When I was a kid, my room was ALWAYS cluttered. There was stuff everywhere, and every time I cleaned it, it would somehow get cluttered again. My mom even took pictures of it (sorry, don’t have them here for you) and still shows it to me on occasion. Thanks mom.
In any case, my Windows desktop typically will get to be the same level of disjointed mess that my room was (and now, my garage and office, *sigh*).
Enter Stardock Software’s (makers of WindowBlinds) ‘Fences’. This little gem can organize your desktop by creating borders/containers around icons of different types. These fences are adjustable and are scrollable if you have a LOT of items in the fenced area.
Upon initial installation, the program will perform an ‘auto-layout’ if you desire, based upon some basic criteria: Are the icons shortcuts of folders, programs, files, system shortcuts, etc.?
This automatic feature can be utilized after you’ve cluttered up your desktop again later, but I’d like to see it as an automatic option (i.e. always auto-layout, even if new icons are dropped to your desktop), or at least a right-click option. With that being said, new icons that are in fact dropped to your desktop (free version) will not go into a fenced area, so you will have to manually organize or dig through the configuration screen and perform another auto-layout.
New fences can be created quickly by simply secondary-clicking (right-click for default mousers) and dragging a rectangled area on the desktop – not unlike when you perform a multi-select to highlight multiple icons. Upon your button release, a menu will appear, and you can click ‘Create fence’. Fences will then take over and ask what name you would like to give your new area. Drag your icons into the new area, move the fence, and you are done!
Additionally, you can adjust the color and transparency of the fences using the configuration tool in addition to taking snapshots of your current layout prior to making changes. There are a number of pre-made layout ‘templates’ you can choose from if you don’t like the default (as shown below).
Dislikes:
- Not sure where fences.exe runs – as a service? I have to admit, I couldn’t find it running either in task manager or via services. This is a red flag for a lot of people. and may trigger some anti-rootkit or malware detection apps.
- Have to dig in the configuration screens to get back to the auto-layout option (‘Tools’> ‘More tools…’> ‘Perform an auto-layout on my desktop’)
- Automatic organization option when new icons are saved or moved to your desktop *
Likes
- Auto-layout at program initialization and manual “re-layout”, this is very handy
- Transparency looks great, it is very unobtrusive
- Great set of initial fences
- Good feature set for free offering (list of features – free vs. pro)
2 comments:
Back when I looked at this, if I remember well, it runs as a Shell Extension inside Explorer.exe, which is why it won't show up in Task Manager.
Ah, ok - interesting! Good to know.
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