An alternative to the old Exposé "All Applications" hot corner

Aug 27, '12 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: robleach

I recently upgraded to Lion and miss Exposé's "All Windows" Hot Corner feature, which showed clearly all windows of the current Space. With Mission Control, you have to delicately hover over tiny slices of windows and keep hitting the space bar to switch between windows or, using a hot corner with "Application Windows," select among all windows of a single app from all desktops (plus windows that aren't even open)! I'm a power multi-tasker and I use desktops to differentiate between projects that all use the same apps, which means that Mission Control is virtually useless to me. Thus, I have put together an alternative that is far from Exposé's previous functionality, but a wee step closer, and for me, a huge boost in productivity.

This hint uses two third-party preference panes (Witch and Corner Click) and an AppleScript.

First, make sure that the hot corner you want to use for Witch is not set in System Preferences.

Install Witch and open it in System Preferences.

Install Corner Click and open it in System Preferences
tell application "System Events"
	key down option
	keystroke tab
	--delay 2
	try
		repeat while (value of seventh attribute of process "witchdaemon" is true)
			delay 0.1
		end repeat
		on error errStr number errorNumber
		key up option
		error errStr number errorNumber
		end try
	key up option
end tell
This script basically "holds down the Option key" (and taps the Tab key) and keeps the tab down until you've made your window selection.

I may be tweaking my settings as time goes by, but this to me is much better than Mission Control or the "pplication Windows hot corner simply because I can select among all windows on the current desktop quickly using a hot corner and a single click. No more delicate window slice navigation and space bar nonsense.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20120808121823403