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Tag: start menu

  • StartUp Is A Launcher…And An AppManager?

    StartUp Is A Launcher…And An AppManager?

    StartUp is described by its author as

    WPF tool to help you launch your programs easily.

    To start off the developer page does not mention the name ‘StartUp’. The only place this program’s name is visible is in the solitary screenshot. One can easily confuse its name to be ‘AppManager’ as that is the domain URL and also the title of page. That minor quibble aside, on to the program itself.


    StartUp
    Upon installation StartUp looks up or indexes the system’s start menu, quick launch and recent documents entries and presents them in a rectangular interface (see image) and also groups them into areas. Right clicking anywhere on the program window or clicking the + icon one can create groups for additional shortcuts. The program supports dragging and dropping shortcuts, executables or almost any file to create links to them. It is also possible to drag a file over a program icon, while holding the Alt key, to force the file to be opened with that particular program.
    The program is minimized to the system tray using its X or close icon or by just pressing the Esc key. By default the program window can be maximized by using the Alt and ~ keys or by what it calls “mouse activation”. To activate the program using the mouse single click the top left hand edge of the screen. This activation feature can be turned off using the program’s preferences.
    Perhaps the best part of StartUp is the integrated search feature. Click anywhere on the program interface and just start typing, a search box narrows your choices as you type (see image).
    StartUp requires, at a minimum, the .NET 3.0 framework and is a 164KB download. It is released under the Microsoft Public License.

  • Appetizer Is Food For Your Application Launching Needs

    Appetizer Is Food For Your Application Launching Needs

    Appetizer is described by its author as

    …a free application launcher, or dock, for Windows

    Appetizer is an open source entry in the application launcher list that includes the likes of 8Start, reviewed here previously, LaunchBar Commander from DonationCoder and many others. It is available in an executable and ZIP package portable. It also supports skins and plugins.

    Appetizer
    Appetizer, as it stands now at version1.3, keeps it simple. The first step in using it can be importing Start Menu and Quick Launch shortcuts using a special importer. Alternatively one can click on the + button (see image, showing Appetizer using the iAppetizer skin) or drag and drop program icons into the dock to create shortcut items manually. By right clicking shortcuts one can change the display name of the shortcut, change its path and icon and add special parameters that control how the application is launched. In addition to the aforementioned shortcuts can be added to ‘multi-launch’ groups. A multi-launch is often useful when one wants to open several portable applications (non-portable ones too) by clicking one single button. Here, using Appetizer, one can add many shortcuts to a group and open several applications simultaneously.

    The configuration menu of Appetizer lets the user do the following: choose its language (18 available as of this review), keep the app on top, check for updates, change its skin, its orientation (vertical or horizontal), its icon size, its transparency, auto hide it after an application launch, run multi-launch groups on start up, add a hot key to hide/show the dock and enable/disable plugins. One of the useful included plugins is the one that opens the folder where the application being launched resides in. Once enabled a plugin becomes accessible via a right click on any of the shortcuts.
    Appetizer is a very promising relatively new software and runs on Windows 2000, XP and Vista.