I’ve long been frustrated at Windows’ tendency to suck. If some random part of Windows suddenly freezes, EVERY part of Windows is frozen. Sometimes I can’t even access my start menu, or anything on my system tray, or even touch my taskbar because Windows has ground to a halt because a butterfly flapped its wings on the other side of the planet.

I despise convergent and interlinked applications and lately I’ve started getting extremely aggressive about replacing parts of Windows I don’t like with highly specialized tools. In another Productivity Tip of mine, I’ve talked about Launchy to free you from navigating for commonly accessed files and folders through Windows Explorer. In this Productivity Tip, I’m going to talk about RocketDock and how it can replace your QuickLaunch and your Windows taskbar.

My friend Eric talked about RocketDock on his blog and got me interested in it. RocketDock is a FREE, extremely attractive application launcher. Fundamentally it’s a clone of the icon dock that Mac users are already familiar with. Just by itself without any customization, it can completely replace your Quicklaunch bar and look about a hundred times better. It also won’t be affected by Windows Explorer locking up. 🙂 Check out the video below to see EXACTLY how it looks and what it does:

You can launch applications from it, minimize applications to it, and customize it endlessly with all sorts of interesting ‘docklets’, which are custom user-made applications that extends its capabilities. For example, you can add a custom readout of your system information (CPU usage, disk usage, time), a huge variety of clocks, the ability to monitor and check your mail, monitor the weather in your area, the ability to launch your start menu from the dock itself instead of the taskbar, etc.

There’s another commercial dock application called ObjectDock that has years of docklet applications built for it, and fortunately, RocketDock was built to be compatible with all of these docklets. You can check out a huge gallery of docklets here on WinCustomize.com.

I’ve used RocketDock to completely replace my Windows taskbar and my Quicklaunch. All of my most commonly accessed applications are on the dock, I minimize running applications to it (which are thumbnailed, so I can easily see what’s in each minimized app), and I have a clock on it just like before. The entire dock auto-hides so it only pops up when I want it, and it does it MUCH faster than Windows’ default taskbar, and it looks cooler doing it. You can even customize the speed at which it hides and unhides. Also customizable are the icon size, whether or not they zoom when you mouse over them, and exactly where on your screen the dock sits. It’s a hell of a nice thing, and as I said, I’ve totally removed my Windows taskbar.

When everything on my system is minimized, THIS is what my desktop looks like:

I have no desktop icons (because everything I access is either accessible via Launchy or through the icons on the RocketDock) and no taskbar, because I use a program to hide it. When everything is minimized, my PC looks like it’s off.

When I move my mouse up to the top of my screen to bring up the Rocket Dock, this is what I see:

You can see all my commonly accessed icons on the left (Firefox, Notepad, 3DSMAX, Core FTP, Photoshop, Project, Explorer XP, MindManager, AllWays Data Sync, ACDsee, Quicken), my short list of system files and tools (My Documents, RocketDock Settings, Hide Taskbar, Battery Power Meter docklet, and my clock), and off to the right is the thumbnailed minimized applications I have currently open (Firefox, Notepad, 3DSMAX and Photoshop). When I mouse away, it immediately disappears and goes back to my perfectly black desktop.

Everything is very simple, very clean, and very efficient. It’s also not affected by any other part of Windows freezing, or random application freezes, because it is its own separate program, unconnected to anything else. It also looks damned pretty, and you can find lots of kickass high-resolution icons for common applications for it all over the internet. The icons I use can be found here in the gallery of an artist named Deleket.

If you’re wondering how to access the Start menu without a taskbar, you can still use the Windows key to bring it up, or a Start Menu docklet. And the tsakbar is by NO means gone forever if you still want it around! That’s just my personal preference, because fuck Windows. 🙂 Finally, if you’re wondering about your system tray, there’s a docklet available for that, too. All these things have been thought of, and solved.

So, that’s what I do to replace the Windows Taskbar. Has anyone else done something like this?

