How to multitask on computers?

I feel like this shouldn't be a huge problem to do, but I feel like it will be.

I just want to multitask watching videos/movies/youtube and doing other things like playing world of warcraft (in windowed mode), minecraft, browsing the web (Everything can be done in windowed mode).

So technically I just need to figure out how to get these squares of video to stay up front while clicking on other things, I figure this is the easy part. But also I'd like to just isolate the video like it does in fullscreen mode. I don't want the sides of WMP or firefox active unless I switch to the program. I've tried to do this both in WMP, Winamp, and firefox/youtube and it seems all these programs insist that you must have their amazingly beautiful and expertly designed boarders always visible when not in fullscreen mode.

is there a program that simplifies this? I just feel like this is something people would want to do and it should have already been done by now. Maybe a program that creates a second desktop window in your. Desktop window? I don't know. Any help is appreciated.

Added (1). I'm getting a second monitor eventually, just don't have money.

Until then I just need to make due with what I have.
I did find a program called "Deskpins" that keeps programs "pinned" which helps, but I'd still like to trick these programs into playing a video in fullscreen mode while not actually being fullscreen.

Jeremy

Probably the simplest answer is multiple screens. If you really wanted to run a second desktop on your desktop you'd probably have to run it as a virtual computer and that's going to slow your PC down quite a bit if you're running a copy of windows plus a virtual copy of windows.

Behind Blue Eyes

Attach a second monitor to your PC. That will solve all of your issues. You can watch on the other screen and do some other stuff on other one.

Azmariah

You only have so much screen area in which to place your windowed programs. So, you'll probably want to get a second monitor and output one set of windowed programs on one monitor and another set of windowed programs on the other monitor.

Naturally, in Windows 7 and beyond, it makes sense to use the "Slam" feature to automatically arrange two opened programs to each consume 1/2 of the screen on one monitor and two other opened programs to each consume 1/2 on another monitor.

deanyourfriendinky

So you want a tiled, borderless display of multiple windowed programs?
Interesting idea. You would still need to switch focus between tiles somehow to choose which window receives focus.

This might get you close to where you want to be: http://maxto.net/

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