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Desktop icon virtual grouping

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jake78:
Is there anyone who knows of any software that will let me group icons on the desktop without using folders?

// Jacob

Nighted:
Avedesk? I don't know, I'm not sure what you mean.

tomhogers:
You can always group desktop icons manually!
Just right click on your desktop, click on "Arrange Icons by" and make sure that "Auto Arrange" is deselected. Now you can move your icons anywhere you want on your desktop. Repeat the process and click on "Align to Grid" to make your groups look a little neater.



Cheers,

Tom

hopeless:
Is there anyone who knows of any software that will let me group icons on the desktop without using folders?
-jake78 (February 28, 2007, 04:00 AM)
--- End quote ---

Nope, but I've been looking on/off for the past 18 months.  At one stage I started putting something together in C# but didn't have the motivation or skills to really integrate it with the desktop.  My idea was this just to help organise the desktop in particular sections which is something I manually do anyway: apps on the left, frequent folders or the right, pending folders towards the bottom, etc.

* Group icons onto "trays" or "slides"
* Name the trays: apps, work, phd, pending, african holiday etc
* Allow trays to be minimised to the side of the screen, collapsed down to a single icon, auto-hide or remain on the desktop
* Apply colour coding to the tray (alpha-blended) and/or tray items
* Retain full explorer context menu integration etc
* Possibly allow icons to be rounded up into irregular shaped "trays" --- like drawing a lasso around them
I'm always reminded of Blinds, a utility for RISC OS computers that did a similar job (about 15 years ago).

iphigenie:
you almost have to look at the alternate shells, or to programs like stardock's desktopx. quite overkill for what you are hoping to do about it.

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