My Quickstart toolbar, what's yours ?

General Discussions
#1

here is what my Quicklaunch toolbar look for a while, do I miss some really nice tools ? let me know.

what’s yours ?

we got :

  • Internet Explorer
  • FireFox
  • Opera
  • Skype
  • Msn
  • VisualVM
  • JCreator
  • FlashDevelop
  • Notepad ++ (really nice text / hexa editor)
  • Filezilla
  • Tomcat monitor
  • Putty
  • Mathcad (a must have to help simplifing equation without tones of papers)
  • Wireshark (an excellent network sniffer, usefull to debug network code)
  • Dexpot (good when working with multiple monitor sometime and only one other time… help to retrieve window outside of screen)
  • Some current projects links…
  • Winmerge
  • Thunderbird
  • Some other current projects links…

I know Chrome (EDIT: and Safari…) are missing… (I test those on another computer)

PS: not in the toolbars but used often are : photoshop / 3ds max / cygwin

#2

I use shortcut keys. On any shortcut in your start menu, right click properties, and you can give it a key combination. To keep things straight, I use ctrl+alt+? to run apps, shift+alt+? to VNC to various machines, ctrl+shift+? to open folders, and ctrl+shift+alt+? to run OS stuff. Eg, ctrl+alt+E opens Eclipse, ctrl+shift+alt+p opens a command prompt, etc.

This way I don’t need a quickstar bar cluttering up the screen! :slight_smile: If you think that you can’t remember the shortcuts, then you must not use the app enough to warrant a shortcut for it, so then it shouldn’t be on your quickstar bar either.

Windows 7 has a searchable start menu which I use for everything that doesn’t have a shortcut. There are alternatives for XP.

#3

Forgot to mention some tools!

ArsClip: My most used tool EVER. It is “just” a clipboard history, but I use it more than anything.
SciTE: great text editor.
http://n4te.com/tools/scite.zip
TreeSize: finds where HDD space has gone.
CopyPath: For XP, easily copy files as paths.
http://n4te.com/tools/copyPath.zip

#4

interresting about shorcut I will look, unfortunatly I am pretty sure that I wont remmeber anyone :slight_smile:

about directory copy, msdos (or window cmd) offer xcopy no ?

I use WinDirstat for space looking, I dont know about treesize, is that better ? (windirstat is pretty slow…)

ArsClip sound very interesting, in some situations I 've thought that it would be cool to find a clipboard history tool, so this tool is probably the next guest to my quicklaunch toolbar, thanks :slight_smile:

EDIT: I would never exchange my Notepad++ against any other text editor but I will have a look on SciTE as some of my coworkers use this one too, maybe… (but cant see how it could beat Notepad++ :p)

#5

I like SciTE because it is fast and lightweight, for when you really just want a text editor. If I want hex editing I use XVI32. What does Notepad++ offer? Did you know Notepad++ uses Scintilla for its text control, the same as SciTE? From the features list it seems to have the same features as SciTE, just a different implementation. The link I posted is my distribution for SciTE, configured how I like. Configuring it is pretty time consuming.

Directory copy? You mean copy path? It adds a right click menu to files and folders, “Copy path”. Just register the DLL.

I used to use a little tool called DiskUsage, but it didn’t work on win7 so I found TreeSize. It is pretty fast. May be better tools though.

ArsClip is fantastic. Can’t be said enough! :slight_smile: I am old school, so I use ctrl+insert for copy and shift+insert for paste. I setup ArsClip so ctrl+shift+insert pops up the history and pastes when you select an item. If you use ctrl+V to paste then maybe ctrl+shift+V for ArsClip would make sense.

#6

yup I learn that a cupple of minutes ago :slight_smile: (notepad was using scintilla ) notepad++ have greats features that I love (probably same for scintilla…) : it higlight most language / hex edition / function listing & colapse for most language (java / php / javascript / xml /html / and much much more) and it start as fast as notepad, for hex edition I found more easy to have both in one notepad++ let you switch from text to hexa and you still get all its features (searching and such) may be give it a try a day, pretty sure that you wont be deceived

“Copy path” ha ok ! inded it could be usefull, will try (in XP dragging a path/file icon to somewhere (at least to a cmd console / text area) was working too, dont know why but seems they remove this feature on Vista … )

about ArsClip, I am already sure that I will love it

#7

I’ll give Notepad++ a try.

One of my ArsClip tricks is to clear the history, then go around to a browser/document/file system/whatever, select something, copy, select something else, copy, repeat. When done you can go to SciTE (…or Notepad++, I suppose ;)) and paste the entire history you have collected.

#8

Notepad++ is really nice. I use it almost daily. After seeing this post I decided I should check for updates. I was still using version 3.1 and was a little behind on updates since the newest build is 5.6.8 :persecutioncomplex:

FWIW my toolbar contains this stuff: My Computer | Show Desktop | IE | FF | Chrome | SSH | ITunes | Ventrilo | NP++ | PSP | folder shortcut | Eclipse

#9

My Toolbar (attached):
-Finder
-Safari
-Firefox
-iTunes
-Eclipse
-XCode
-Blender
-Word
-Excel
-Powerpoint
-TextEdit
-Photoshop
-Flash
-Echofon (for twitter)
-iCal
-VMWare Fusion (hooked up to Windows 7 on bootcamp, and a virtual Ubuntu 9)
-Terminal
-Shortcuts to the specs for OpenGL 2.1, 3.2 and 4.0

#10

Work Win (The highlights):
ant-renamer, eclipse, ultravnc, notepad++, postgresql admin, pidgin, puttycm (a mutlitab view for putty, highly recommended), beanshell, console (from sourceforge), jdk1.6.chm, j2ee.5.chm, WinSCP, xmplay, procexp

Work Ubuntu:
beanshell, eclipse, netbeans, krusader, terminator

Home Ubuntu:
swiftweasel, terminator, krusader, skype, pidgin, eclipse, netbeans

You can start most programs quickly via the alt-f234 keys or just go via the menu. Due to the flater hierarchy and good grouping in Ubuntu, it is only 2 clicks away.

#11

browser, email, terminal, eclipse - and whireshark but arguabbly I don’t use it enough for the screen estate it takes. I tend to have a lot of graphs around my screen, network (in numbers) cpu, memory, swap, disk other then that a clock/date and some other standard things preferably without color.

http://projects.gnome.org/netspeed/images/netspeed1.png

o, yeah as far as tools go I quite enjoy keepass, though I should still figure out a way to securely sync it among computers.

#12

That reminds me, I’ve been using LastPass for a long time now and I couldn’t live without it. Firefox plugin that stores all my passwords. Encypts locally and stores that on the server. That means I can use it from multiple computers (work and home usually). I also use it to fill forms (addresses, credit card info, etc).