Desktop Toolbar

I have just purchased TrueLaunchBar, and it looks like just what I need to restore my preferred way of working on Windows 7, now that Microsoft in the infinite wisdom have seen fit to remove support for it. :cry:

The way that I organise my desktop is as follows:

1. Dock the Windows Desktop Toolbar at the top of the screen and set it to auto-hide.

2. Set the Windows Taskbar to auto-hide at the bottom of the screen.

3. Unset "Show Desktop Icons".

This results in a completely empty screen with all my desktop icons on a dropdown toolbar at the top of the screen.

Using the Standalone TrueLaunchbar, I have succeeded in creating a drop-down toolbar which shows the contents of /Users/martin/Desktop. The one thing missing is that it is not showing the Desktop icons that were installed for All Users.

If I create a menu and select the predefined Desktop menu option, it contains all the icons. So my question comes down to how I can create a standalone toolbar with all the icons that appear on a Desktop menu

I'm hoping that there is some thing simple I can do to make my shiny new Desktop Toolbar show all my Desktop icons.

This is impossible to make the toolbar that 100% looks like the desktop toolbar. Actually selecting the desktop folder (/Users/martin/Desktop) as TLB toolbar folder is not recommended because TLB creates there some internal files in the toolbar folder (on the desktop in your case).

If I create a menu and select the predefined Desktop menu option, it contains all the icons. So my question comes down to how I can create a standalone toolbar with all the icons that appear on a Desktop menu

The menu is the only way to show all desktop icons. In addition you can setup toolbar to show the menus without click (on mouse hover). And the free space on the toolbar you can use for something other. TLB gives much more ways to organize your workspace.

That is rather a shame. I really just want a very simple drop-down toolbar. Microsoft took this feature away in Vista, but I found a workaround. I created a shortcut to the Desktop on the Desktop, and the shortcut could then be docked to the screen edge where it did exactly what I wanted. The shortcut was made a hidden file so that it didn't appear in the toolbar. A bit of a kludge, but it works almost all of the time. Of course, Microsoft promptly removed this capability in Windows 7.

I can think of one way round this by creating shortcuts in my own Desktop folder to any missing programs. Not ideal, but looks like it would work.

At the a deeper, code change level, I can see a few possible ways in which this might perhaps be done, although obviously they might not actually be feasible.

1. Allow a toolbar to draw from multiple folders and present the aggregated set of icons.

2. Allow a toolbar to take a shortcut to a folder instead of an actual folder.

It just seem a shame that since you can access the full contents of the Desktop to create a menu, it can't be used to create a toolbar. Is that a TLB or a Microsoft limitation?

It just seem a shame that since you can access the full contents of the Desktop to create a menu, it can't be used to create a toolbar. Is that a TLB or a Microsoft limitation?

This is TLB limitation, its internal structure don't allow to use the folders like Desktop as toolbar folder. Actually the desktop have some "virtual" shortcuts like Computer, Recycle Bin and some others, not only the real shortcut files.

I plan to make the tore off menus dockable. So it will possible to make something like toolbar.

That sounds like a good enhancement. I look forward to it.

I did try a little experiment using using the Windows 7 Library feature. I created a new Library called Desktop, and added /users/martin/Desktop and /users/Public Desktop to it. The result lacked the virtual shortcuts for Computer, etc, but this can be solved by creating real shortcuts in one of the Desktop folders.

Unfortunately, TLB does not support a library as the folder for a toolbar. I guess this is because a library is not a real folder, and TLB cannot create its support files within it. I suppose the only way around that would involve a fundamental change to the design to keep the support files somewhere else, which is probably not something you wish to contemplate.

I am getting close to the effect I wanted to achieve, so I shall persevere with TLB as I think it is a great piece of software.