Michael Haren’s Wassupy Blog

Windows: Improving the Command Window, if Only Slightly

in windows, usability, and technology

I’ve long loved the command line user interface. Ever since I fully immersed myself in Linux during college, I have loved me some ssh goodness. I have enjoyed popping open OSX’s Terminal and finding familiarity there, too.

But on Windows, cmd.exe just isn’t enough. Recent versions have brought tab completion but it’s still a far cry form a tcsh or bash shell. I tried using Putty and Cygwin to simulate the experience on windows but it never rang true and isn’t available when I use other machines or servers.

One breakthrough I discovered today helps a lot, though: you can make your window wider than 80 characters. I’m embarrassed that I didn’t discover this years ago. This is for the poor saps like myself who didn’t know:

And there you go:

While you’re in there, you might as well choose a pretty font like Consolas, too.


1 comment

Xander Dumaine said on 2011-03-03

These are a couple great little tips. I never realized you could do this. I always just assumed it was stuck in a state of complete suck. Now it’s only an incomplete suck.

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