I’ve been looking for ways to improve my PC workflow, and I touched on that in an earlier Productivity Tip. One of my readers suggested that I use Launchy, which is “an open source keystroke launcher for Windows.” Essentially it’s an application that runs silently in the background that lets you quickly and easily access indexed data through super simple keystrokes. It’s simple to use and incredibly powerful.

For example, let’s say I need to open one of my most commonly accessed files, HumanMaleVisuals.gc. I’ll show you what I did before Launchy, and now what I do after Launchy:

• Without Launchy: I have to open an Explorer window and navigate to c:depotdungeonrunnersbuildgameavatarraceshumanmale and then open HumanMaleVisuals.gc. This is annoying and time-consuming. I hate navigating with a mouse because it’s slow, so I always ended up simply typing it all out (I type 140wpm), until I eventually just up custom shortcuts to go straight to it.
• With Launchy: I press the Launchy keyboard shortcut (Alt-Space), type ‘malevis’ and Launchy’s indexed search immediately selects the file I want. I hit enter, and it opens instantly. Right there I’ve saved time by simplifying a common task.

There’s a tremendous amount of power and customization available in Launchy. You can select which folders to search, what file types to search for within them (i.e., in the ‘textures’ directory it ignores all the material script files and ONLY looks for image files), how many potential results to show at a time, etc.

Another massive time-saver for me is accessing commonly used folders. I simply make a shortcut to the folder, then call it something simple and short to type. For example, let’s say I want to look at Bob Contractor’s submissions folder.

• Without Launchy: I open an Explorer window and manually navigate to C:workcontractsBob Contractor.
• With Launchy: I open Launchy with the alt-space shortcut and type ‘art bob’ and press enter.

I have a folder full of shortcuts to all my most commonly accessed applications and folders, with their names written in shorthand so I never have to type much.

One of Launchy’s best features for me is its extremely intelligent handling of partial and incomplete text strings. If I’m looking for HumanMaleVisuals.gc, I can type all sorts of crazy gibberish and STILL have it find the right file. As I was writing this I tried the following; ‘hu ma vi’ – ‘vis’ – ‘man gc’ – ‘man le sal’ – ‘ual’ – ‘male gc’ – ‘nma gc’ – ‘lev gc’ – and ALL of them correctly pointed to the file I wanted. And I have thousands of files indexed with very similar names. It’s also blazingly fast at doing this.

Using Launchy has dramatically decreased the amount of time it takes me to access the huge variety of files I touch at work every day and freed me even more from the shackles of Windows’ default search and means of accessing files and folders. I’d strongly suggest giving Launchy a shot. One of my favorite sites, LifeHacker, has a fantastic article on tweaking Launchy to fit your needs. Check it out!

Who else uses Launchy, or other software like it?

I have accounts with all four major instant messenger protocols. Because I hate each one of their native programs, I use a single program that can log into each of them and keep it into one single interface. This prevents me from having to switch between multiple applications, taking up tons of RAM, and communicating as quickly and efficiently as possible with the people on my contact lists.

There are several applications that group all the IM protocols together, such as Trillian, Miranda IM, and GAIM. To varying degrees, each of these applications minimizes all the extra clutter and maximizes your ability to customize the application for your preferences. They’re all valid options, but of these three I’ve chosen Gaim because of one simple feature:

I can make my IM windows stop blinking!

In every other IM application, your IM windows blink and make a sound every time there’s a new message. This is really irritating and distracting, and pulls me away from my work. I can’t ignore it, because it’s designed to be attention-catching, so I tend to open them just to make them stop blinking, and it disrupts my workflow.

I COULD just turn off IM, but I can’t do that for long because I communicate with my artists through IM, so making the windows not blink keeps them in the background to check at my leisure.

The way to do it in Gaim is this:

Open the Gaim window -> Tools Menu -> Plugins -> WinGaim Options -> Configure Plug-In -> Uncheck ‘Flash window when messages are received.’

In all likelihood, I will never switch from Gaim for this one simple feature. Thank you, Gaim developers. 🙂

Does anyone else have a pet feature they love about software they use?