Multiple notebooks in Mathematica

Question

While working with multiple notebooks in Mathematica, is there a way to have the names of the files appear along with the minimized window of the file. I mean that sometimes I forget which file was places where on minimizing and have not found a way to locate by name.

Answer 1

I don't think you can do this. As an alternative, you can have a palette with all the Mathematica windows for easy switching. Something like this quick hack:

CreatePalette[
 Dynamic@Column[
   Button[
      "WindowTitle" /. NotebookInformation@#, 
      SetSelectedNotebook@#
   ] & /@ Notebooks[]]]

To remove the palette window itself from the notebook list you could do the following:

With[{title = "Notebook selector"},
 CreatePalette[
  Dynamic@Column[
    DeleteCases[
     Button["WindowTitle" /. NotebookInformation@#, SetSelectedNotebook@#] & /@ Notebooks[],
     Button[title, _]
     ]
    ], WindowTitle -> title
  ]
 ]

You can save the palette by selecting it and choosing "Generate Palette from Selection" from the Palette menu.

Answer 2

Actually the first 2-3 letters of the file name are shown on the mininmized window if you look carefully. If your multiple files have names starting differently in first 2-3 letters, you still can easily tell which is which.

Answer 3

I am going to assume you are on Windows.

In Windows 7 and Vista the minimize, maximize, and close buttons are so large you can't read anything.

This used to not be so much of an issue when the minimize, maximize, and close buttons were much smaller in xp and classic windows.

As another solution you could shrink the minimize, mazimize and close buttons using caption buttons.

You could also switch the theme to classical windows or download uxtheme patcher and converting the theme to something that has smaller minimize, maximize and close buttons.