as the trial?

Also, I agree with Matt.... Buy a Mac and all of these problems go away. ALso, This function was designed to work on a machine with the capability to handle the redering necessary to perform smoothly. An affordable "Wintel" Machine just cannot do it.

Entblosse 2 is much better than winplossion cause it actually updates the images and has great animation, tells you the window. It is the best. Winplossion is at best sub par. The only thing I like about WinPlossion is it doesn't mess around with the arrangement of the windows.

people writing about entbloess updating live pictures are just trying to push that product, these are actually not real users but people from the entbloess company.

In fact, I just tested entbloess now and the "live updating" is purely a joke. I have a fast computer with Go6800 256MB graphic but I can clearly see that it just takes static snapshots in intervals, and it is not live and smooth at all.

So far the best tool from my point of view is Winplosion, it is the lest resources consuming tool and has the smallest memory footprint, only around 5-6MBs with around 20 windows opened.

my personal experience after trying them all on a p4 300mhz, 3gb ram, nvidia fx5500 with 128mb vram...

entbloess seemed to be the most feature rich in terms of customizability. i liked how you could customize the backdrop and the fonts and all sorts of other sillyness. but it didn't work with my multiple monitors (i have a three-headed setup), so i had to keep looking. if you're running one monitor, i reccomend entbloess over most of the other ones, at least if your hardware is similar.

i then went to winplosion, which was decent but pretty basic featurewise. i almost bought it, but their weird, anal registration thing was having difficulties with my firewall. i personally get a bit peeved at anyone that's so bent about piracy that they make it difficult for me to purchase their product, so i moved on.

iEX had all kinds of old VB6 dependencies i didn't feel like installing, so you're on your own there.

winGlance was decent, but again, problems with the multiple monitors.

exposer was the only one out of the bunch i can say performed outright poorly on my system. there didn't seem to be any animation whatsoever really. and while it shows the titlebar zoomed up when you hover over the window, it doesn't recognize my window manager, so if you're using windowblinds, ignore this.

in the end i went with topdesk. i think they've probably changed their demo since last year, because i saw all the features that i got with the final version. it worked fine with multiple monitors, had enough speed options that i found a decent setting for my system, etc

it also had a few things i hadn't found in the ones above, namely it has vista's upcoming 3d task switch as a mode, and was one of the few that got the spatial relationship of the windows right, for "true" expose functionality.

my only complaint was that it didn't notice a few non-standard application windows (winamp, trillian's buddy list window, though it did see the individual chat windows).

i noticed that they're trying to work that out, probably for the 1.5.x cycle (1.4.x is largely cleanup)

another thing it doesn't do too hot is active updates for say, a video window. in that department, entbloess seemed to reign supreme. entbloess also seemed to be the biggest RAM-hog however, particularly with those aggressive settings, and i think it peaked at around 80mb of ram with five windows open. comparitively, topdesk took up around 20 to 40mb, depending on how conservative you set the options.

i'd reccomend entbloess if you have only one monitor, like the active previews feature, and have a lot of RAM you don't mind throwing at a task switcher.

i'd reccomend winPlosion if you're looking for a middle-of-the-road application and don't have too much trouble registering it.

i'd reccomend topdesk if having the effect maintain its spatial positioning properly is important, have multiple monitors, or you also want to be able to mimick the upcoming vista task switch functionality.

LOL, I got a kick out of the poster going by various names and pushing WinPLOSION. Dude, you are SO transparent. Your posts are doing more to hurt the credability of WinPLOSION than to help it. I'm so turned off by the ranting that I'm not even going to try it.

Agreed. Mira made my eyes roll so hard I've been completely turned off to it.

Just installed iEx. Works like a dream on my Thinkpad (Pentium M T43 system) - no lag at all. Thanks for the pointer.

2 whole years...just goes on and on...consider rewarding the 100th post.

"If you have too many windows open sometimes they don't all fit on the screen"

Apple's implementation just makes them smaller. I haven't had enough windows that they wouldn't fit at 1x1 pixel each, so I dunno what happens then.

With my setup, the only program that came close to being impressive was Topdesk. WinPlosions wouldn't even run, I got some type of error every time I ran the program. I have 4 monitors, so a lot of the programs immediately didn't work. I also want to preview ALL windows, not just Maximized one, so other programs also immediately were useless. Topdesk is customizable. On my system, it uses 33 megs ram, but with 4 gigs ram, thats not a problem.

My suggestion for you all is to get a mac! Then you don't have to worry about all these expose clones. =)

TopDesk KICK ASSES!!!!!!!!!!! You guys gotta try it!

I agree... TopDesk comes highly recommended.

I agree Top Desk is better but on slower systems only Winplosion works.

TopDesk is definitely the way to go, can even set it up to look like the new Vista Flip3D feature.

i hate to say it, but both iEx and Winplosion dont seem to work on my PC, which i cannot understand as it is 3.8Ghx, 128Mb, graphics, 1.25Gb ram, and WinXP why would these nor work on my pc? the only reason i can think of is my dual-screen setup, why i never seem to get these programs working just makes e want to turn to mac even more!!!!

there's another one at www.grg-software.com

price is $5, has live updates, shows all windows including minimized ones

now there's free version downloadable

There is also Admiral at www.mexircus.com it is $8 and it has really fluid animation.

I use iex all the time it is the closes to the mac's expose I own a MacBook Pro 17 and OS X 10.4.10 I Also boot Windows XP. I have used this app in the classrooms at in college on windows mechines and I love it. The Two drawbacks are it must be installed as admin and you cant use the arrow keys to switch to another window when you have all windows exposed. You must use the mouse. On windows machines where I am not the admin i use openexpose. With this you only get the use of the mouse. No show desktops or current applications.

D*mnit Apple! Stop destroying OSX's potential! I hate your hardware - but your OS - your OS - I love it! (has some major major flaws but is by far the least stressful to use). Wimps... Will they ever change?

At least I have OSX86 - that is, if the drivers work out...

But maybe Linux!... sucks ass.

If your obsessed with the idea behind expose (implemented so well by apple) then I recommend either getting a Mac (don't buy if you tend to be prejudiced) or Vista (may a divine power give you strength). Or if your extremely technical A) you want to be legal: get a fancy Linux-box with Beryl&XGL and whatnot.

B) you want to er... adventurous: get an OSX86 distro

If none of those options work, then try -~ .,TopDesk,. ~-. If it's too slow for you, forget about having an expose clone for XP. All the rest fail, and in any case you should stop sacrificing precious system performance or upgrade. Maybe the 'coolswitch' microsoft powertoy can help you out. Or maybe there's a miracle program out their that I haven't heard of.

I'm surprised this comment chain is still going. I've seen wars half this size cut off by site admins//.

PS - QWERTY was meant to slow down typists.. <http://www.geocities.com/malibu_malv/curse_qwerty.html> & "Macs are for yuppies, not the majority" I agree with you for the most part. Games on Mac truly do suck. And other things... I use all three brands of OS more or less equally. Sadly, most consumers don't know how to write line a of code. Most consumers take their opinion from (vomitretchhack) marketing or prejudice (such as from opinionated family members) or mixtures of other social influences. Your right, the monopoly is for the majority. The BMW with the broken stickshift is for the minority. Oh, and enjoy working on your 'boring work' graphic design.

Why do so many people justify buying an expensive mac just to use the expose? If you want the effects so bad, download a linux distro for FREE and compiz-fusion for FREE and try out the expose effect (and many others) in all its glory. Just make sure you're running a non-8000 series nvidia card for best compatability (certain ati cards will work too).

BTW, all you expose-clone schills are frickin pathetic, get a life!