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Is the Windows start menu dead?
Rocker452:
I don't use the start menu as much as I use to since I found Hotkeys by Qliner (http://qliner.com/hotkeys/) did buy the Vista Start Menu program to make it easier to organize. Hotkeys lets me map shortcuts to programs to any key on keyboard. Use the Windows key + "*" key you mapped to run the program. Hitting Win key+Z puts a keyboard on screen to show whats mapped where. You can launch .exe, documents, folders or web sites whatever you map on the keys. You can drag & drop things on the screen keyboard from desktop or explorer or even the Quick launch bar. It is opensource and free to use and is easy to setup plus saves time looking for stuff. It also works in Vista.It also requires the .Net Framework 2.0.5 or greater.
Curt:
You only forgot to tell that Q-Liner is extremely good looking too :-*
- however; their ZIP is an incapable weakling (or was, ½ a year ago)!
Laughing Man:
To me..mostly yeah. XP's was pretty good. Vista's is terrible (why the heck they decided to contain it in the start menu area is beyond me). Luckily I have FARR and other programs that can launch them without having to enter it.
laughinglizard:
laughinglizard , do you hold anything against .NET 3.0 ?? :tellme:
-Curt (July 11, 2007, 07:25 PM)
--- End quote ---
Nah, not me, I added that so that people on dial up would know it might be a looooong download.
When I was on dial-up I didn't like surprises like that, but then my usual speed was 19.9 kpbs.
:o
Mandork:
I've recently re-discovered a couple of things that Windows does that have made my life a lot easier, without extra software.
One is Win+R. I made a folder called "c:\shortcuts" and put shortcuts to various things, such as Thunderbird and LyX, and renamed them to something easy to type. So, when the run box comes up, I just type in the appropriate thing and it opens. Neat. I put a shortcut to this folder on the desktop, so that when I want to add something it is easy to find. And, I've just discovered, you can put a shortcut to the shortcut folder itself in there, and then Win+R "shortcut" will open the folder of shortcuts! Amazing. How come I never knew I could do this?
The other is that you can add shortcut keys to shortcuts on the desktop, using Right Click+Properties. So, for instance, I have a desktop shortcut to the folder that has my PhD work in it and have created a shortcut key combo of Ctrl+Alt+P, and presto! the folder opens. It starts faster than the QuickLaunch bar, I don't have to look at it all the time, and I don't have to navigate down multiple levels to get to it.
Since I have a tiny screen and I normally have whatever I am working on at any given time maximized, I don't particularly care about having a clean desktop. I also find that it makes sorting things easier if I can just drag files onto the appropriate desktop shortcut and thus move them to the appropriate place, although I have also found the programs called "Folder Guide" http://www.freeware365.com/desktop/folderguide.htm and "File Targets" http://www.moonsoftware.com/download.asp handy.
I use FARR sometimes, too, but I'm afraid that I am a little bit too dense to understand how to use it properly. :'(
(Edited for clarity)
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