I wish Windows Explorer had icon grouping
I want icon groups in windows explorer. I haven’t actually researched this yet, to see if anybody’s made anything that can enable the behavior I’m interested in, but it would be nice if it was just a feature natively in windows.
My desktop always gets too cluttered, but I want things handy, and I like some redundancy between start menu and desktop and quick launch toolbar…
So, on on my desktop, I either have tons of icons all over the place (sometimes with “Auto-Arrange” turned off, with similar icons placed near each other in small groups), or i make folders on desktop and group icons into those folders.
With the former, inevitably, the icon arrangement ends up getting screwed up at one point or another, and I end up with an alphabetically-sorted mess again. With the latter, the folders mean that it takes 2 clicks to get to what I want, and 1 click is already mildly annoying (I’m a keyboard guy).
[tangent] Actually, being a keyboard guy is the reason that I usually run programs by pressing the Windows key to pop up start menu, and then a letter/number to run one of the programs in my main start menu folder, which I have named such that most programs have a unique first character (see screenshot on the right). It’s not the ultimate in optimization and efficiency, but it works for me. [/tangent]
So, rather than throw my icons into folders and hide them, it would be nice if I could just group them on the desktop (or whatever folder), and even add a label to the group, and then moving one icon would move the whole group, and you could do something to automatically rearrange the whole folder (desktop in my scenario) with each group’s icons spaced close together, and the groups would get evenly spaced away from other groups, etc.
Just something I thought of a couple days ago. I’m sure it’s been thought of before, but it’s not currently available on my machine, so I wanted to make a note of it. If you know of a good way of doing this grouping type stuff, or if you agree that this would be a potentially useful feature, leave a comment!
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December 27th, 2006 at 9:35 am
Hmm… I’ve never had my icons regrouped, but then again, I generally only permit 2…. My Computer, and NET.
If 2 clicks are so annoying, why do you want grouping? You’d still have to click once to get into the group, and again to click the icon. I don’t see how that’s going to save any effort at all.
Programs are meant to be started from the Start Menu! That, too, is usually 2 clicks. I do it the same way you do (small icons, ‘main’ start menu).
But I doni’t see how this idea would save anything, effort wise. And I’m sure it would simply confuse a lot of dumbasses! :)
December 29th, 2006 at 6:50 am
With the grouping I described, 2 clicks would not be necessary. Maybe I did not explain it well enough.
I would not have to click once to get into the group. I would still have all of my desired icons on the desktop, but they would be auto-arranged such that similar program icons would be near each other. It would just enable me to visually find the icon I’m looking for more easily.
What would work, for me, would be to have control over the “Auto-arrange” functionality on a per-folder basis. One way to implement this would be:
1. allow me to write a little script to define the way comparisons are done for icon sorting (like the Java Comparator interface)
AND,
2. allow icons/shortcuts to be associated with a tag [aka label/keyword]
Multiple tags would make the comparison more challenging, but if I gave something multiple tags, and could write my custom comparator code, it would be my responsibility to work that out.
This way, your average “dumbass” would never even be exposed to this functionality, but developers (like myself) could take advantage of this custom sorting API.
I know it sounds like a lot of work, but if the API was there for me to harness, I envision just a tiny piece of script code could do the grouping I want.
I’m not sure why I use the desktop at all, since I do use my start menu (with keyboard) most of the time. For some reason, though, I do still find myself sometimes wanting to run stuff from the desktop. Maybe I just need to get over that. :)
December 29th, 2006 at 10:36 am
Yeah, I’d say get over it. My desktop has my computer, and network neighborhood ONLY. And I’d prefer them to be in the start bar. I move them overlapping each other so they take up less room, and put them in the corner.
I use “John’s Adventures Desktop Switcher” on every computer to change to a random picture from my photo albums every minute (or 2). Icons get in the way! At least XP has an option to make them all disappear, but I hate XP and use 2K on 3/4 machines.
So I hate them.
Only good use? If you just installed a new program, and you want to remind yourself to try it out before you forget it exists. Then I leave it on my desktop until I try it out. Once I try it out, if I like it, that icon goes to my start menu. If I don’t, it goes to my recycle bin.
I still didn’t understand your explanation, by the way. There’s no folders at all? Just arrange them manually then! Auto-arrange is evil, unless you have LOTS.
Or do what Carolyn’s parents do.. NEVER DELETE ONE, EVER.
Their entire desktop is filled with icons. THE WHOLE THING.
Here’s the kicker: They are like FOUR LEVELS DEEP. So you literally would have to dig a hole in the desktop to find your buried icons.
Revolting. :)
January 19th, 2007 at 10:43 am
i like that!
February 21st, 2007 at 5:24 pm
The following program appears to address this.
www.icongenesis.com
Not taken by the animation feature but the grouping feature looks ok.
February 21st, 2007 at 5:53 pm
I should have said first that I think there is a definite use for this grouping.
An ingenious approach here:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6346_11-5034408-2.html
but unfortunately not easily changeable.
Alternatively set your icon groups manually and then “lock” in the positions with
www.iconsaver.com
Could be further embellished by changing icon colors/images to match the groups, even use an icon creator to create a dummy text icon with the group heading.
However all hard work when you consider the concept was already there in Windows 3.
December 27th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
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