Finally, and thanks to a number of Stardock programs, I have no more icons on my desktop (technically, they’re hidden).
Instead, there are “sliding drawer” tabs from the left side of the screen. Each drawer is a category of my own devising and contains the icons that would typically be somewhere on my desktop… if only I could find them among the 50 or so that are (were!) there.
I saw this technique used in one of the Linux/XFree86 window managers about 1.5-2 years ago and just fell in love with the idea but until recently not even the Stardock stuff was up to the task.
It’s nice to have a clean desktop. It’s weird, too. I’ve discovered, through absence, that while thinking about what to type next or waiting for a web page to load I would visually scan the “icon swamp”, probably to keep that part of my brain busy while the other parts were thinking. I have a rather strange but cool background now to serve as stimulating eye candy (no, it’s not pr0n or anime).
Programs used (and paid for):
- Object Desktop
- WindowBlinds
- Object Dock Plus (this is the magic bullet program)
- DesktopX
Needless to say, this hasn’t done anything to improve Windows’ startup time (post-login), but I think a good defragment will likely fix that.
5 Responses to “Finally, no more desktop icons”
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How are the sliding door tabs different from going to Start —> Programs, where one can re-arrange their Start Menu as they desire?
I’ll admit, I’m not really a fan of messy desktops and find myself continually rearranging my own. I’d probably like the whole sliding tab thing…but I can’t find a way to justify another way of opening the same program.
My Start->Programs menu has 110 items on it and that’s not counting sub-menus. The sliding drawers are insanely more efficient compared to navigating through that quagmire — I get to what I want by dragging the mouse to the left side of the desktop, drawer pops out, I click once on what I want to launch and it happens, and the drawers are categorized (one category per drawer). In the past I’ve tried organizing the icons on the desktop and, inevitably, they get randomized again by something. With 50+ icons on the desktop, fixing this gets old after doing it once and downright annoying after twice.
That, and if you have any program open and maximized you can’t get to the desktop icons to do something else. With the tabs, everything that would otherwise be at least one more semi-annoying click away is right there. More semi-annoying clicks if you have more than one program maximized. Even on a 3GHz machine, the Start->Program menu takes an annoyingly long time to draw because it (stupidly) doesn’t cache the little icons ahead of time.
Anyway, it’s good for me. YMMV.
Oh, and the Stardock stuff is just way prettier than anything Windows ships with or that MS provides as add-on. :)
*sigh* Last one, I promise. :)
Yes, you can hit Alt-Esc to make all the open windows disappear and then the desktop is visible but I personally still find that tiresome compared to the sliding drawers. And it does nothing to address the inevitable randomization of the desktop icons.
*nods*
These are good answers. Coolio.