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.
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Description: Stick is a free program that introduces tabs attached to the sides of your screen (called "Screen Tabs") that can display notes, folder contents, web pages, RSS feeds, as well as mini apps such as a calendar or calculator.

If you have folders that you always work with, or a web page that you like to always be easily accessible, notes that you frequently refer to or, say, an RSS feed that you like to check frequently you might want to give this program a try. "Stick" enables you to use "Screen tabs" attached to any of the four sides of your screen that you can easily expand and retract, and that can display the following: rich text notes, RSS feeds, folders, web pages, a (non-interactive) calendar, and a calculator app.

What I like about this program:

• It can look elegant: meaning that (a) you can use this to good effect in your quest to reduce clutter on your desktop, and that (b) of the handful of "skins" available is possible to use a configuration that looks good and adds to the desktop experience. (Conversely, you can end up with some pretty ugly tabs on your desktop, but you can only blame yourself if that happens).
• Favorite folders as Screen Tabs: having a handful of your favorite or frequently used folders easily accessible through retractable tabs on the side of the screen is a very good idea; esp as these support drag and drop, context menu commands, different views, and navigating the directory structure. There’s even a little arrow button that opens the actual folder for you in explorer.
• Web pages as Screen Tabs: I didn’t think much of this at first, until I thought to put my main Gmail account in one of the tabs, which was certainly an interesting setuip.
• Customizable tab behavior: you can control the color, skin, transparency level, the speed by which the tab opens, always on top, whether it opens by hover or click, and whether it closes by hover away or click.
• RSS feeds as Screen Tabs: for those must-view RSS feeds that you want to be able to access quickly and easily - e.g. Freewaregenius - the RSS Screen Tab will be very handy. The RSS function has some quirks (e.g. newer items are shown on bottom, no Atom support) but is overall a good option if you want RSS on your desktop.
• Keyboard shorcuts: for each tab you create you can define keyboard shortcuts that make it visible.
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Description: Kana Launcher is a “pop-up menu” style applications launcher that can either reside in your system tray or appear anywhere on the desktop when invoked by a hotkey. It offers two modes, a regular “context menu” style pop-up launcher with a hierarchical tree structure, and a so-called “floating icon” launcher style. It also offers the ability to install a permanent shortcut to programs, bookmarks, or folders within the system tray itself.

Ok so those of us who have tried indexing, search-box style launchers (such as Launchy) may not be looking for a new icon-based launcher, but we at Freewaregenius are always on the lookout for useful and/or interesting launchers, and have determined that Kana Launcher deserves a mention here. More notes on this program below:

• Two modes of operation: a “floating window” style launcher and a pop-up, context menu launcher. These can be configured separately (i.e. the shortcuts that are displayed in one need not be the same as those displayed in the other). The “floating icon” mode displays tooltips that can help identify each icon as you hover over it. See the screenshot above to get a sense of what these two modes are like.
• System tray or hotkey: the launcher is called by right clicking or hovering over its icon in the system tray (for the pop-up and floating window launchers, respectively), or otherwise both the pop-up and hovering styles can be called anywhere through user definable hotkeys.
• Shortcuts: Kana can open programs, folders, files/documents, or URLs/bookmarks. The popup menu style launcher includes the ability to create a hierarchical folder structure that can be used to organize your shortcuts.
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Description: ProgramLaunch is a applications launcher that docks into the top or bottom of your desktop and can be accessed either by mousing over the edge of the screen or by a shortcut key. It offers a number of interesting functions such as organizing shortcuts by group, assigning keyboard shortcuts for each icon, assigning a single launch icon to a group of apps, and others.

This is a launcher that is somewhat reminiscent of Rocketdock and ObjectDock in that it is a dockable, horizontal row of icons, but it is different in that it does not 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 icon to launch multiple applications. More notes below:

• How it works: hover on the side of the screen with the mouse for a few seconds and the launcher will appear, move away to autohide. (Or press F12 to summon/dismiss. You could alternately switch off auto hiding altogether and use the keyboard shortcut primarily). Drag shortcuts to add to the launcher, drag them across the different groups you create. Overall very user friendly.
• Groups: create a group that makes sense for each set of icons that belong together. These are placed at the bottom of the launcher and function like tabs.
• Keyboard shortcuts: you can define these for any app whose icon appears in the launcher. Also allows for setting launch parameters and path.
• Batch launching: you can create shortcuts that launch multiple apps. As an example, I am using this for a bunch of apps that I have disabled on startup that I nonetheless sometimes like to have open at once. The one strange thing is that the program requires that all apps that are batch-launched be included somewhere in the launcher individually, which seems quite needless.
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Description: gMote is a free program that allows you to record mouse gestures and associate them with applications, websites, and Windows tasks. You can then launch those whenever you need them by drawing the specific gesture associated with the program or task you need on-screen.

