Desktop Icons
Mention of icons all over the desktop reminded me of the Office 97 shortcut bar. A desktop toolbar, installed from Office, loaded on boot, no need to run Office. It could be placed on any edge, with optional auto-hide 'till mouseover; both of which would be very useful for widescreens with limited depth. You could add additional bars which changed the colour with an (optional I think) name, and which replaced each other in the same space. Drag and drop shortcuts onto it (with a few Microsoft exceptions, Internet Explorer of the time was one) for programs, folders or files. I had 8 toolbars for various things, all with multiple icons (Just bitmaps, renamed .ico). Nothing was more than two clicks away. Out of interest I've just been to the old XP machine with a 22" screen, made a new toolbar called New (short name) and had room for 58 icons. Some toolbars have longer names so I've now got nine bars with space for about 450 (say) icons, all grouped, all auto-hide. It was dropped in Office 2003, never knew why. I found it one of the most useful little add-ons MS ever produced and moved it from machine to machine until Windows 7, which doesn't support it. It had much more space for icons than the taskbar, and really reduced start menu usage.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
