Motivation: I miss MDI in Visual Studio 2010. In long term the best solution would probably be to have it back by Microsoft. (You can vote for this at Microsoft Connect.) However, even if Microsoft might decide to have it back, it will probably take a few years.
I am therefore exploring the alternative meanwhile. Making the source window floating is a step to MDI, but it has nasty implication of the window being always on top of everything, including tool windows.
Would it be possible to create an extension which would could allow my to make some floating windows not always on top? How should one start in creating such extension?
Or would it be perhaps possible to modify the windows ordering by external application, perhaps something similar to Spy++, but with the ability to modify windows properies or send window messages as well?
This is a bit related to Visual Studio 2010 – Semi-Transparent Floating Windows – any utility which could do that could probably be modified to do this as well.
As mentioned recently on Connect web site, recent Pro Power Tools should have an option for this, called “top-level floating windows”.
That said, I already have the version “10.0.20214.15” installed (which is most recent as of writing) and there is no such option available. No such option is also mentioned in Pro Power Tools Revision Notes.
However, this gives me a hope this extension might add this option later.