Are you looking for a quality app launcher that doesn’t cost anything? You actually only need to look to your Windows machine. Today we show you a little-known feature in Windows that provides you with a super powered application launcher.

If you’ve ever searched the shareware sites for an application launcher (a small program used to start other programs), then you will have noticed that there are hundreds out there.? Some of them even cost money.? Which one should you pay for, download, install, configure and use?? Perhaps none of them!? There’s a little-known feature in all recent versions of Windows that can serve as a fully featured application launcher – not just for programs, but also for files, folders, playlists – anything at all!

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You may have noticed after installing one too many programs on your system that your Quick Launch bar (the icons next to your Start button) “overflows”, by hiding the extra icons behind a little arrow:

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Most power-users see this as an annoyance, and quickly remove the unnecessary icons, or widen the Quick Launch bar to make all the icons visible.? But one man’s annoyance is another man’s can’t-live-without feature:? This “overflow” area can be utilized, by filling it with the icons (shortcuts to programs, files, folders, etc) of your choice.? You can even add sub-folders, customize icons and add separator lines.?

Also, unlike most application launchers out there, you can right-click on any item and get a complete context-menu for easy customization of any item.

This system works in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7, although it will only work in Windows 7 if you revert to the old-style taskbar and enable the Quick Launch bar.

Possible Uses

From the screenshot above, you can see some of the potential uses for this feature.? Aside from the various individual programs shown, there’s also:

• A sub-folder for hundreds of playlists (shortcuts to M3U or PLS files), which (in this case) are further arranged into sub-sub-folders
• A sub-folder for links to online radio stations
• A sub-folder for shortcuts to RDP files (Windows Remote Desktop) or VNC files – each of which represents a connection to view/control another computer
• A sub-folder for shortcuts to the various virtual machines on your system
• A sub-folder for often-used documents (Word docs, spreadsheets, etc)
• A shortcut to the Quick Launch folder itself, where all these links and sub-folders are stored

Other useful ideas include:

• Links to often-used folders – on the local machine or around the network

It works on workstations and servers:

How to Set it Up

If you haven’t enabled the Quick Launch bar, you should do that first.

Next, you need to open the Quick Launch folder – the folder that contains the icons (shortcuts) that appear in the Quick Launch bar.? This can be done by clicking the Start button and typing shell:quick launch (XP users should first click the Start button then click the Run option), and then pressing Enter:

The Quick Launch folder should open, showing the default set of icons that Windows loads in there:

From here, it’s pretty easy.? Simply create shortcuts in this folder for any program, file or folder you need in your new application launcher.? You can create shortcuts to just about anything (drives, control panel applets, network shares, etc), and you can organize them into sub-folders if you wish (each sub-folder appears in the Quick Launch bar as a sub-menu).

Always a useful addition to this folder is a shortcut to the Quick Launch folder itself.? This may sound oddly recursive, but it’s actually very useful to have a shortcut to the Quick Launch folder on the Quick Launch bar, so that you can easily add new icons, delete icons, or reorganize them (although most of these functions can be performed by right-clicking any icon, or by dragging and dropping).? To add an icon for the Quick Launch folder, locate the Quick Launch folder in the right pane of your Explorer window, then right-drag the folder (click and drag with the right mouse button) into the right pane of the Explorer window:

When you release the mouse button, choose Create shortcuts here from the menu that pops up.? You may wish to rename the resulting shortcut.

Create Separator Lines

Some application launcher programs come with the ability to create separator lines, for breaking large groups of icons into smaller functional groups.? Windows has no such feature built in, but with a little creativity we can create some decent imitation ones:

Those separator lines are simply Windows shortcuts that have been renamed to “——————”.? Create one at any time by right-clicking in the Quick Launch folder and selecting New/Shortcut.? It doesn’t really matter what we type into the location of the shortcut (because we’re never going to click on it), but it should be something that exists on the Windows computer.? You can type notepad if you like:

Secret tip:? Given that no-one is ever going to click on this separator line, you may wish to make it a shortcut to some secret document (or folder) that you don’t want anyone else to ever discover.? Only you will know that the innocent-looking separator line is really a shortcut to your plans for world-domination!

After you click Next, you will be prompted to enter a name for the shortcut.? Type in —————– (it doesn’t matter how many “-” characters you type):

Tip:? If you need multiple separator lines, you’ll need to create each one with a different number of “-” characters.

