If the desktop size is set incorrectly, you may find you cannot maximize applications! Please be careful when editing these values. The right and bottom settings should be set to negative values if you want them to measure from the right and bottom (instead of from the left or right). Just to be clear: if you're setting the Desktop Right setting to a positive value, it should be set to something near the full width of your screen, and the same goes for Desktop Bottom and the height of your screen.

The desktop size settings allow you to adjust the space that windows use when they are 'maximized.' For instance, if you want to keep bars on the bottom of the screen, perhaps they cover part of the bottom of your applications, like this:

If you would rather not have your bars overlapping with your windows, you can change your desktop size so that maximized windows will look like this!:

Follow these easy steps to configure your desktop size:

In the recent betas leading up to R4 12, the key for the desktop settings has been changed to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\geo\GeoShell\ShellUI\Desktop so you should make make these changes there if you're using the beta builds.

• Open your favourite registry editor (run "regedit.exe")
• Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Geo\geoShell\Services\Desktop
• Edit the entry you want to modify:
  • Desktop Bottom:
    A margin on the bottom. Usually you want to insert negatives values to go "up". For example, -32 is enough for a single bar on the bottom.
  • Desktop Left:
    A margin on the left of the screen.
  • Desktop Right:
    A margin on the right of the screen. This also uses negative values to make padding.
  • Desktop Top:
    A margin at the top of the desktop.
• Recycle GeoShell

You also need to check that the entry Set Desktop Area is set to 1, or your settings will not take effect.

One side effect of the way Windows(tm) handles the desktop area is that when you're dragging a window, you cannot move your mouse outside the area specified by these margins.

Sample settings:

Please note that we use negative values for the right and bottom margins:

Leave space for bars on 3 sides			Leave no space for bars	.
Set Desktop Area	1		Set Desktop Area	0
Desktop Bottom	-40		Desktop Bottom	-0
Desktop Left	35		Desktop Left	0
Desktop Right	-30		Desktop Right	-0
Desktop Top	35		Desktop Top	0

This is interpreted by geoShell as "Leave 40 pixels on the bottom, and 35 pixels on the left, 0 pixels on the right, and 35 pixels on the top. The rest may be used by maximized applications." If your screen resolution was set to 1024x768 these would mean the same thing:

Leave space for bars on 3 sides			Leave no space for bars	.
Set Desktop Area	1		Set Desktop Area	0
Desktop Bottom	728		Desktop Bottom	768
Desktop Left	35		Desktop Left	0
Desktop Right	994		Desktop Right	1024
Desktop Top	35		Desktop Top	0

Multiple Monitors

To set the desktop area for multiple monitors, set Per-Monitor Desktop Areas to 1, then set the desktop area for each monitor under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Geo\GeoShell\Services\Desktop\Monitor (##) where the "##" is a zero-based index (the first monitor is 0, the second is 1 and so on).