If you’ve installed Windows 7 you may have noticed the nifty new feature whereby you can right click on any program pinned to the taskbar and access recently used documents in what is called the Windows 7 jumplist. However, you may have noticed that when it comes to pinning your favorite documents to the taskbar, these will only appear with their program icon (e.g. Word docs to the Word jumplist, favorite folders with the Windows Explorer jumplist, etc.)
This is where the free Jumplist Launcher steps in; it is an app that allows you to pin any combination of elements (any documents, folders, or apps) to the taskbar within the Jumplist Launcher icon and organize these into groups that make sense. You can even pin multiple, separate instances of Jumplist launcher to your taskbar.
This is the first Windows 7-specific app that I review on Freewaregenius. The author first emailed me about this app almost 6 months ago, but I just only finally installed Windows 7 (which I quite like) after skipping Vista altogether.
This program is essentially a launcher that resides on the taskbar and exhibits "Jumplist" behavior, much as any app placed on the taskbar in Windows 7. The difference is that you can place anything you like in "Jumplist Launcher", including apps, documents, and folders, and you can categorize these into groups. More notes below:
- Drag and drop: you can drag and drop icons from explorer straight onto the Jumplist Launcher dialog, or otherwise onto the Jumplist Launcher button on the taskbar. Strangely, dragging the icon "pinned" to the Start menu doesn’t seem to work, but dragging from the start menu proper does.
- Number of elements: 60 different shortcuts can be placed within the Jumplist Launcher.
- Customization: you can rename anything you place on the Jumplist Launcher, change the icon, reorder, etc.
- Multiple Jumplist Launchers: this runs comes in a portable zip archive, and I found that copying the folder and placing multiple Jumplist Launchers on the taskbar is possible (at least on my 64bit Windows 7). This could be useful, say, if you would like your shortcuts for project A on one Jumplist Launcher and your shortcuts for project B on another.
The verdict: very nice and useful. The drag and drop feature seemed a bit erratic at times, but otherwise delivered a very nice user experience. It would be nice if the program supported multiple Jumplist launchers without having to launch separate instances of the program, but as is it works well.
This is the sort of program that, once you start using it regularly you will likely become addicted to it. Check it out for yourself.
Version Tested: 1.x
Compatibility: Windows 7.
Go to the program home page to download the latest version (approx 477K).
Good app thanks. I also just installed Windows Seven. So far so good!
It took you some time to write about.
I’m glad you did it no as I’m a regular reader of your blog.
The application has recently won a prize in Microsoft’s Code7Contest -> http://en.www.ali.dj/jumplist-launcher-wins-early-bird-prize-at-code7contest/