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11 Small Free Hotkey Utilities That Can Improve Your Productivity
I just love small special purpose utilities so I was delighted to discover the Fave Soft website which is a treasure trove of these goodies.
The hotkey page on the site contains 11 freebies that perform a wide range of functions. Some of these are trivial while others are really useful.
My favorite was TopmostToggle a little 746KB application that allows you to make an active Window stay "on top" by simply Ctrl Right clicking on the Window.
These programs are not for everybody but check them out; you may find just what you have been looking for.
http://www.favessoft.com/hotkeys.html
Thanks to Panzer from Donation Coder for the suggestion.
Gizmo
PS If you draw a blank with FaveSoft then try www.tinyapps.org If you come away from there empty handed, you are truly beyond help:)
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Comments
Check the hotkeys page for a new utility called Selector. It's a Hotkey program that provides a popup list of programs you wish to run with Selected, Clipboard or typed in Text as parameter. You can drag & drop shortcuts onto Selector. You can have multiple customized shortcuts to the same application as long as the "short names" in the ListBox are unique.
There are hotkey programs that perform a similar function but with most you have to remember a different hotkey to launch each program. With Selector you only need to remember the hotkey to pop up the ListBox window. See the page for screenshot.
btw those using either FolderCache or ReOpen should upgrade to the latest version. I recently fixed a bug in the incremental search input that allowed dead entries(deleted folders mostly) to be reinserted in the ListBoxes. That gap should be plugged now.
I should have thought of it earlier. As of V. 3.5 ReOpen optionally opens the popup window if you middle mouse click an empty space on the desktop or in an Explorer window. You can toggle it via the Tray Menu. Good for mouse-centric people like me who don't want to take their hand off the mouse to hit the hot key.
I just found the site and forwarded the link to Gizmo. Do not shoot the messenger!
Panzer
Agree, nice find guys but as Gizmo says - 'not for everyone'
Thanks Panzer and Gizmo - I got something here I've long been looking for.
746KB for a Window On Top app? WinRoll does that (and almost everything else you could want) in just 24KB. Even PowerMenu, a slightly nicer alternative, is 128 KB. 746KB is bloated and scary in comparison. No thanks!
I agree with the above commenter. The pervasive attitude that memory doesn't matter is what gets us into trouble so often. For such limited functionality, 746 KB is bloat, not small!
If we're talking about the size of a program, the numbers are oftentimes misleading because some programs are compressed, some are not, some include icons, skins, etc., some do not. With today's hard disks, these size differences are negligible and don't necessarily represent how bloated the software is (unless differences are very large). But memory (RAM) usage is another issue. It's very important to consider and is probably a more useful measure of bloat.
Very good point, PE. The size of a program can become bigger if it uses a larger size of icons, GUI, or with some setup files with fancy images. Similarly important, a small program at about the same size but with some poor routines coded can slow down the process substantially and take a lot of RAM.
The large download and lack of hotkey in the About dialog are fair comments. Thanks for the feedback. When I wrote this I wrote it for my own use, and was also playing around with installers with skins. Also included was a "kill" app to kill the program if it was running in the system tray when the uninstaller was invoked. Now for scripted apps I just use the script with a custom icon compiled to exe, and a Readme zipped. The new Topmost Toggle download is less than 200 kb. Also the hotkey is noted in the About dialog. I've added an item to the Tray Menu to display the Readme file also.
I'm glad a few people are using some of my utilities. If you find one or two fun to use, I'm happy. :)
MilesAhead
I've removed the installer and incidental .exe files from ControlEnterVista and Half Shell to match my more recent hotkey configurations. Downloads are much smaller now.
MilesAhead
Hi Gizmo, thanks for the good tips. Looks like this is an endless road with unlimited freeware products to explore :>)
I tried TopmostToggle and it works like a little gem. It even works on skinned windows and DOS windows, but with 2 disadvantages:
1. Need to memorize the hotkey (as the utilities say for itself).
2. No indication which windows are now on top.
A good candidate to add in but can't beat DeskPins, a Gizmo's top pick, at Best Free Setting On-Top Windows.
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