I have just as many shortcuts spread all over. I use AppLauncher in the sidebar (put the Vista Sidebar into my Win7). Then I have 4 different Toolbars off the taskbar (i don't like to have everything in the same place - I group it by category) and then i also use the Rocket Dock (on 32bit though). With that spread I can launch anything instantly.
may i add that the reason many features are dropped from the 7 or in the case of the windows live applications changed over to download only is because so many users didn't want or need these applications. we asked for a leaner smaller os and microsoft gave us that.
In principle you are right - we asked for it. And making whole components like WMM, etc. optional is a good thing. BUT, small, useful functions like the Toolbar on top of the screen that make the operation of the system easier, should not have been axed. I am sure they did that to accomodate their desktop background stuff - who needs it? That is really some useless junk that adds nothing to the ease of operation and bloats the system.
[QUOTE=whs;512909]idk i really like some of the new desktop features especially aero snap, on large screens it really saves time when you want to see multiple windows at once, now aero shake, i don't really see the point in that one, i think it's more just eye candy and because they could
Leaner?
I understand leaner. Remove the junk software. Remove the windows live crap. Shit... Remove MS paint. That's leaner. Removing the ability to right click and add a toolbar is not.
Everyone can argue with me on this and I don't care. I'm right and you're wrong. Windows 7 removed on of it's greatest assets and now it's just shitty.
If anyone knows how to bring it back please do tell.
If anyone knows an alternative thats 100% identical (none of this 'jerk me off *I now look like a mac*' rocket dock BS), please chime in.
-Arin
That feature was a very simple one...being able to drag a toolbar to the desktop. In Win7, creation of toolbars within the taskbar is still possible, so we're just talking about the drag/drop to desktop. That wouldn't be one of those 'streamline' points--at least not a major one. A lot of the emphasis in Win7 and Vista is on eye candy and glitz -- Aero and fancy visual features. In this respect, a lot of MS's decisions are probably market-driven (competition with Mac) rather than trying to provide features that don't jump off the screen.
MS has also screwed up some development tools for about the same reason. They're determined to use WPF everywhere, and now their own development system (Visual Studio) has slowed down drastically. (Who cares about shaded buttons and nice transparencies when you're trying to write code?). Also omissions of functional features that were in VS2005 and VS2008, but evidently didn't pass the new 'visual impact' test. Pulled the rug out from under lots of programmers.
Back to subject at hand: If we're talking about the same thing, Arin, I believe that this would be easy to duplicate. I don't use the docking feature--I just keep programs categorized by function in one of about 10 desktop toolbars. It allows me to expand a toolbar's window when I'm working within that category. And visibility, sorting, and one-click launch are nice.
Anyway, I was thinking about writing something like that, cause my Win7 desktop is now (ironically) ugly and cluttered with icons. But that is probably something that I won't get to for a while.
I haven't seen any of the other toolbars that do what I want, but this is easy enough (not sure about docking) that someone may have done it already.
I know this is not exactly what you were looking for but I just stumbled onto it and I think it is pretty neat. I always wanted my Desktop clean of shortcuts and found a way to obtain it and yet still have it a single mouse click anyway.
1) Right click the Desktop, select View and uncheck "Show desktop icons"
This will result in a clean Desktop - Yeah! and you can always undo this if it makes you nervous.
2) Right click the Taskbar, select Toolbars, Desktop
This will once again give you access to your Desktop with a single click to the double arrows.
You don't say why you use a Desktop toolbar but if you used it to control application shortcuts or any sort of shortcuts you could accomplish almost the same thing as a Desktop Toolbar by creating a Folder (anywhere on your hard drives), which contain these shortcuts and instead of viewing the Desktop in the preceding instruction #2 you could perform the following:
Right click the Taskbar, select Toolbars, New toolbar - navigate to your newly created Folder, choose it and finally click the Select Folder button
This will produce a new toolbar which uses your Folder name located on the Taskbar with a double arrow. You can click the double arrows to see and/or launch any of the Folder's shortcuts.
Last edited by jth; 28 Apr 2010 at 08:46. Reason: Grammatical edits
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