Announcing: 7stacks - stacks for 7 (freeware)

Hi all,

I'm a frequent lurker to this forum, so wanted to post this here first. Just letting you that I've just released a free app for Windows 7 called 7stacks. It's just what it says: its stacks for 7.

Instead of recreating the OSX stack look (like the fan), I made it use Aero to more closely resemble 7's look and feel. It can display the contents of a folder as a vertical stack, a grid, or a cascading menu. It also has "in-stack" browsing of subfolders like in Snow Leopard.

It also gets around the problems of using multiple stacks on the dock that apps like StandaloneStack have trouble with, where you have to fiddle and rejigger with EXEs and shortcuts. 7stacks lets you have up to 10 stacks on the taskbar w/ no reconfiguring. It uses 10 identical EXEs and checks the Taskbar folder to see which EXEs are being used.

Oh, and it uses Windows 7 Jumplists to make it easier to create new stacks. Just right-click on any stack, and you'll see a Jumplist entry "Create a new stack."

It works on Vista and XP also, but it's designed for Windows 7. I'll be adding some more features soon, such as image previews, etc.

And, like I said, it's 100% free. Enjoy.

-- Alastria

   Note

Version 1.2 now available for download here. Changes are:

• Added editing of stacks via JumpList entry. Note: This only works for stacks pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar. Also, once stacks have been pinned, they cannot be renamed (this is Microsoft's fault .. don't blame me).
• Added JumpList entry to browse the stack as a Menu (regardless of the type of stack it is).
• Added file and folder captions to Grid items.
• Added file and folder information to the hint windows of Grid items.
• Fixed speed of icon retrieval. Browsing large folders should now be almost instantaneous. Testing found that one small area of code was the choke point slowing things down.
• Added optional image thumbnails of BMPs, GIFs, JPGs, and PNGs when in Grid mode. This slows down the browsing of large folders of images, so each stack can choose to have this on or not.
• Added white-on-black text, and accompanying preference. White-on-black looks like a more conventional "shadow" of white text, much like Windows icons. Black-on-white is the text as it appeared in previous versions.
• Added slide in/out animation, and accompanying preference. With animation turned on, Stacks and Grids will do a cool "fade and slide" from whichever side of the screen the taskbar is on. This is reminiscent of OS X.
• Added display of file extensions on all files except shortcuts (.lnk).
• Added option to turn off file extension display for any particular stack.
• Added multi-monitor support. All 7stacks windows will now appear on whichever screen the mouse is currently on.
• Added quick selection of Windows' Special Folders (such as "My Documents" or "Start Menu") when creating a new stack. Click the "SF" button to see a list of all special folders. Once you select a special folder, you can click the "..." button next to that to drill down into that folder further.
• Added a pop-down confirmation when creating or editing a stack.
• Fixed unsorted file/folder contents when browsing network shares. All files and folders are now sorted alphabetically prior to display.
• Fixed problems with stacks pointing to drives, such as C:.

For a complete list of what's been changed, go here.

Latest: 1.5 Beta 2

7stacks-v1-5-beta-2-is-out
7stacks | Alastria Software

how did you get the games explorer to have the shortcuts in the menu? for the life of me, i can't get that to work. all in all, still cool.