Removing the need of IgorPro main window on Windows OS

An early iteration of Igor 7 actually had that capability, but there were lots of problems. The biggest is Igor's heavy dependence on the main menu bar. On a Macintosh, with the menu bar at the top of the screen, this works well. But on Windows you have to put the menu bar into a window. When you click in the menu bar in that window, unless it's the big gray window, it receives focus and upsets Igor's notion of which window a menu action should apply to.

Where would you put the menu bar?

I understand this difficulty, that's a freedom which Windows doesn't have, while available on both linux and Mac.

If that was the case, is it possible at all to make Igor support dual screen better? I don't know how this maybe done so can't suggest much. 

Naively speaking, could that be something like a second grey screen background that I can expand on a second window, after which I can choose which grey window each table/graph will appear in?

Say, I created two grey screen window, Grey1, Grey2.
Then I open a bunch of graphs on Grey1. To move some or all of them to Grey2, I have a control panel which allows me to so;
Or, I simply select the graph I want, then with a quick key combination, e.g. Ctrl+Alt+2, then that graph is moved from Grey1 to Grey2.

Sandbo wrote:

If that was the case, is it possible at all to make Igor support dual screen better?

Even macOS has its headaches with dual screen, and Igor Pro is not alone in how the headaches manifest themselves.

In summary, this is not a problem that Wavemetrics will necessarily be able to solve or solve well (nor should they be asked to solve it IMO). Someone may have created a package to solve you problem. One other option that you might explore is to find third-party apps that allow you to manage dual screen setups universally for all applications. I do not know Windows well enough to recommend such an app. On macOS, one such app is Moom.

I can totally imagine how it maybe difficult to change the UI. Sorry if my tone was a bit strong and made it sound like an obligation, I didn't mean it. It was just a suggestion and I believe that's what the wishlist section was for.

I came up with this because I primarily use Windows due to the compatibility of equipment, but then I saw how seamlessly Igor can work in Mac on my colleague's PC so I was wondering if something maybe done to improve the situation.

You can expand Igor's MDI frame across multiple monitors. This works best if the two monitors are the same size, but that's not a requirement.

Ya, that's exactly what I am doing now. But it has the problem of if I max out one screen, some graphs/table will be lost in the extra dimension (monitor), this is a problem when I have to work across different workstations when some of them has just one monitor.

IP8 has the "retrieve all windows" in the toolbar so you can quickly get all windows back when switching to single monitor setup. I usually have IP open stretched on two flipped monitors this tends to give enough screen real estate. Just remember never clicking the maximize button as that only maximizes on one screen.

When I was in the lab, I had the same issue you're having. The computer on my experimental rig had two monitors and I needed Igor to span across both monitors. The computer I used to analyze the data had a single larger monitor. I wrote a relatively simple macro that used IgorInfo(0) to get screen information and then moved certain windows to certain locations based on whether I had 1 or 2 screens attached. Thomas's suggestion of the new Retrieve Windows button in the toolbar is also useful in this situation.

You might also find the Igor 8 window browser useful. And there's my old Window Desktops package (https://www.wavemetrics.com/project/ACL_WindowDesktops) that might come in handy. 

Thanks for the ideas, I will definitely give it a try.