Taking Control of Windows – Part 2

In Part 1 I explained some of the uses of WinWarden.   Now I want to explain what is the main use – transparency.

You might think that transparency looks really cool, but that’s not what’s best about it.  What is best about transparency is the added functionality it gives you.

You can work on one project, say editing a document and at the same time see if something else you are doing e.g. installing a program has finished by having the document on top and making it semi-transparent so that you can see what is going on behind it.

I often use transparency when I want to see some text and copy from it or modify it somewhere else.  I can simply open a text editor on top of the program , enable transparency and read the information underneath as I work on the new document.

Alternatively you might have a desktop widget which you are watching (e.g. stocks and shares, the weather etc.).  Transparency allows you to see the relevant information while you’re working on something else.

Or you may just love your desktop wallpaper and want to see it while you work.

WinWarden allows you to control the degree of transparency which is important as you may need different levels of transparency for different tasks, or depending whether what’s on top or what’s underneath is more important.

Here’s what 20% transparency looks like:

And here’s 80% transparency:

To make a window transparent, just right click on the WinWarden icon, move the mouse to “transparency” and move to the desired percentage and click (left click).

If you want WinWarden to keep that setting for that window until you override the command, right click on the WinWarden icon again and select “Remember”.

Another useful feature of WinWarden is the “Always on top” feature which keeps a window on top of all others.  I find this useful when I want to take notes say from a website.  I’ll open a Word document, and make it small.  With “Always on top” my little Word window stays put when I go back to the website (or another document) to scroll up and down, click a link or whatever.

As I said I have found this functionality really useful.  

I hope you will to.

Jason