Shock Bookmark: access favorite files, folders, apps, and websites in Windows’ context menu
Shock Bookmark is a free program that provides access to your favorite folders, files, internet bookmarks, and program shortcuts straight from the Windows explorer right click context menu. It also enables quick right-click copy and/or move operations to your bookmarked locations.
A quick and easy way to access your favorite folders, apps, and websites, Shock Bookmark allows you to install and launch these in your right click menu. Here are more notes on this program:
- The what: gives right-click access to files of any type, folders, program shortcuts, internet favorites.
- The where: works on the desktop or within Windows open/save dialogs
- Adding objects: simply right click on an object and select “Bookmark Add/Delete” in the Shock Bookmark context menu. This will immediately add the object to Shock Bookmark’s list or, if the object is already there, will prompt the program to ask if you want that object deleted. You can add shortcuts to files and folders and it will automatically find and bookmark the actual object, which is very useful.
Organizing objects: you can create sub-folders and organize your bookmarks into them from the options screen; however only one folder level is supported (you cannot place folders inside other folders). You can change the order of your objects at will, which is cool. The program also allows for saving your configuration of folders and objects to a file (for backup purposes, presumably?). 
Copy/Move: select files and folders and right click to quickly copy them to your favorite folders (see screenshot to the right). Very cool.- Memory consumption: was somewhat hard to determine, but I believe it is somewhere between 250K-500K in memory. Someone please correct me if I am wrong (used the wonderful System Explorer to investigate this).
Wish list (or how this program can be even better):
- Preserving file/folder icons: the version I tested does not preserve file or folder icons, and instead uses its own generic icons for folders, files, and browser favorites. These look ok but the ability to preserve and/or customize the icons used for various objects would have been better.
The verdict: I must say I really like being able to right-click to access my favorite folders and apps – a device which is quite frequently employed in alternative shell replacement software like (e.g Emerge desktop). Shock Bookmark is very similar to another freeware title, the previously reviewed Folder Guide, except it goes a couple of steps further in that it supports files, apps, and internet bookmarks when Folder Guide is restricted to favorite folders only, and it also adds the “move/copy to folder” function as well, which I personally found very useful. Overall a very nice program.
Version Tested: 3.0
Compatibility: Windows 2000, 2003, XP, Vista.
Go to the program page to download the latest version (approx 590K).
I like this app. I think it’s very useful. But SUPERAntispyware (free) detects shockbm.dll as a suspicious file.
Link is dead in the UK.
@cicom3nd3z: the installer is malware free. I just uploaded it to VirusTotal and it was deemed safe by 36/37 scanners (which is a stellar score). See results here
I have reviewed 4 programs by this author, some of which I have used personally for a long time, and have had false positives identified by some malware scanners before and reported by users. I am confident in that this program is 100% clean.
@blogward: the site is down. May be an exceeded bandwidth issue, from the looks of it. I have uploaded the version I reviewed (link below); will remove once the author’s site is back up.
http://www.divshare.com/download/6000242-79d
I’ve been using “Direct Folders” for a while.
I think it’s much more powerful and intuitive, compared to this.
@ Gent: its not clear to me that DD is so much better than this one. I like the move/copy function in ShockBookmark myself. Plus DD as I remember has a lot of little functions within functions and sometimes less is more (Shock Bookmark is rather straightforward).
When I tested DD I remember being annoyed at the functions that were restricted in the non-paid version, although that was many many months ago and I dont recall specifics.
I will say that DD looks somewhat better on account of the fact that it uses the original icons from the folders/apps. Hope the ShockBookmark guys get around to doing the same.
Great piece of software.
I was extremely hookt on Folder Guide, i cannot work without it, and i was pleased to see the idea go a little further.
A hint for its users too: I had a website i needed to open only with explorer. So far i had a shortcut, that worked like this:
“C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE” http://www.website.com
That path did not work with Shock Bookmark – but, linking directly to the shortcut, did
Also, a bad news for me: it does not work well with non-latin languages, like Greek
Of course, this program is convenient in many cases, but, after adding some objects to the context menu, it takes ages to load the menu on my system?
Well, it seems safe. Guys at Shock have some nice apps, but I think they really need a forum and beta-testers. Shock Bookmarks works fine.
I really like this program and would use it if only I could access it when my Firefox window is maximized. If I have to minimize Firefox to access SB, it’s not worth it.
This looks like something I could use quite regularly, but as JK said, I wonder about load times when it comes to the right-click context menus.
well, if you only use firefox and have no use of the IE favorites menu, you can use that menu as a fast way to access folders. That menu appears in Windows Explorer, Save dialog (use tweakui to put it there) and start menu.
Oh, wait! Under XP at least, you can right-click the start button to show Shock Bookmarks. So YOU DON’T HAVE TO MINIMIZE Firefox
Thanks for the tips. Right-clicking on my Vista start button does the trick. I’ll give SB another chance…
[...] Shock Bookmark: another freeware app that, similar to Folder Guide above installs your favorite folders in your [...]