A thread for KK: Organizing your desktop.

[Anakha56]

So to follow from KK's messy looking desktop I thought it would be great for a thread on how to tidy ones desktop.

First one to help tidy ones desktop: Fences

http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
http://download.cnet.com/Fences/3000-20 ... 09535.html

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: Jessica Dolcourt on October 05, 2009

If you're losing the battle over your workspace to your desktop icons, a secret weapon is one click away. Fences quickly and easily organizes your icons into separate windows on your desktop, either automatically or manually. Labeling these boxes helps keep programs, photos, files, and Web links together, or you might choose to group by project rather than by file type. Whatever your logic, you'll be able to drag and drop fences (and the shortcuts within them) anywhere on your desktop.

You can furthermore drag and drop shortcuts anywhere, and resize the fence. A scroll bar pops up so you can find your icons in fences that you've resized to be smaller than their contents. In addition to sorting shortcuts, you can cleverly hide them completely by double-tapping the desktop; double-tapping again resurfaces them. Fences helpfully lets you exclude select fences from hiding. Customization tools can change the color scheme or take snapshots of your layout at any time, in case you'd like to switch among them without completely redoing your arrangement.

We just wish that creating a new fence was smoother and took fewer steps, and that you could create rules for certain files types to automatically download into specific fences. Perhaps we'll see that in a future premium version. In the meantime, we recommend Fences to anyone looking for a fast, fresh solution to persistent desktop clutter.

You could also create toolbars that get placed in your start menu to get easy access to your most used files and apps. Follow the instructions at the following website to see how to do this, it is in XP but should work for Win7.

http://allthingsmarked.com/2007/05/21/h ... -programs/

Anyone else got tips or apps to assist KK and other users?

[KALSTER]

I use fences, still, my desktop is covered in icons. At least a double click in empty space hides them.

[KatrynKat]

my desktop is fine thanks.... i know where everything is and i don't have to go through many directories to get what i want....


as soon as i get my laptop back i will see if anything has changed and then just organise it again and post a pic....
the Cat's desktop is far more cluttered than mine!!

[Anakha56]

Another way to keep ones desktop from getting messy...

http://hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-You ... nd-Stylish

How to Make Your Windows 7 Desktop Organized and Stylish

Though leaving program shortcuts, files, and folders randomly on desktop is a good idea since you can access them quickly and easily, for sometime later, you will find your desktop very messy and difficult to reorganize those files.

In this hub I will show you my personal way of organizing the desktop in Windows 7 to make it neat and tidy as well as to make it look more stylish which you can relax and enjoy with it.

Here's the steps:

1. If you have too many shortcuts on desktop that you don't really use it every time, simply just move them to a single folder. You can name the folder "shortcuts" or anything else that you prefer. Only leave a few shortcuts outside

...

Follow the steps for a possible cleaner desktop...

[Anakha56]

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/14 ... lists.html

Creating custom jump lists for Win7.

How to Create Custom Jump Lists in Windows 7

Information
I made a little tool which lets you put 10 files and/or apps in a jump lists in custom groups.

Stumbled across this while hunting for how to create a custom service for Win7...

[Synthesis]

Nice thread. I hope there's some good tips as I like using gadgets and sidebars and docks and so on.
So here's my tip of the day for KK:

Right click empty space on desktop -> Select "View" -> Unselect "Show Desktop Icons"

[Hman]

Lol, I've got absolutely 0 icons on my desktop.

[hamin_aus]

keep saving stuff to your desktop - makes it really easy to delete all your stuff

[KatrynKat]

my desktop is now back in order.... everything back in its place....

[RuadRauFlessa]

Damn that is a mess.... Ok now repeat after me....

CTRL+A
SHIFT+DEL

[KatrynKat]

uh.... NO!

[Anakha56]

*shudder*

My dear that is awful...

[KatrynKat]

it's my desktop.... it works for me... you don't have to use it or look at it so please move along to the next person's desktop...!!

[Anakha56]

Anyway here is something else that can help:

http://cybernetnews.com/gmote-mouse-ges ... r-windows/

gMote: Mouse Gestures for Windows

In the past we’ve talked about some mouse gesture applications for Windows including ones that targeted specific applications like Firefox. For some people these gestures can save significant amounts of time day in and day out. If you’re one of those people you should probably know that there’s a new mouse gesture program in town, and it’s called gMote.

There are some things that really make gMote unique. For starters it doesn’t have a predefined set of motions that are used to initiate an action. Instead you record all of your actions so that it knows exactly how you draw them. Your only limitation is what you can draw with your mouse.

