Finally, a reason to use the Windows QuickLaunch bar
I've never been a fan of the Windows QuickLaunch bar. (For those that don't know, it's that area of the Taskbar just to the right of the Start Menu where you can put shortcuts to the programs you use frequently.) Don't get me wrong - I understand its purpose, and for a lot of people I can see how it would be useful. But my problem is that I'm a tiny bit obsessed with using my keyboard for, well, anything I can. In fact, my #1 least favorite "feature" of Windows Vista is the quick search thingy in the Start menu, because it took away the ability to effectively launch programs with the keyboard. In XP, you could hit the Windows key to bring up the Start menu, and then just hit the first letter of a program. So long as no other programs on the menu started with the same letter, it would just launch. For example, I have Firefox set as my default browser, so it shows up on the menu as "Internet". In XP, I could simply hit the Windows key, then "i", and Firefox would launch. But that stupid quick search on the Start menu got rid of that capability.
So anyway ... where was I? Oh, yeah - the QuickLaunch bar. As I was saying, I used to pretty much avoid using it because, until today, I thought that they only way to launch something from it was with the mouse. But then I read about a cool keyboard shortcut. It turns out that in Vista (and as far as I know, this is a Vista-only thing), you can simply press and hold the Windows key, and the press 1 to launch whatever program is first (the furthest to the left) in the Quicklaunch bar. Windows-2 launches the second program, and so forth.
Obviously, this is limited to only ten items (Windows-0 launches the tenth), but it's still a great shortcut. I've gone in and rearranged the QuickLaunch bar so that the ten programs I use the most will now be much easier to access.
I am just sayin!
I am just sayin!
@Steph - Yup. Way cool.
Any program listed in your Start menu, as you know, is a shortcut. Go to the shortcut for a desired application and right-click it instead of clicking it and choose Properties. In that dialog-box assign a keystroke by simply pressing a letter. This will give you a Ctrl-Alt- triggered keystroke. If you want to use a key more than once you can hold Shift to get a Ctrl-Shift- keystroke. Any assigned keystroke that is stored in the Start menu will be available anytime, from anywhere. For example, I have ctrl-alt-c assigned to the calculator, ctrl-alt-w to Word, you get the idea.
I realize this is a slightly more labor intensive method, three keys versus two keys, but you can certainly add more than ten *and* you can go back to hating on the Quick Launch toolbar. Also, this is a great way to save time on the computers that you are only asked to use occasionally like your parents. They'll never know it is there but you can sit down and lay hands to quickly launch an app.