I hope you all had nice Christmas.
Here's just a quickie update.
Xavier, the maker of KeyLaunch, has not yet sent me a early stable version of KeyLaunch. Nor has he corresponded with me since my last post. I think the Christmas rush had alot to do with that on both of our ends. I think I will drop him a line tonight.
I'm posting here now to tell you about a new alternative which I just found last night for clearing my desktop of all those ugly, yet so handy icons/shortcuts.
Last night, while surfing, I managed to some how run into <A href="
http://www.idesksoft.com/>DesktopIconToy</A>. After I installed it and started it, it promptly messed up my icon arrangement, so be forewarned! Later when I got un-mad at it, I started to play with it and soon found myself becoming intrigued with it.
I found it offers more configuration abilities than my old and trusted and heavily used solution, <A href="
http://www.sillysot.com/"%20 class="postlink"%20target="_blank">Iconoid</A>. It seems to be extremely more snapper to show the icons while also staying under Iconiod normal average memory usage. That gives it straight up pluses in my book.
It also has the added sweet ass ability to hide icon text until moused over.
<A href="
http://www.idesksoft.com/screenshort.html">More ScreenShots</A>
What cool things could you do with Desktop Icon Toy?Dance Desktop Icons
You can drag and drop desktop icons to make them run around the desktop, and double click the desktop to stop the running icons. According to your drag and drop time, the desktop icons will run with different speed, more quickly, more speed.
Hover Effects
You can add visual effects when mouse hover desktop icons, like dance icon, shake icon text and blink icon text.
Icon Size
You can change the desktop icon size to 48x48, 64x64 or 128x128.
Automatically Hide Desktop Icons
You can automatically hide desktop icons when mouse off the desktop or desktop icon. This can give you a pair of bright eyes to see your beautiful wallpaper.
Arrange Desktop Icons
You can arrange desktop icons by many shapes, such as:
Clock (all the icons will be aligned as a clock showing the exact hour)
Circle (creates a circle in the middle of the screen)
Cross (creates a cross in the middle of the screen)
Around (all the icons will be positioned around the desktop)
And more...
If you like, you can also:
Arrange the icons precisely with <CTRL + Arrow Key>.
Add animation effects when arrange desktop icons.
Configure to automatically re-layout when change screen resolution, adding/deleting icons.
Customize layout order (eg: place "My Computer" to last one).
Sort icon by name (Ascending or Descending) .
Remove Icon Texts
You can remove the classic ugly text of desktop icons, optional, instead of a cool pop-up tooltip. The whole desktop will become neat and tidy.
Lock Desktop Icons
Have you ever need to place some desktop icons in a specific place for better working, but always by careless or windows move them to back? Use this function, you needn't care this problem again. You can also add animation effects for it.
More Funny Things
You can remove all desktop icons, and only keep the icon texts.
You can change desktop icons to small mode, all the icons will become small, and icon texts will be placed on the right of icons.
Other Features
Remove desktop icon shortcut overlay.
Save and restore desktop icon layout.
Change icon background or text color, and you can even make the background of icons transparent.
System Requirements
Windows NT4/2000/XP/2003 operating system
My top 3 criteria for these icon hiding programs until moused over are:
Restorability(reliability of) of lost icon positions
Memory + CPU usage
Configurability and ease of use
Iconiod has a bug that really bothers me. It stores it's saved icon location file in a temp folder. I dump my temp files regularly thus lose Iconiod saved positions file usually when I most need it. I have tried saving this file to another location and it does not work when re-inserted.
I do not yet know if
DesktopIconToy suffers with this flaw yet, since I have only been using it for a tad over 24 hours now.
DesktopIconToy is giving me a problem with renaming files/shortcuts. While doing so my cursor goes erratic along with the file name text.
Iconiod renaming files/shortcuts are done with normal ease, but the cursor needs to stay positioned on your desktop.
Iconiod is freeware
DeskTopIcon Toy Co$ts 20 bucks US.
I really like
DeskTopIcon Toy's ability to not only hide my shortcuts but their text too, until moused over.
Is it snappiness and the above mentioned ability worth shelling 20 bucks out for? I don't know yet.
If it can retain memory of icon positioning then maybe it will be worth an investment.....if I can figure out how to stop the strange effect it does when I renaming desktop files.