Dual Monitors Deliver Dual Open Source Browser Nirvana
by Sam Dean - Jul. 08, 2009Comments (5)- Related Blog Posts
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In a recent post I did on WebWorkerDaily, I provided three efficiency tips for using dual monitors. I recently switched to a dual monitor setup, and I'll never go back to using a single monitor. The efficiency benefits are tremendous. Not only can you treat the large amount of screen real estate that two monitors next to each other create as one long tapestry of desktop space, but you can also pick logical ways to organize multiple applications that you're running so that you can see a lot of information at once. If you do any type of writing or graphics work, dual monitors are a big benefit.
Many of us live within browsers all day, and I've made the point several times that the lion's share of innovation is going on in the open source browsers, especially Firefox and Chrome. I use both of these browsers concurrently throughout the day on dual monitors, and here are some of the many benefits of doing so.
The good news about switching to a dual monitor setup is that you can get, say, two 19- or 20-inch displays for less money than it costs to get one huge display. If you put the displays next to each other so that they're touching at the center of your viewing area, you have a huge amount of screen real estate to work with. Windows and the Mac OS have dual monitor support built right in, and it's easy to set up in Linux distros as well.
During the day, I keep Firefox 3.5, customized with all my extensions and bookmarks up on my left display. On the right display, I run Chrome. Firefox is, in my opinion the best browser, especially because of all the great extensions. Chrome, runs multiple processes in such a way that if a page or application in one tab crashes the other tabs don't crash, and the whole browser never does. Firefox doesn't have that yet, although it's on its way soon.
With each browser running on its own display, I can keep "maximum uptime needed" applications and pages up on Chrome (on the right display), and Firefox up, available with my extensions, on the left display. What do I mean by "maximum uptime needed?" I'm referring to e-mail engines that I use, a couple of Zoho's online applications, an online text editor that I use for writing, and more. I want these instantly available and running as fast as possible all day, which Chrome guarantees. I actually spend a lot of my time in Firefox because of how many extensions I use, but with the dual monitor setup, I can get the best of both leading open source browsers at the same time. If you haven't tried this, it may make things much more efficient.
If you get into multiple monitors on Windows, also try the freeware program Multi Monitor Mouse, which can greatly speed up your mouse tasks on two monitors. UltraMon is another free utility that I haven't used, but have heard good things about. Â
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