OT: "Stackable" Icons

I have a TOOLS icon on my screen, for that same reason.

Any open space on your desktop, right click/new/folder, make a desktop folder called TOOLS, and then you can drag your other icons into it.

If you want, right-click on the folder, select "properties", then "change icon" or whatever.

John

I'm getting way too many icons on my desktop.

Is there any way to create an icon which will open a window/panel of more icons?

What I have in mind is to create an icon named "Engineering Tools".

Clicking on it would open window/panel of the dozen or so tools I have, click on one of the tools, the selected tool would open and the extra window/panel would close.

Probably already exists from some creative programmer, but I don't know where to look.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
 Anyone can be rude, but it takes a Democrat to be a real dirtbag.

That just dawned on me. Thanks, Richard and Tim!

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
 Anyone can be rude, but it takes a Democrat to be a real dirtbag.

Erm, right click desktop/New.../Folder ???

Tim

-- Deep Fryer: a very philosophical monk. Website:

You can't change the icon of folders (at least not on Win95, Win98, Win2k, WinNT4 and WinXP. You can on MacOS 9, not sure about MacOS X). But you can change the icon of shortcuts.

What you can do if you want a custom icon is create the folder somewhere 'hidden away' like in C:\\ and then create a shortcut to it on the desktop. Then right-click on the shortcut, select 'properties' and change icon. You can then drag other icons into this new icon because it is simply a shortcut to a folder.

(PS: for the Mac people, a Windows shortcut is similar to an alias, for the Unix people, it is similar to a soft link. For Windows people, the word 'shortcut' on a Mac means 'hot key').

Here is another trick -- in Windows XP, after you have created your folder, you can drag it to the edge of the screen and release the mouse button and it will turn into a "toolbar window," which is basically a folder docked to the edge of the screen. This is rather useless, in my opinion, but here is the good part. Grab the part of the toolbar window that shows the title and drag it away from the side of the screen. It will turn into a floating toolbar window, kind of like you can separate tool bars in some programs and make them into floating windows. Then you can resize the window to whatever you want. So say you have an "engineering tools" toolbar window with three programs you use regularly. Arrange those icons to be the first three. Now resize the toolbar window to show three columns of icons with those at the top. Now you can drag the bottom of the window up so there is only room to show those three icons. The window will get a little ">>" bar on the bottom that you can click to show the additional icons that no longer have room to show. So you can have a little window with your most used icons available directly, and all the secondary stuff in a drop down menu.

And Windows98SE too!

Thanks for the tip.

-- Graham W

PGM-FI page updated, Graphics Tutorial WIMBORNE Wessex Dorset UK Astro Society's Web pages, Info, Meeting Dates, Sites & Maps Change 'news' to 'sewn' in my Reply address to avoid my spam filter.

Why not just stick them in a folder ?

Graham

you mean like you could do with program manager in windows 3.1 ? I wonder if it would still run on windows xp ..

Colin =^.^=

if your talking ms-windows shortcut icons righ-click the desktop New->folder and stick your excess icons in there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ hmm, that last bit could be tricky.

there is that start menu thingy, you could put your engineering tools in there...

Bye. Jasen

"Jim Thompson" a écrit dans le message de news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Have a look at Perfect Screens. Just wonderful.

--
Thanks,
Fred.

I discovered that... then I did what you say below...

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC\'s and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
 Anyone can be rude, but it takes a Democrat to be a real dirtbag.

This also allows you to organize the actual data appropriately for other purposes (for example, you might put it in a directory that gets backed up regularly, or in one that does not, depending on the nature of the data). You can also simply delete desktop shortcut icons as projects are completed, leaving the actual data in place.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

--
"it\'s the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com             Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog  Info for designers:  http://www.speff.com

Sure. Right-click anywhere on the desktop, and click New->folder, and name it whatever you want, and drag your icons into it.

Making an icon for a folder - I think you can right-click the icon, click "Properties", and click "change icon".

To make an icon, take a 32X32 or 64X64 .bmp file, and change .bmp to .ico (that is, change the name, from, for example, "My_Icon.bmp" to "My_Icon.ico". It's really that simple. :-)

Yup. :-)

Well, this post might work. ;-) (Do you still even have my serious electronics/programmer persona plonked? Oh, well - your loss. ;-) )

Cheers! Rich

On XP, right click on the new folder, select properties from the context menu, then select the customize tab. Down the bottom there is an option to change the icon.