Lara Michaels writes:
A graphical pager would also be a great way to solve both my problems. I am on Ubuntu and tried enabling the one that comes with the Gnome panel ("Workspace switcher"), but though everything works I can only see the shaded contours of the windows on the different workspaces... Is there a way to have it show either an icon or a miniaturized "preview" of what each window is displaying?
The gnome panel will show you icons if the windows are big enough, which can be acheived by either making your panel huge, or having only one window on the workspace. Neither of these solutions is any good. Another option for the gnome panel is the "window selector", which is a dropdown menu that lists your windows and workspaces. It's not as good "at a glance", but it's handy if you don't mind using the mouse.