If you’re looking to gain better control of the windows you work with throughout the day, eXtra Buttons may be just what you have been looking for. In addition to the normal three title bar buttons that enable you to minimize, maximize and close windows and programs, this handy utility provides you with more than ten extra buttons that can be used to do everything from moving a window to another monitor to adjusting the transparency level.

There are a huge number of options here – windows can be configured to be always on top of others or, conversely, can be set to always appear behind other windows. You can use eXtra Buttons to create a duplicate copy of an open window and minimize them either into their own title bar or to the notification area. Windows can be set to open in full screen mode – not just maximized – and there is the particularly useful option of adding a bookmark link to frequently used locations.

One very handy twist on a theme not only means that it is possible to make a window slightly transparent, but also that you can interact with objects that are positioned behind a semi-transparent window. The wealth of option is somewhat breath-taking, and you may feel that it is going to lead to something of a cluttered interface with all of the new buttons. You are not obliged to keep everything active so you can choose to show only those buttons that you are going to be using.

Another useful option is the ability to exclude certain programs from eXtra Buttons. This means that if you have an application that uses a slightly different title bar of its own, or you find that it is incompatible with the program, you can opt to disable the display of the additional buttons. This is the sort of utility that you can use for a little while and then wonder why its feature were not included as a standard part of Windows.