After you click Finish, your separator line shortcut is created:

The only thing left to do with the separator line is to remove the blue Notepad icon.? We do this by changing the shortcut’s icon to a blank icon.? First, right-click on the separator line and choose Properties.? The shortcut properties box appears:

Click the Change Icon… button.? The Change Icon box appears:

The file in which we need to look for icons is %SystemRoot%system32SHELL32.dll? This is a special file that contains many, many icons for use with Windows shortcuts.? Any time you need to change the icon on a Windows folder or shortcut and are looking for a decent selection of icons, check this file first!

Enter this filename into the field at the top and press Enter.? The lower box will fill with icons:

A blank icon can be found in the 13th column, 2nd row.? Highlight that icon and click OK.? Your separator line shortcut now appears to have no icon at all:

Organization

After you’ve added all the icons (shortcuts), separator lines and sub-folders you want, the only thing remaining is to organize them into the correct order in your Quick Launch bar.

This is easier than it sounds.? All you need to do is pick up each icon with the mouse and drag it up or down to its correct location (being careful not to drop it on top of another icon):

If an icon appears in the main part of the Quick Launch bar (next to the Start Button) which you need to move into the “overflow” menu, this is actually tricky to achieve.? It turns out to be easier to drag the icons out of the “overflow” menu that don’t belong there, and drop them on the main part of the Quick Launch bar.

Note that reorganizing the icons within the Quick Launch folder (when the folder window is open) has no effect on their position in the Quick Launch bar or menu.

That’s it!

And remember, the more time you spend getting your often-used programs, files and folders into your new application launcher, the more time you’ll save in future hunting around your system for them.

And don’t forget the two preliminary steps for the Windows 7 users out there:

Make the Windows 7 Taskbar Work More Like Windows XP or Vista

Add the Quick Launch Bar to the Taskbar in Windows 7

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Do you need multiple different “exact-size” windows for web-design work or other activities throughout your workday? Then see how easy it is to switch between sizes with the ResizeIT extension for Firefox.

Before

Here is our pre-extension test browser set against a 1280 x 1024 pixel sized background. Notice the position and size of the browser versus the wallpaper…

Options

As soon as you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox it is recommended to immediately access the “Options”. These are the default settings for the four window sizes that you can switch between.

For our tests we selected for “Position” in relation to all non full-screen sizes and made a slight change to the “Alt + 2” listing so that it was close in size (and proportional) to our browser’s size in the screenshot above.

Once you have made any desired changes click “OK” to save your new settings.

ResizeIT in Action

Here are the results of our settings. The “Alt + 1” keyboard shortcut setting of 300 x 300 pixels…

The “Alt + 2” keyboard shortcut setting with our altered browser window size of 869 x 651 pixels…

The “Alt + 3” keyboard shortcut setting of 1024 x 768 pixels…

And finally the “Alt + 4” keyboard shortcut setting for full-screen.

Now if you are wondering if you can enter in unique and/or unusual custom sizes the answer is yes. Just for fun we altered only the “height setting” for the “Alt + 1” keyboard shortcut. Enter in the appropriate pixel size(s) and click “OK” to save your settings.

Here is the result of the size modification. Custom sizing makes this an extremely useful extension…

Conclusion

If you need multiple different “exact size” windows for your work then the ResizeIT extension is going to make it a pleasure to quickly switch between them. This is definitely a recommended install.

Links

Download the ResizeIT extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

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Have you ever accidently deleted a file, or removed a crucial part of a document only to realize it no longer makes sense?? Windows 7 is smart enough to protect you from yourself, and here we’ll see how you can restore files in any edition of Windows 7.

How does this work?

The Previous Versions features is a part of the volume shadow copy service, which creates restore points to help roll back changes to your computer in the event of a problem.? It is also the backend for the surprisingly good image based backup in Windows 7.? By default, shadow copy will save a copy of your files once a day, or when activated explicitly such as when installing an update or new program.

The Previous Versions feature was actually a new feature in Windows Vista, but was not directly available in the Home editions of Vista.? However, the volume shadow copy service was still present, allowing even users of Home editions of Vista to access previous versions of their files.? The default method is much simpler, so thankfully it is now included in every edition of Windows 7.

How do I access Previous Versions?

It is simple to access previous versions of any file or folder on your Windows 7 computer.? Simply open any Explorer window, right-click on a file or folder you wish to restore, and select “Restore Previous Versions.”? For instance, if you accidently deleted a file from a folder in My Documents, browse to that folder and open previous versions from it.? Please note that this will only appear on files and folders, not drives or Libraries.

