Powermenu
If you’re trying to have a Skype text chat why also doing some work, you need the Skype window to “stay on top.” Otherwise you keep getting distracted by the things flashing down in the taskbar. Same if you want to watch an IRC channel.
A decent solution: Powermenu.
It’s not new, it’s not glamorous, but it does the job very unobtrusively. It extends the options on the system menu for every window, to include “always on top” and also a transparency setting. No frills. It just does the (rather esoteric) job.
Miranda
And while I’m on the subject, if you’re looking for an integrated IM client which supports IRC, you could do worse than Miranda.
I tried Trillan but couldn’t make sense of the IRC configuration. Miranda does the job. It’s also not ugly, which is a a major achievement for an IRC client. Most seem to be shabby and cryptic, on XP at least.
Firefox showcase
Showcase makes Firefox show you “thumbnails” of all the pages you have open. Works beautifully and is designed with a bit of love. But I never remember to use it. Perhaps the key combination is too obscure? Or perhaps it’s a creaping feature – good on paper, but not actually required.
Questions:
- Was this feature available on Firefox before or after IE7?
- Does anyone ever use it?