VANCOUVER, Canada – February 06, 2007: Actual Tools, the leading provider of desktop productivity software, today announces Actual Window Manager 5.0, the newest version of its tool for enhancing window navigation and management with new abilities, now presenting a truly unique ability – fully featured support of command prompt windows.
Command prompt windows (also known as console windows, CMD windows etc.) are well-known for anyone who at least once used the Windows Command Prompt facility and command line utilities. In addition, such windows are used in such famous and widely used applications as FAR Manager, Apache web server for Windows, MySQL DBMS server for Windows, Cygwin-based applications, most cross-platform ports from Unix/Linux, and many others. All these applications use a system console for input/output and therefore are called console. Also system console is used when running command batch scripts which usually do automatic long-term jobs.
Being an integral part of any modern operating system, command prompt windows are widely used by programmers, system administrators and technically advanced PC users in order to optimize their work using command line utilities, shell commands and batch scripts. Actual Tools, in its turn, focuses on work optimization and enhancing computational efficiency providing extended window controls and also automatic general window operations.
As practice reveals, in most cases console applications do their work in background but their windows stay open and take valuable space on the desktop (even being minimized – in taskbar). Thus, there is a natural desire to use any of Actual Tools advanced features (e.g. minimization to tray, rolling up etc.) to hide such windows. However, due to Windows internal design, all additional features presented by Actual Tools were not available for command prompt windows in the WinNT product line because starting from Windows 2000 command prompt windows’ processing has been carried out into a specific subsystem. Since then, the operating system itself began to treat command prompt windows quite specifically. The most obvious example of this specificity is Windows XP visual themes: they absolutely don’t affect command prompt windows!
However, in new Actual Window Manager 5.0, as Actual Tools CEO Michael Tretyakov says: “There occurred a tremendous technological breakthrough! We developed a truly unique technology which allows the extended manipulations with command prompt windows. No other company specializing in desktop enhancement applications for the Windows OS family can boast of such a technology so far!”
Actual Window Manager offers more than 50 handy tools that teach windows new tricks. For example:
– users can pin a window to keep it on top in such a way, that it is always accessible and could not be hidden by other windows
– if there is no need to view a window all the time while it is working, it can be easily minimized to Windows notification area (also known as “system tray”) or to a small icon on the screen thus avoiding taskbar clutter
– a window can be rolled up (i.e. reduced in such a way that only its title bar remains visible) if you need some information from underlying windows
– all the features can be triggered in various ways (both automatically and manually) and are available either in Default settings or in Specific settings, which you can create just for a particular kind of command prompt windows (e.g. all Apache web server windows).
Additional Information
Publishing-friendly graphics (TIFF, CMYK, 300 dpi) can be obtained at the following link: http://actualtools.com/files/press/ActualWindowManagerPressPack.zip (2,5 Mb). This ZIP archive includes two Actual Tools company logos, Actual Window Manager’s box shot and screenshot.
Pricing and Availability
Actual Window Manager 5.0 runs on all Windows platforms (including 64-bit editions) and costs $49.95 (USD) for a single-user license. Discounts for volume buyers are available (please, refer to http://actualtools.com/windowmanager/order/). Registered customers are entitled to the unlimited functionality, free minor updates and lifetime technical support. Active bloggers are also welcome to participate in recently opened Blogs Support Initiative available at http://actualtools.com/blogs_support/. Additional information on Actual Window Manager, a collection of tutorial articles and success stories, as well as a 60-day evaluation copy is available from http://actualtools.com/.
