Displayfusion Review

[Trisha Quercioli]

Ithink these are features that many people who use a large number of monitors might want, so in this post, I will first focus on these aspects in detail and then go into other features and general program behavior.

There have been a few freeware ad-free apps in the past that allowed for scrolling non-focus windows below the mouse pointer. The two I have tried are KatMouse and WizMouse.

These work quite well, except they are not reliable at sending scroll inputs to non-Window UI parts. Usually, there is no need to do that, but I personally use Volume, a small tool that allows altering the system audio volume by scrolling over the taskbar or blank desktop space. The combination of KatMouse / WizMouse and Volume tends to stop working after some time, and I need to click on the Volume tray icon to restore the intended behavior.

DisplayFusion does not add any context menus to the Windows 8.1 native task bar. It does, however, add a context menu for its own secondary monitor task bars, if you enable that feature (which I personally will not, since it also cannot clone the native task bar pinned programs).

Even then, there is only an option to move the window to the next monitor, not to a specific monitor.

In DisplayFusion, if a mirrored window that has an inner size of lower resolution than the source window, it will be scaled down to fit. As soon as the inner size exceeds the source resolution, it will be displayed at 100% zoom with white padding outside.

DisplayFusion also has the more modern look and feeling, but suffers from scattering its options among different settings windows. I prefer the integration of all the settings menus within the main configuration window in Actual Multiple Monitors.

For writing this comparison review, I installed the long-term free version of DisplayFusion and the expired trial of Actual Multiple Monitors on my Windows 8.1 computer, and the limited active trials on my Windows 10 computer. There were no incompatibilities at all. I used AMM version 8.8.3 and DF version 7.3.4 at the point of writing this.

Wow, this was the longest time I've ever gone without blogging. It was very interesting being (reasonably) unplugged. I was even more unplugged this time than last year when we spent Christmas in South Africa (where I was blogging near-daily over a cell phone modem).

Disclaimer: I'm not on the Windows 7 team and I have no knowledge about anything they are, have, may, may not, will, will not do, or did and didn't tell anyone. I'm just a dude who likes Windows.

I've fully converted myself and the extended family over to Windows 7. In fact, Windows 7 was my number 1 Christmas Gift this year. Everyone's running it and everyone's happy. Even Uncle Ronnie, a 90+ year old die-hard Windows XP guy has been upgraded (but hasn't noticed, other than "it's snappier.")

However, the one remaining gaping hole in Windows 7 for the Power User (like me with my four (sometimes five) monitors) is the lack of a native taskbar that works across more than one monitor.

The most interesting thing about Windows 7 isn't a feature; it's that Windows 7 has a strong sense of aesthetic. Nasty looking apps won't cut it any more. Folks want things to integrate with Windows 7 features like jump lists and the superbar. They want clean design and fresh styles. Most of all, they want their apps to LOOK like Windows 7 - like they belong.

Now, back to the taskbar thing. Here are the two contenders and my conclusion. I'm reviewing these products taskbar capabilities, not the many other features they each offer like multi-monitor wallpaper support, etc. For the most part they are similar, but I'm a utilitarian and I'm interested in the bread and butter stuff first.

Realtime Soft appears to be a one-person company run by Christian Studer out of Switzerland. He's been making software since 1998 and I purchased his product Ultramon when it was version 2 in Jun of 2002. Wow. That's over 7 years for the math-challenged.

Ultramon has long been the only game in town when it comes to multimonitor support on Windows. It gets revised in fits and starts. Sometimes you won't hear anything for literally months, then there will be a flurry of activity, then silence. Christian is very kind when he answers forum posts, but it's no uncommon to hear folks complaining about the speed at which the beta version's bugs are fixed. These days folks want to see code rev'ing weekly, minimum.

What's this? Three apps? Well, note that the second and third above were actually Windows Explorer windows. Ultramon not only didn't group them together (per my settings within Windows itself), it also used the actual icons for the folders I was on, rather than the default Explorer one.

