WinExt: a horizontal docking launcher for all your apps, files, and folders
Description: WinExt is a free horizontal bar docked to the top or bottom of your screen that can give access to your files, folders, and programs as cascading menus or as shortcuts placed on the bar itself. It also offers an optional “infobar” with status indicators for CPU, memory, battery, and hard disk drive usage.
There are many ways to get access to your favorite folders, files, and apps, and WinExt can do this in the form of a docking bar that can be placed topmost on your screen or on the bottom above the Windows taskbar. What the screenshots might not at first convey is the depth and versatility of this program, and the extent to which WinExt allows for customization. Here are more notes:
- Folders on the WinExt bar: you can do 3 different things with folders placed on the bar; (1) create a cascading menu from a folder; (2) place a folder icon on the dock itself that you click on in order to open that folder in Explorer; and (3) place a so-called expanded folder, whereby the contents of the folder are displayed as clickable icons on the bar itself (as for example the contents of the quicklaunch folder in the screenshot). Personally for many folders I like to put up both a folder icon that opens the folder itself as well as a cascading menu from the folder right next to it.
- Always visible: WinExt will “nudge” your desktop down, so to speak, and Windows will maximize such that they will touch the bottom of the bar so that it is always visible.
The infobar: an additional bar that is placed adjacent to the original and contains gauges that display status indicators for CPU, memory, battery, and hard disk drive usage, etc. I don’t care much for this, personally, but I can see how it can be useful (I use Systraymeter for some of these and am very happy with it).- Customizability: WinExt is highly customizable; however, I will also say that the interface used to tweak and change the settings is not very user friendly and, in my view, is a lot more work than it could be (why can’t I just go into some sort of edit mode and right click on elements to change them?) It will take some work to get this app configured exactly the way you want it.
- Skins: comes with 2 skin choices (pictured in the thumbnails on this page). Customizable variables include alpha blending, changing the color of every single element, etc. Keeping my fingers crossed that more will be provided in the future.
- Hotkeys: comes with a system-wide hotkeys manager that can launch a file or maximize, minimize, or close windows. I honestly couldn’t figure out how to get it to work, but didn’t try that hard as I am not that interested in this functionality personally.
- Marquee: the right hand side of the bar can display information such as the time, memory use, battery consumption, Winamp track information, etc. It will scroll these in succession, and you can click to scroll through the different messages. The kind of info displayed is customizable and you can switch it off altogether if you like.
- Memory consumption: consumes a rather large 30 megs of memory.
- URLs: a built in tab provides for quick IE
- Notes: one of the built in tabs functions as a simple notes organizer. Won’t replace my favorite notes program (Tobu) anytime soon, but I’m sure many will find such a notes-right-on-your-desktop tab very useful. Somewhat buggy in the version I looked at (see wish list section below).
Wish list:
- Enabling right-clicking on the items in the cascading menus: as it is at the moment, you are unable to right click on an item in the menus and perform context menu operations (e.g. renaming, deleting, etc) in the same way you can, say, in Windows’ start menu or quick launch. It would be great if WinExt allowed for this as well.
- Bugfixes: program stopped responding and displayed an error message on at least three occasions within a 24 hour period, and had to be shut down and restarted. The built-in notes tab also presented an error whereby it seems to automatically save notes as you type them in, and then one you are done and click “ok” an error message appears informing you that the note is already there (?).
- Opening folders in the cascading menus by double-clicking on them: seems like a no-brainer; would greatly enhance this program’s functionality.
The verdict: I am posting this program for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is a great way to always have your favorite folders on-screen and access them both as cascading menus or easily open them in explorer. Secondly, I am intrigued by the possibilities it presents for those who like customizing their desktop experience and/or experimenting with Windows shell replacements. I don’t much care for the infobar or the hotkeys but if you are interested in these you will find them to be solid components.
This is not a perfect program by any means, but I am hoping that it will get better in future releases. It’s (relatively) high memory use is somewhat of a drawback and will probably put some people off (I know the Freewaregenius audience is a tough crowd!); however if you put the time into customizing this program initially you can arrive at the perfectly customized docking bar that delivers access to your favorite folders, apps, and files quickly and easily.
Version Tested: 1.03
Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP, Vista.
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 1.08 megs).
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I use SideSlide for very similar reasons and the Start menu is also highly sorted by functional groups. Don’t know how the non-link aspects of SideSlide compare.
