[patcheudor]

Our philosophy in the office is that alt-tab is for suckers. While my setup is the most over the top we have three other people with five monitors or more. We are all security researchers and find the configuration saves a bunch of time in reviews. As an example, I can associate a MitM proxy like the Burpsuite or Fiddler 2 with the server side application which might communicate to web clients as well as to additional web services behind the scenes. That takes up one monitor, typically the one at the far top left. Under that monitor I can then associate another MitM proxy with the client. I can then run the client from my laptop display. If I'm working on a fat client, on the 30" I'll then run Wireshark which will effectively be watching the client. On another monitor I can run sysinternal tools. What remains I use for writing code necessary for the review, running additional tools like Metasploit, e-mail, chat, and research. I arrange my workspace for the task at hand. On a daily basis do I use all nine? No.

Interestingly enough, with this sort of setup it's pretty easy to visually see what's happening when going after an application. Before going to the monitor extreme I'd constantly alt-tab between my monitoring & exploit tools with every action. Now I can run an action and see the results within one workspace. Of course there is a massive downside. It makes competing in CTFs a pain in the butt as I can't drag that setup with me to physical events.

[lttlrck]

Surely you still use the keyboard to switch keyboard/mouse focus? But instead of Alt-tab another key combo?

[richardkeller]

The moment I use more than 1 screen, I find alt-tab to be cumbersome. I find that in a GUI environment, having your mouse autofocus on the window it's hovering over is far easier than using alt-tab. Especially when you have multiple windows open, cylcing to the correct window using alt-tab is usually slower than moving the mouse over the window.

[Neridum]

Just what I was thinking. How on earth do you find the cursor never mind navigate it from one corner to the other.

[jmgrosen]

A bit off-topic, but what CTF team do you play on?

[patcheudor]

THD+N.

[dustin999]

Dumb question, but which CTF game/mod are you referring to?

[endgame]

He isn't. It's a term to describe security competitions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_the_flag#Computer_secu...

[ibrahima]

Presumably they're talking about security, not an FPS mod: https://ctftime.org/ctf-wtf/

[xanderstrike]

It's a gamification of security analysis. Teams are pitted against one another trying to exploit a system to achieve a goal.

[Dewie]

> Our philosophy in the office is that alt-tab is for suckers.

Which is why I've partly switched from Unity to xmonad (a tiling window manager). Dual monitors is nice to have for me, but the real boon was to have 9 (or 10?) easily accessible workspaces, which allows me to only have to worry about a handful or less windows in each workspace. Unity also have workspaces, but they suck (at least out of the box).