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I am developing a virtual desktop application and have been an avid dexpot user for some time. I've been reading the Win32 documentation, specifically the CreateDesktop and SwitchDesktop functions. From what I understand, only one desktop can be viewed at a time, yet dexpot manages to show a real time view of all active desktops in its full screen preview mode. Does anyone know a way of possibly implementing this? My first idea is to rapidly switch desktops, but this would use up far too much processing power.

Connor S
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    Dexpot's desktops are probably not implemented using Win32 desktops at all. – Chris Culter Oct 14 '14 at 04:11
  • As far as I know, it's pretty impossible to move existing windows between native desktops, so yeah, probably not. I really hope Windows 10's desktops fix a lot of these shortcomings. – chris Oct 14 '14 at 04:22
  • I'm not so much concerned with moving the windows between desktops. I just need them to update in real time while displaying all of them at once – Connor S Oct 15 '14 at 01:04

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The most difficult part about what you want to do is application switching. You cannot move an application instance from one Desktop object to another. I would base my implementation off of remote desktop applications. There's plenty of open source clients you can look into for some ideas. I would look into the desktop duplication api as well. One idea that comes to mind is making one large desktop, locking the mouse and view to one particular region, and using desktop duplication to show all the split up regions as separate desktops. That's assuming desktop duplication works as I think it does. I'm not sure as I don't use windows.

MJRasicci
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  • Thanks, but how would I go about creating one large desktop? I tried searching the documentation but I cant see any way of forcing windows to create a desktop which wont fit on one monitor (ie creating a 4k display to divide into 4 1080p displays) I would imagine you could set the origin to display once you create a large enough desktop – Connor S Oct 15 '14 at 01:08