This dialog shows all the previous copies of this folder that are available.? Here we see that there is a copy of my folder e-books from yesterday, 3 days earlier this week, and some from the week before that.? Click on the time you wish to restore from.

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You can choose to either Open, Copy, or Restore the folder.? If you click Restore, you can restore the full contents of the folder as it appeared at some time in the past.

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Choose copy to copy the entire contents of the folder as it appeared at that time to another location.? For instance, you could copy it to a flash drive for safe keeping.

Or, choose Open to browse the contents of the folder as it appeared at that time.? You can open, copy, or do anything you choose with the file from here.? For instance, if I deleted the Audio Books folder accidently today, I could click copy, and then past it into my normal e-books folder in my Documents folder.

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When in this mode, you are directly browsing the shadow copy of your hard drive.? The path to the folder shows the date and time of the copy.

And, the great thing is, this feature is available in all editions of Windows 7, including the low-cost Starter edition often preinstalled in netbooks.

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Change Shadow Copy Settings

By default, the shadow copies of your files will use up to 5% of your hard drive space.? You can change this by typing “Shadow Copy” into your Start Menu search.? Click the “Create a restore point” link.

Here you can restore your system with a restore point, create a new restore point, or configure the settings.? Click Configure to manage Shadow Copy.

You can choose to save both system settings and previous versions of files, only previous versions of files, or to turn this feature off entirely (which we do not recommend at all).? You can also choose how much space will be dedicated to these files.? The default is 5% of your hard drive, but you can choose more or less if you wish.? Finally, you can also remove all previous restore points, including the previous versions of all your files.

Summary

The Previous Versions feature is definitely a lifesaver. You can actually retrieve deleted files using Shadow Copy in Server 2003.? It has saved us many times when we accidently deleted a file or removed important information from a document only to realize what we had done minutes later. For these and many other reasons, don’t panic and just check Previous Versions if you ever lose a file.

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Are you longing for celestial views for your desktop? Then sit back, relax, and enjoy the view with our starscapes wallpaper collection.

Note: Click on the picture to see the full-size image—these wallpapers vary in size so you may need to crop, stretch, or place them on a colored background in order to best match them to your screen’s resolution.

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If you have enjoyed these wallpapers be certain to look through our other wonderful wallpaper collections. The perfect additions for your collection are just waiting for you to find them.

How-To Geek Wallpaper Collections

• Desktop Fun: Underwater Theme Wallpapers
• Desktop Fun: Winter Theme Wallpapers
• Friday Fun: Retro Nintendo Wallpapers
• Totally Awesome Lego Wallpapers for Your Desktop
• Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: Guitar Edition
• Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: Abstract Art Edition
• Awesome Desktop Wallpapers: Windows 7 Edition
• Fun Wallpapers: The Linux Desktop Edition
• Amazing Desktop Wallpapers: Castle Theme Edition

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Do you have a netbook and need to make the most of your screen real-estate? Now you can choose how much (or how little) of Firefox’s GUI Bars are visible with the Hide GUI Bars extension.

Before

Here is our test browser with all of the usual toolbars displaying. Depending on your personal needs this could be taking up a lot of screen real-estate. Notice that the background wallpaper in the new tab completely fills the blank area…

Hide GUI Bars in Action

As soon as you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox things are going to look a LOT differently than before. Your “Extensions Management Window” should also be visible too.

Here is what the main window looks like right after the restart. Just for a moment you may be tempted to panic wondering how you will access anything…but relax. All that you need to do is use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + Shift + A” to reactivate part of the GUI…

Just for comparison notice how much white space is visible beneath the background wallpaper in the new tab…that is quite a difference.

Once you use the “Ctrl + Shift + A” keyboard shortcut these parts of the GUI will be reactivated. No “Bookmarks Toolbar or Tab Bar” are visible at the moment…

Note: You can quickly make the “Bookmarks Toolbar” visible again in the “View Menu”.

In order for the “Tab Bar” to become visible you will need at least two tabs open…use of the “Ctrl + T” keyboard shortcut or the “File Menu” will do the trick nicely.

Options & Access

Now for the options…there are two “tab areas” for you to look through. In the first one you can deselect any of the GUI Bars that you would like to have visible full-time and change the keyboard shortcut if desired.

The second tab area focuses on just the “Status Bar”. Make any desired changes to best suit your personal needs.

