Rating: 5
Version tested: 1.32
LaunchOnFly is a system-tray resident launcher for programs, bookmarks, and folders. It installs a LaunchOnFly entry in the Windows right-click send to menu that can be used to easily add entries to the launcher.
Here are some notes on this program:
- Highly configurable, with the ability to order entries, add separators, subfolders, and even add columns to spread your entries horizontally (see screenshot). Allows you to use a custom icon for any program if you want, to you launch command line interface executables with parameters. There’s an option you can use to launch programs minimized (or maximized) by default, but for whatever reason it didn’t work for me when I tried it.
- Adding programs and folders is a breeze; all you have to do is right click on the program icon (or shortcut) or the folder and select "LaunchOnFly" within the Windows send-to menu. A brilliant idea, I must say, and works really well.
- Program can be run using (all or any) of the following methods: clicking the icon in the system tray, through a user-defined hotkey combination, by mousing a defined corner of the screen, or using the mouse wheel.
There are many system-tray based launchers available but I must say this is one of the best that I have seen. If a system-tray launcher sounds like it could be useful to you you could do worse than use this one.
Compatibility: Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003 Server
Go to the download page to get the latest version (approx 2.43 megs). Also visit the program page.
I had set up my version of ‘on the fly’ launching by creating two new toolbars – Desktop and MyDocuments. These pointed to folder on C: and I added and deleted shortcuts to specific programs as per need to these folders.
Launch on Fly will definitely fit the bill and my toolbar real estate will be freed up now.
Let’s see how things go in the trial.
Thanks for the link and info on this.
Trojan
Al.
It most certainly is NOT a trojan.
I downloaded the latest version from the site and uploaded to VirusTotal. It came back with a largely clean bill of health: http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/d81c77c0ecfc8d5541f907124eee628c
Also, my own collection of security tools reacted positively to this program.
The 3-year-old 1.32 version reviewed in this article is still available as freeware on the author’s site, but the current version is now a 30-day trial of pay software.