Sadly, this is where Ultramon falls down. There's no Aero Preview. Recall that Aero Preview is when you get a nice tiny window preview as you mouse over running tasks. In this version of Ultramon you'll just get a sad little tooltip.

True, this isn't really functionally necessary, but it's a missing piece that Windows itself does have and as I said before, I want Windows 7 utilities to look like Windows 7. While a small thing, it's enough to give me pause when deciding to use Ultramon. I really like my aero effects.

Now there is "color tracking" in Ultramon buttons. This is when you look at the most prominent color in an icon and create an light or glow effect that tracks with the mouse. Here's the effect from Ultramon (click to watch the animation):

Note that the tooltip unfortunately (and constantly) pops up while you're tracking, basically ruining the effect and getting in the way. Also, very subtle, the color tracking effect "jumps" from button to button as you move the mouse. It doesn't "fade out" as it does on the actual Windows taskbar. It's maybe a 100-200ms animation, but I noticed.

Finally, and this may be something that's either not possible or certainly not easy to fix. When you minimize a window on another monitor, the "I'm minimizing" animation is the same one that Windows itself uses, meaning, the app will appear to minimize in a diagonal slashing motion to the primary monitor. This is a bummer, but I suspect tough to fix.

When you're using the actual Taskbar in Windows 7, you can rearrange the buttons (tasks, programs) just by dragging them. This is true whether the apps are running or not. You can't rearrange the running tasks on the Ultramon taskbars by dragging, or at all.

When you right click on a running task on the Ultramon "false" taskbar you get the app's System Menu with two added items. Maximize to Desktop and Move to Monitor. The Move to Monitor option is fabulous and I use it all the time. (Although Windows 7 itself includes hotkey support for moving windows between monitors via Shift+Win+ArrowKeys.)

Ultramon also dynamically adds (as an overlay, but you don't know that) buttons to every window with the same functionality. Note the two extra buttons on the left. It's a very nice touch and Ultramon tries very hard to make these buttons the right size and style as if they were included with Windows.

There are some odd windows that paint their own title bar and buttons that will look weird when Ultramon puts these buttons on them. Skype and Office Communicator come to mind. You can add these as exceptions in the config for Ultramon.

One other thing of note with Ultramon as a taskbar for other monitors is that this is a taskbar, not a superbar (or whatever the Windows taskbar is called) which means you can't pin icons or make launch-able non-running icons. You also (and this is sad) don't get that apps JumpLists. You can only access jumplists on the primary monitor and even then, only if that app is pinned. Non-pinned apps that are running may have jumplists, but you can't get to them if the app is running on the other monitor. Subtle, but very important, and missed.

One awesome thing though, is that these previews are the true live preview that you're using to seeing with Alt-Tab or on the standard taskbar. That means if you're watching a video, you'll see a tiny thumbnail of that same video appearing in the DisplayFusion version of Aero Preview. While the preview intro animation isn't perfect, the animation when you've already got a preview up and you're moving laterally to another one (the preview transition animation, I'll call it) is darn near perfect. I was impressed. Kudos to them for making the effort. I hope they keep trying to get the animation pixel perfect. It matters.

DisplayFusion also adds buttons to the title bar at runtime, although the buttons are more squared off than the Ultramon ones. Ultramon includes two buttons, but DisplayFusion actually has a menu that lets you add many buttons with lots of different options. You can control what buttons do and in what order they appear. I just find the DisplayFusion buttons to be visually jarring. They do offer various themes for the added buttons, but I'd prefer they just pick up the ambient look and feel.

The Windows taskbar includes an option to expand the taskbar buttons to included both the icon and its text, and DisplayFusion can do the same. They don't pick up the default setting, unfortunately. You have to set it manually and the wording is different from the language Windows uses so it may take a second to figure it out. When it's done, however, it looks great:

I've used Ultramon for literally years and I trust it. I know it's fast and I've used it for days without crashing. However, DisplayFusion is closing fast. If they continue to focus on getting the look and feel perfect and adding a few options like "Move to Monitor...", DisplayFusion just may be the Multi-Monitor Toolbar for Windows 7.

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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