If you happen to prefer menu access for using the extension then you will find an entry in the “Tools Menu” near the bottom.

Conclusion

If you have been needing a higher degree of control for the parts of the GUI that will be visible when using your netbook then this will definitely make a nice addition to your browser.

Links

Download the Hide GUI Bars extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

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Do you have a netbook and need to make the most of your screen real-estate? Now you can choose how much (or how little) of Firefox’s GUI Bars are visible with the Hide GUI Bars extension.

Before

Here is our test browser with all of the usual toolbars displaying. Depending on your personal needs this could be taking up a lot of screen real-estate. Notice that the background wallpaper in the new tab completely fills the blank area…

Hide GUI Bars in Action

As soon as you have installed the extension and restarted Firefox things are going to look a LOT differently than before. Your “Extensions Management Window” should also be visible too.

Here is what the main window looks like right after the restart. Just for a moment you may be tempted to panic wondering how you will access anything…but relax. All that you need to do is use the keyboard shortcut “Ctrl + Shift + A” to reactivate part of the GUI…

Just for comparison notice how much white space is visible beneath the background wallpaper in the new tab…that is quite a difference.

Once you use the “Ctrl + Shift + A” keyboard shortcut these parts of the GUI will be reactivated. No “Bookmarks Toolbar or Tab Bar” are visible at the moment…

Note: You can quickly make the “Bookmarks Toolbar” visible again in the “View Menu”.

In order for the “Tab Bar” to become visible you will need at least two tabs open…use of the “Ctrl + T” keyboard shortcut or the “File Menu” will do the trick nicely.

Options & Access

Now for the options…there are two “tab areas” for you to look through. In the first one you can deselect any of the GUI Bars that you would like to have visible full-time and change the keyboard shortcut if desired.

The second tab area focuses on just the “Status Bar”. Make any desired changes to best suit your personal needs.

If you happen to prefer menu access for using the extension then you will find an entry in the “Tools Menu” near the bottom.

Conclusion

If you have been needing a higher degree of control for the parts of the GUI that will be visible when using your netbook then this will definitely make a nice addition to your browser.

Links

Download the Hide GUI Bars extension (Mozilla Add-ons)

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You’ve suffered through the work week long enough and it’s time to chill out and play a flash game on company time. Today we take a look at Blosics 2 which is a fun and challenging physics game.

Blosics 2

When you start out you’re shown the object of the game. Select different size balls to knock blocks down. Just use your mouse to position the direction to shoot the ball and the level of force behind it.

Each ball costs money and as you progress levels it gets more challenging. In this example you can’t knock the red bricks down, only the green. You loose points when the red blocks fall off.

Sometimes it’s necessary to knock a red brick down to get to the green ones, but be careful and only knock down the minimum amount you need.

Different objects with various properties are introduced as you progress in levels as well.

You can restart a level at any time and can go back and play previous ones to up your score.

Blosics 2 is a fun and challenging game that will keep you amused until the company lets you regain your freedom.

Play Blosics 2

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Do you like to browse shopping, social, and video websites while at work and need a really quick way to hide them if the boss strolls through? Now you can hide those websites easily with the Boss Button extension for Google Chrome.

Installation & Setup

Once the extension has finished installing you will see an “empty spot” that is actually your new invisible “Boss Button” and a short extension management message. Invisible is good!

Note: During our tests the Boss Button remained invisible regardless of theme background color (excellent!).

The “Boss Button” will appear as an “empty box button” when you hover over it.

Note: There is only one option to worry with…choosing a “prim and proper” webpage as your cover.

Just Before the Panic

So there you are with some fun videos to watch, your personal e-mail & Remember The Milk accounts open, and a couple of great tech sites with lots of reading goodness. Just as you are getting settled into all that goodness here comes the manager on “walk about” through the office…

Note: During our tests the Boss Button did seem to “interfere” with some flash games (which may or may not be due to a “quirk” in our browser’s settings).

Boss Button in Action

Time to get everything hidden as quickly as possible! Just click on that wonderful “invisible Boss Button” and…

Nothing but pure innocence.

Once your manager has returned to their office you can get back to all of that “important” browsing that you were doing before. Click on that wonderful button again and…

Indulge in the goodness.

Conclusion

Keep in mind that your job security is more important than visiting your favorite websites. But if you do need to keep some websites “out of sight” from prying eyes (i.e. coworkers trying to see confidential work data or such), then this could definitely be a very useful addition to your browser.

