So, the end result is bug reports like this one. The clever cookies among you probably know by now what Microsoft is doing. In Linux, these events are all turned into a KEY_SWITCHVIDEOMODE which makes it easy to create standardised behaviour. Great little feature.Ī lot of laptops have a key to switch between displays – it more or less achieves the same goal via the keyboard controller, WMI, or ACPI.
This eliminates the need for vendor-specific tools to achieve the same goal. Pressing win+p allows you to use the dialog to cycle through the different output options (clone, extend, second only, first only). In Windows 7, Microsoft introduced an incredibly handy pop-up dialog that allows you to easily manage multiple display output. It’s small, you’ll barely notice it, but dear lord, it’s really, really annoying. And then, just when you think they’re starting to get it – they go behind our backs to do something incredibly insipid. After years of dragging their feet, the company is finally implementing web standards in Internet Explorer, there’s a boatload of interoperability information now, that sort of stuff. So, we have Microsoft slowly but surely trying to be a better citizen in the computing world – with the emphasis on trying.
