Idea: Multiple Start menus

[BinderDundat]

Finding stuff on the start menu is a pain, especially for people with a couple of pages of stuff.  I thought that if you could access several start menus with say Ctrl+Winkey, Shift+Winkey, Alt+Winkey, you could have different types of software organized into easily scanned groupings - preferably with the programs starting by pressing a hotkey - say the first letter of the name of the program, or a definable letter in the name of the program.  Windows98 used to have the option of using the "&" in the name of the program to define the hotkey of your choice to launch a program.  I know that this competes with FARR, but I find that I don't always remember the name of the program that I want to run, so a browsable menu suits me better.  It also appeals to the neat freak in me.

[hamradio]

Maybe using LaunchBar Commander and creating launchbars with LaunchBar Commander does something like what you want? If you havent tried it then you may want to look at it and see.

[mouser]

By the way, LaunchBar Commander does allow you to create multiple menus (in your system tray) or docked bars, with their own contents.  You cannot trigger them by hotkeys yet but this is something i plan to add this month.

[BinderDundat]

Sorry, but my tray is messy enough without another icon and possibly a few menu icons as well.  More important, for me, is that it does not work with key strokes yet - especially for invoking the different menus.  My desktop is occupied with current projects and reminders of recent discoveries, so having the menus stay open after use would be a nuisance.  I am somewhat more at home with the keyboard, so I would be much happier using keys to open and navigate the launch menus than using the mouse to find and open the menus.  Keyboard invocation of the menus would also avoid having another tray icon - or four.  My current Start Menu has about 500 entries in it.  It is fairly well set up now, but you can see that there is room for better sorting of the entries, especially since I have not yet implemented web address access via the Start Menu.

[tomos]

have you looked at VistaStartMenu - it doesnt do exactly what you want - well maybe, but not in just one step - but it is very keyboard friendly

http://www.vistastar...tures.html#interface

[cthorpe]

How about True Launch Bar? http://www.truelaunchbar.com

My normal start menu


Internet apps (and sandboxie) - This opens with Ctrl+Win


Art programs


You can even do submenus if you want:

[BinderDundat]

VistaStartMenu looks promising.  So does the True Launch Bar, but I have currently eliminated the Quick Launch bar to allow more room for the Taskbar to show open windows.  VistaStartMenu looks like it can be configured to open menus and have enough sections to accommodate about 260 entries.  In combination with the regular Start Menu, that should make life freer of the layers of sub-menus that you get with the regular Start Menu.  I have not used it yet, so there may be hidden treasures to be found!  Thanks for your input - searching on Google was not doing it for me.