Hi!
FreeLaunchBar (http://www.freelaunchbar.com) does this beautifully.
You can do LOTs of things by right-clicking the menu items (both w.r.t customising the menus and also the menu items in various ways AND executing the regular explorer right-click options). There is an advanced version too but FLB(freelaunchbar) itself is quite great…
Once I got this 8 months back, my productivity has zoomed. there is absolutely no need for desktop icons at all. I had tried atleast 20 launchers prior to FLB. FLB was the only one which finally satisfied my needs in the simplest and efficient manner possible. You can have the bar both at the top and the bottom (or even in the sides) simultaneously, if one wishes to.
by the by, thanks for your wonderful service, samer. I am a regular reader ever since I got to know about freewaregenius.
I did not venture to try out WinExt since you have written that it does not support Right-Click context-menu operations.
Regards
B.Viswanathan
Freeware Windows PowerPro is better and mightier, I think.
And consumes less memory.
Yes, I use powerpro also “extensively” but not for quicklaunch bars as it does not have the easy integration (with taskbar) and other features which FLB (freelaunchbar) provides effortlessly.
Otherwise, in general, Powerpro is mighty mighty big becos with just one program, you can accomplish tasks of very many diff. programs put together. Plus, it gives many features which are not available at all in any software. But, one has to dig very deep to learn and implement all the varieties of things it offers. Great stuff for programmers though… to keep exploring it.
Similar thing like you manage shortcuts to certain applications and or documents in a folder (with sub folder if necessary).
Then from task bar create a new toolbar, linked to that folder (only one click extra).
In this case, if we move original application folder somewhere else, at least windows will help to find the new place.
Vishy: FLB doesn’t support Virtual Folders. I think virtual folders are the cascading menus from a folder.
I use Rocketdock myself; low memory consumption and lots of options, plus it can use some docklets from other docking programs. http://rocketdock.com/
Qline Hotkeys is for me the simplest and the fastest to setup and use.
I have extensive computer programming and design background, I can read arid manuals before breakfast, but sometimes too much is too much.
My take, of course.
The good old KISS principle works for me.
You guys at FreeGenius are doing a consistent good job at helping us skim through the crap (can I say that?) too often found under only bells and whistles.
Horizontal is deal-breaker for me in this case. For widescreen monitors vertical screen space is pure gold.
WinExt contains malware:
winext.exe
Worm / Mail trojan
Alters Win.ini. The worm is encrypted. It propagates to users who earlier has mailed the user of the infected computer.
Removal: Winext.exe is removed by RegRun.
WinExt keeps trying to launch at the startup. Be careful.
Yes Sridhar, only the advanced version TLB(True Launch Bar) allows virtual folders, I suppose. I shall try out WinExt for this feature alone sooner or perhaps later (when the bugs, as pointed out by Samer, are fixed).
I really like winext, been using it to make an ubuntu kind of app, places, system bar.
Just wish there were more options, and configuration…
And i scanned the app with nod32, and it says clean.
You can make any folder into a “Launch Bar” just by dragging it to any open wall of your desktop then drop it. It’s easier to show in person but I will try to explain.
1. Make a folder on your Desktop called “Launchbar”.
2. Assuming your Taskbar is on the bottom of the screen, drag the Launchbar folder to the very top of the screen and drop it. You need to be able to desktop for it to work (minimize all windows).
3. You should now have a toolbar on the top of the screen. You can resize it or dock it to left or right on your screen by drag and dropping using the beveled “grip” on the left of the toolbar.
4. You can create another toolbar by dragging another folder to an open wall (try your C: drive) then drag the new toolbar onto the first toolbar.
5. You can opt to display the toolbar name, the icon names, icon size and auto hide from the toolbar’s context menu. Right click on an empty area of the toolbar or the grip.
There you have it! A launch bar without any additional programs or excessive memory usage. It can’t do everything the featured program can do but if all you need is a launch bar you’re all set.
I emailled some requests and got the following reply:
Hi Brian
Thank you for using my program WinExt. Unfortunately I have chosen not to develop more new features for the program for some time. I have alot of projects and I need to choose which ones I will focus my energy on. But I plan to clean up the program a bit during the fall and release the program as open source. Then somebody else might continue the development of the program.
Regards
Kim Jensen
http://software.hulubulu.net
I also just realised as a registered user of TrueLaunch Bar, I can use TLB to do everything it does anyway