Links

Download the Boss Button extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

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Since most of us sit in front of Outlook all day, wouldn’t it be nice to be able to consolidate social networking contacts into Outlook as well? Today we take a look at the newly announced LinkedIn for Outlook social connector, which brings those contacts to your inbox.

Outlook Social Connector (OSC) allows you to sync your online social networks of friends and colleagues to your Outlook Inbox. Right now the LinkedIn connector is ready to be tested, and allows you to organize your LinkedIn contacts from within Outlook. You can actually use the OSC and Linked in with Office 2007 and 2003 –However we’ve only been able to test it in Outlook 2010 and 2007.?

Note: Only 32-bit Outlook is currently supported, but they advise a 64-bit version will be arriving soon.

LinkedIn for Outlook 2010

Well, it’s all still in beta so if you want to be able to test and use the new features of OSC, you’ll need to do some uninstalling first. We need to go in and uninstall the OSC that came included in Office 2010 beta. If you don’t do this step, Outlook will crash…and we learned the hard way.

To remove the OSC included in the Outlook 2010 Beta, start up the installation file and select the radio button next to Add or Remove Features and click Continue.

Now under Installation Options expand Microsoft Office Outlook Outlook Add-Ins Outlook Social Connector and make it Not Available then click Continue.

Now wait while the OSC is uninstalled…

Now we can begin installation of the OSC Beta from the MS Download Center (link below).

Next we need to install LinkedIn for Outlook, so download and install the LinkedIn for Outlook Connector (link below).

After successfully installing OSC and LinkedIn Outlook Connector, you’ll see a new pane for contacts.

While you checking an email, select to Add the user so you can follow their online activities on one of the social networks.

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Since we installed the LinkedIn Outlook Connector we can select it and type in our username and password to connect.

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Successfully logged in and connected to LinkedIn…click Finish.

You’ll get a congratulations message saying everything is great…just close out of the message.

No go back to the contact and you can add them on LinkedIn…

A dialog box pops up asking if you’re sure. Select not to show the message anymore then click Continue.

Now the contact will show up with their avatar and information from LinkedIn.

You can go through and and sort through emails, calendar events, attachments, and news feeds from the LinkedIn contact.

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If an email contact isn’t in your LinkedIn network yet, a request will be sent to them just like if you were on the LinkedIn site sending a request.

You can see the option to add a contact on another social network too.

The Social Network Accounts window opens and you’ll want to click on the View social network providers available online link.

That opens up a Microsoft page where you can select different social network connectors. Unfortunately, LinkedIn is the only one available at the time of this writing, but more are on the way soon.

We took this shot from the Myspace for Outlook site which shows you how it will look…the same as LinkedIn only with your Myspace contacts.

Outlook Social Connector Outlook 2007

We were able to use Outlook Social Connector Beta in Outlook 2007 as well. And there is no uninstalling anything with 2007 as it doesn’t include OSC in the first place. Just install the OSC Beta and the LinkedIn Social Connector.

Here is a look at using LinkedIn for Outlook in 2007…

Conclusion

Overall this is a cool new concept that will allow you to keep all of your business and social contacts together in Outlook. Don’t expect this beta to work without flaws as we experienced several, but it does give you an idea of what to expect. If you’re an early adopter and enjoy testing out new software, then this is for you. If you barely get by each day without cursing at MS Office, wait for the finished version to come out. If you don’t want to test it out on your machine yet, go to the Outlook product team MSDN blog and view a video demonstration.

Download Office 2010 Beta

Download Outlook Social Connector

Download LinkedIn for Outlook

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Are you looking for a way to help organize your channel guide in Windows 7 Media Center? Today we’ll show you how to quickly and easily add color coding by category to your channel guide.

Add Color Coding

Applying color coding is a cool way to help identify the content of each channel. To add color coding open up Windows Media Center and go to Tasks > Settings.

Then click on TV…

Then go to Guide…

Then Guide Page Options…

Click the check box to select Apply colored backgrounds to shows, based on their category. Then click “Save.”

Now, when you access your program guide, the TV listings will be nicely color coded.

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Media Center color codes your channel guide by the following 5 program categories.

This is another nice little addition to your Windows Media Center setup that adds visual appeal and brings your Media Center closer to the true DVR experience. Also make sure to check out our previous article where we showed you how to add Network logos to your channel guide in Windows 7 Media Center.

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