STabLauncher
Submitted by Samer on October 25, 2006 – 4:40 pm14 Comments
Rating: 5
Version tested: 1.3
My new favorite launcher!
STabLauncher is a tabbed launcher that resides either on top or bottom of the screen. Mouse over the tabs and they pull down; create as many tabs as you like, in the color(s) of your choice.
I must confess I like this better than Rocketdock, just because the tabs make a lot of sense in terms of organization.
I do have a wishlist for this program, however:
- An option to have the tabs disappear altogether until you mouse over them (similar to Rocketdock)
- For some reason I was not able to install this in C:\Program files\sTabLauncher. I encountered errors upon launching (yes I did have administrator priviledges), so I had to install it in C:\sTabLauncher instead. Needless to say this has to be addressed.
- More skins; I would prefer less of the cutsey colorful tabs and more metallic/modern looking tabs myself.
- I’d also like to be able to change settings for all tabs at once, instead of doing it each tab at a time.
Definitely Recommended!
Go to download page for latest version.
it’s great!
I like it!
didn’t had any problems installing to C:\Program files\sTabLauncher.
I found more skins here http://www.stablauncher.com/skins.htm
Oslavo
Thanks for the link Oslavo… If anyone knows of more Stablauncher links please share!!
Hi…,
I was trying to download STabLauncher but it appears that there must be a broken link as connection from your “Go to Download page” doesn’t work… Please advise if this is a temporary issue… Maybe you can tell me if this program is available from some other site… Thank you in advance.
Pedro.
It seems that it was temporarily down, Pedro. Its online now!
It’s down again!
Actually link is wrong above:
Go to http://www.stablauncher.com
And there’s a newer version already, version 2.0.7 which covers most of your wishlist, I think only point 4 is still missing…
Also has an interesting player tab with internet radio, cool!
[...] verdict: a nice launcher that looks good and behaves very intuitively. It somewhat reminds me of StabLauncher in that it docks to the side of the screen but the similarity ends there. Try it out you will [...]
[...] feature the Mac-style zooming into the active icon, allows for clustering of icons in groups (like Stablauncher), and offers a number of functions such as setting keyboard shorcuts for apps and using a single [...]
[...] If you are absolutely married to your mouse as an input device, there are some good mouse-based application launchers. We all know the Start Menu is absolutely worthless when you have a lot of applications installed. You have to look at a long list, which takes a long time, even when filed alphabetically. The Quick Launch toolbar built into Windows is also useless if you need to launch anything with a generic icon. Just try and figure out which document template you are trying to launch out of the half dozen you might use daily. You have to hover over the icon and wait for the name to appear. Stop wasting your time. Take a look at STabLauncher. [...]
For tabbed launchers, there is absolutely NOTHING out there to compare to JetToolbar. The only disadvantage is that it isn’t portable. It will dock to the sides of the screen; it shows/hides with a hotkey. I dock mine to the bottom of the screen and it will show as many tabs as you wish. You can set the tabs to mirror a folder like the start folder or desktop, or you can just drag icons onto the tab to have the shortcut appear there. You can change any icon you add to the tabbar. Also you can specify command-line switches. I have used it for many many months without no problems except that occasionally, a program might not maximize properly. You can change the icon size and the size of the tabbed window. From what I see with this stablauncher, it pales when compared to JetToolbar. It really deserves a review by the Freeware Genius. You can find it at a site called JetAudio. I don’t think it has any current support, although there is an ancient forum there. Note: there is one trick you must learn with JetToolbar. If you specify a tab to mirror a folder, it won’t remember your icon positions on the tab. If you want a custom tab, you have to create a blank tab and drag your icons to it. You can also add separators. It takes between 6 to 14 megs to run however in full capacity.
An alternative to this is FLS Launcher. It’s similar with having tabs and you drag and drop shortcuts. It also can auto-hide when not in use. The main difference to me is it can be dragged around anywhere on the desktop and can be brought up with a hotkey or by pushing the mouse to the top-left corner for a second. Both programs are quite nice and very similar, but I generally don’t care for having things slide out from screen edges like STablauncher does.
A similar one to that is Launchbar Commander. LBC can do menu trees, though, not just individual shortcuts. But it doesn’t do tabs like STab or FLS do. Similar, but different.
And, finally, if you just want the Windows Quicklaunch taskbar to be able to do trees, there’s Free Launch Bar. Surprisingly effective for being so… boring?
All of these programs are quite nice with personal preference being the deciding factor.
ugly!
How come nobody mentions it needs .Net ? Do you people all have and happily use .Net, JavaVM and other attempts at conquering the world? I know this is an ongoing debate/fight/holy-war, but seriously, any program that depends on an external superbloatware to run is less than recommendable.
Since I totally avoid .Net and similar, I cannot even try out many free cool tools, nicely designed and with a misleading small filesize. VisualBasic anyone? Like, 20KB exe size and over 15MB memory usage, for a basic large button calculator? Please.
I only wish someone would find time and interest in replicating or even improving on such software by using more mature programming tools. Nobody talks ASM, but still…