The next awesome thing is all of the different actions you have at your disposal ready to be assigned to a gesture. The list includes launching a program, opening a folder, executing a keyboard combination/shortcut, and other common actions like going back/forward in your browser. You can even do things like control your media player.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? To get started all you’ll have to do is download gMote, extract the files, and run it. There’s nothing to install.

If that one does not work:

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-ti ... se-shaker/

Windows Mouse Gesture App – Mouse Shaker
By Nakodari on Nov 20 2009 Leave a comment

Mouse Shaker is a small Windows mouse gesture tool that can help users perform various actions with simply shaking the mouse. Suppose you want an active window to close when you draw a big “C”, this can be achieved with Mouse Shaker. Similarly you can open Firefox browser by drawing an “F”.


Once it is running, you will see the main window where you can add or edit the gestures. If you want to learn more, hit the How To Use button and start watching the tutorial

[Tribble]

my desktop is fine thanks.... i know where everything is and i don't have to go through many directories to get what i want....


as soon as i get my laptop back i will see if anything has changed and then just organise it again and post a pic....
the Cat's desktop is far more cluttered than mine!!

Sssshhhhhhh

[thEnaileDonE]

I for one also don't like littering my desktop with icons...

[DAE_JA_VOO]

I for one also don't like littering my desktop with icons...

100% agreed. I don't want a single icon on my desktop. I'm really OCD about that. Stuff like "Fences" is a crazy concept for me, because it's like an organised form of a mess. So...





I really used to be into the whole Desktop Modding thing, but I soon got over it, because in my case, I never really used any of that stuff. While having every possible statistic about my machine graphed out on my desktop might LOOK cool, I never read that stuff, so what's the point? So now, I have an empty desk, and on the bottom right I have a clock and a bandwidth monitor.

[Sojourn]

So Dae, I suppose you have your stuff hotkeyd ?
Or do you navigate the start button to get to progs ?

[RuadRauFlessa]

So Dae, I suppose you have your stuff hotkeyd ?
Or do you navigate the start button to get to progs ?

Right Click -> Pin to Task Bar


Best invention EVER

[DAE_JA_VOO]

So Dae, I suppose you have your stuff hotkeyd ?
Or do you navigate the start button to get to progs ?

Most of the apps that I use regularly are always open. I use virtual Desktops, so it's always very organised.

Desktop 1: Browser
Desktop 2: Music
Desktop 3: Tweetdeck
Desktop 4: Photoshop/Lightroom

Looky:





I have the desktops hotkeyed, so to go to my "next desktop" I press Win+S, and previous desktop is Win+Q. So I can get to all my apps really quickly and efficiently, and there's absolutely NO minimizing happening, ever. If there's anything else I need to run that I don't run often, I just run it from the Start menu search. So if I wanted to run Skype, for example, I'd hit Win, type "sk" and then Skype is the first option, so I just hit enter and it launches.

I'm kind of an efficiency nut, so stuff like this is stuff that I spend lots of time perfecting for myself, and making it right for what makes sense to me, and then drilling into my brain. I have a sick amount of hotkeys set up with AutoHotKey that I use for browsing/navigating. Without a mouse, I could use my browser perfectly if it had absolutely NO toolbars/tab bars/etc. In fact, that's why I'm so excited about Google removing all of that crap with their future releases.

[Anakha56]

DJV Is that an external app for the multiple desktops? If so the link? How much memory does it chew? That looks very nice indeed...

[DAE_JA_VOO]

"External app"? What does that mean?

It's an app called Dexpot. I found it about 18 months ago, and it's something I can't live without anymore. Dexpot and AutoHotKey are apps that I'd die without now.

According to Task Manager, it's using about 8MB. I'm actually a beta tester for the Dexpot team, so I'm not sure if I'm running a beta release now or a stable release, but it's very stable either way.

[Anakha56]

I did not know if it was a Win7 built in feature or external thats all .

Awesome! Will download both now for home. Could also use it for work. Thanks DJV that trumps everything I have inputted into this thread .

[ryanrich]

Also don't have a single icon on my desktop. I use Spotlight or the Dock to launch any app I need or find any document and my Windows 7 VM always has the apps I use running and I just suspend it when shutting down my laptop so that it all fires up again within seconds when I need it.

[DAE_JA_VOO]

Hahaha, you're welcome

Autohotkey has a bit of a learning curve, but it's CRAZY powerful. You can use it for more than hotkeys too. You can use it to move windows around without having to click on the title bar, resize windows without clicking the edges, etc etc etc. So if you get into it, it's very powerful