It seems that there is an increasing number of interesting launchers employing new, quick ways to launch programs aside from clicking on icons or shortcuts. Programs such as Launchy, for instance, as well as keyboard-shortcut programs, and now gMote’s screen gestures. Here are more notes on this program:

• How it works: press control and shift simultaneously then draw your gesture with the mouse. A window will popup near the system tray after you perform a gesture that will display the number of the action associated with it or otherwise display a question mark if the gesture is not understood. Note, however, that if you dragged a shortcut and then deleted it, the association is lost.
• The gestures: have to be in one continuous motion (i.e. you can’t take the pen off the page, so to speak). The program will alert you if the gesture you drew is too close to another one that you made previously in order to re-do it.
• The user interface: the user interface looks really good and is split into left and right panes; gestures are drawn on the right pane while the left pane lists the different actions. You can drag and drop shortcuts, executables, and bookmarks into the left pane to convert them into actions or you can browse to the applications manually.
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Description: RunMe is a free program launcher that can dock into sides of your screen and become available on mouse-over. It is similar to the Windows’ start menu in its look and feel, in that allows for placing shortcuts in folders within folders. It supports special effects, animation, transparency, and a good number of very good looking skins.

Nothing beats a good launcher for quickly re-inventing the way you work with your computer. I did not expect much of this launcher at first but after trying it I found it to be very robust and surprisingly smart-looking. here are some notes on this program:

• Docks to the edge of your screen: and can be invosked by a mouse over. Can be placed on the left, right side, or top edges of your screen and dragged and dropped for optimum placement.
• Drag and drop: shortcuts can simply be dragged into the launcher in order to be added to the list. You can re-order items by dragging them around while pressing Shift (and, while pressing Shift, you can remove them altogether if you drag them out of the launcher).
• Eye candy: the launcher supports transparency and animation, and you can customize the way it behaves and looks in the settings (e.g. how you want it to behave when you mouse over, degree of transparency, change the color, sound if any, whether or not to display a ’tab’, glow, zoom, or bounce effects, etc.) But it also performs well in that it runs smoothly and without hiccups.
• Skins: RunMe comes with a handful of skins that mostly are very well done/good looking indeed. Download more skins here.
• Elements supported: include groups (which behave as folder), program shorcuts, links to folder, My Computer, Recycle bin, Run prompt, Control Panel, Show desktop, Restart/Shut Down/Standby, Separators, and a handful of other elements.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.32

Description: 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.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 2.0.01b

Description: SideSlide combines a number of functions into a desktop-accessible interface: a launcher (for programs, folders, files. and bookmarks), a desktop notes and reminders program, and an RSS reader, all of which objects embedded in a free-form environment that is dockable off the side of your screen.

This is an interesting program that has the potential to significantly reduce your desktop clutter and be an invaluable organizational tool. Here’s what you need to know about it:

• Using SideSlide: You can drag and drop objects into SideSlide itself or to a ’containter’ that you can create within it. This is an aesthetic and organizational decision, and is a matter of experimenting with what works best for you. The SideSlide dialog itself can be resized freely with the mouse; it can be placed on top, left, or right of your screen from the program settings.
• Hovering: placing the mouse over any object is a good way to access it (as in reminders, minimized containers, or RSS containers).
• Containers: these are a great way to organize your work. For example, if you are working on a certain project you could create a container for it and drag all related files and URLs to it, so that its all in one place. Containers can be minimized in 2 ways; "folding" is the window-blind style that leaves only the top ’bar’ of the container visible, and "shrinking" reduces the container to a single button with a customizable icon that you could click on to "maximize" the container.
• Taking notes: all containers are also notes (and vice versa), in that pressing a little button on the top right of the container will switch from object view (where your files and URLs are visible) to note view, where you could enter text. So for example if you had a project-specific container you could switch to notes view and write all of your project-related notes straight into the container itself. Unusual but kind of cool. Note that available formatting for writing notes is rudimentary to say the least, with no formatting options to speak of (no font styles or bulleting options).
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Rating: 4

Version tested: 2.51.0.1117

Description: URLMenu is a bookmark launcher that resides in the system tray. It works with Internet Explorer, Opera, and Netscape bookmarks.

This program is somewhat dated, but still very useful. Here’s a list of its most useful functions; note that this applies only to the supported browsers (no Firefox, unfortunately):

• Find and launch any of your bookmarks from the system tray (see screenshot)
• Bookmark any URL automatically by copying it (CTRL-C) twice in quick succession.
• Find link function: will prompt a little window where you can filter your bookmarks by whatever you type in.
• Add link function: bookmart a URL quickly from the system tray. Read more »

Rating: 5 pick 

Version tested:  1.0

Description: Folder Guide provides fast access to your folders through the explorer context menu. A right mouse click is all you need to navigate to your favorite pre-defined folders (see screenshot).

I remember years ago I tried a shareware utility that did the same, so I’m really please to have found this freeware one. Here’s what you need to know about Folder Guide:

• In addition to allowing you to access your defined folders from the desktop, Folder Guide will also do this from and any Save As/Browse Windows dialog. This means that when you are saving or opening files from any application you can use Folder Guide through the context menu to jump to the folder you need
• New folders can be added to the Folder Guide list by right clicking on them, or from Folder Guide’s settings dialog.
• Folder Guide allows you to sort the folders in the context menu as you see fit. Read more »