Super Awesome Blog

This is the closest you’re going to get to Auto Hiding the Vista Sidebar. My BIG problem with Vista’s Sidebar is the inability to conveniently hide/show the application, and the complete inability to auto-hide it.  Always having the Sidebar taking up desk real estate, and having to right click on the sidebar to hide it, and clicking elsewhere to open it was a serious pain.  I have been unable to find any way to make it more useful.

Until now!

I’m pleased to report that using a program called HotKeyP I currently have my Sidebar set to show/hide the sidebar and all gadgets using the Mouse combination of Control and Space.  You can set it to any combination though, including mouse ones.

Excited?  I was.  Here’s how you can Hide/Show Vista’s Sidebar with the Hot Key of your choice:

1. Download and Install HotKeyP.

2. Select HotKey, Insert New.

3. Use the settings seen in the image on the right, or under Command select Hide Application (you can select Hide Window, but then it won’t hide / show all the gadgets.) Under parameters paste the location of the Sidebar’s install.  You can set the hot key to whatever you like.  In this case I’ve set the hot key combo to be CTRL+Space.  Make sure you set the working directory to your desktop!

Please note that you should NOT use the right mouse key as any hotkey, as it will probably disable your ability to right click and drag drop.

4. That’s it! If you used the settings I selected, you can now open the Vista Sidebar by using a mouse combination, and hide it using the same combination.

5. Make sure you save your config and hotkeys or you’ll have to configure them all over again when you restart the program/your computer.

There are a few problems of course, namely this only works for gadgets running INSIDE the sidebar, not on ones floating on the outside.  If you use most of your gadgets inside the sidebar though, this should work just fine for you.

Enjoy!

I want to like Vista’s sidebar. I do!  I would love to have my desktop populated by easily accessible, eye-friendly mini-applications to tell me the weather, my calendar and mail schedule, etc.  Sadly, Microsoft seems to have gone the distance to make this an impossibility for me and many (most?) others.

Sidebar would be far more useful to me if I could set what hot key I want to show/hide it, or choose to have it hidden to the side of the screen. Some Microsoft programs already do this, such as the task bar (home of the Start Menu) which auto-hides quite effectively.   I’ve even tried looking for third party solutions to the auto hide, but so far the only solutions I can find are inadequate.  Solutions range from keeping the sidebar running and using Auto-HotKey to bring the sidebar on top of other windows, but no solution has been found to minimize/close to the system tray or auto-hide off the side of the screen.

Google’s Google Desktop has a sidebar which offers some of these features, but I find the program’s inability to separate itself from its indexing function to be worrysome from a privacy standpoint, and Google’s brand advertising on the Sidebar is insufferable: Google is clearly branded at the top AND at the bottom of the Sidebar and these brandings can’t be removed or skinned away.  Desktop Sidebar has some options, including autohide and many widgets, but the interface remains  unintuitive and sadly clunky.

If anyone knows of a trick, tip, hack, whatever to make Sidebar more usable please let me know!

I love customizing my computer, and recently I had the urge to change the folder icon I use for my Super Awesome Blog files to have a “Super Awesome” Icon!  After a little research I discovered that it’s suprisingly easy.  Here’s what you need:

The Easy Way:

1. Get a .PNG file that’s already to go. If you use PhotoShop like I do, you might find the Free Icon Plugin by Sibcode helpful, it lets you edit Icons in PhotoShop (pretty handy!)

2. Point Your Web Browser to ConvertICO.com, a free site where you can upload your image file and convert it to a high quality .ico file!

How I Made Mine!

1. Get your source files ready.  I simply used my Print Screen button on my keyboard, pasted it into photoshop and cropped out the window I wanted.  I found an empty Vista Folder Icon on Deviant Art.

2. I used the Skew to create a 3D effect, and sized it to what I wanted.

3. Then I made a duplicate layer. I changed the Opacity to 50% on the duplicate layer, and cropped out the original screen cap (the area that looks like it’s inside the folder. Once I was all done, I saved the file as a PNG.

4. Then I simply went to ConvertICO.com, uploaded the PNG, and voila!  You can test it by converting the PNG in this article.

Happy Icon Creating!

I have a love/hate relationship with modifying Windows.  I do it enough you’d think I had the ideal system to my needs, yet I’m constantly looking for new little add ons, enhancements, etc., that make my relativly boring tasks on the computer just that much better.

I run Vista, and one of the things that’s always bugged me is the Win-Tab and uninspired Alt-Tab functionality.  Vista’s default Alt-Tab is a very boring view of each windows contents with a glass border around it.  I demand way more flash when I alt tab, which Win-Tab kind of provides, but something was still missing.

How-To-Geek posted a great find that helped fill my eye candy and functionality gap: Switcher for Windows Vista.  Switcher is highly customizable, both with hot key behavior and with window displays, size, speed, and more. I find the style shown here on the right to be the most useful, but if you prefer you can custmize it to your hearts content. I replaced Alt-Tab entirely, and set CapsLock+Tab to show the previous window, but again you can set any hot keys you like.

The only problem I’ve found is if you use an application (like winamp in classic view) that has many component windows that are all docked together Switcher treats each as its own window, creating a messy and unapealing apperance.

Depending on your computers muscle power Switcher will either run smooth or choppy… with all the bells and whistles Switcher runs great on my computer, which runs Aero just fine.  I suspect older computers that run Vista (people do this?) could use Switcher with some of the fancy effects turn off and look just fine.

Thanks again to the How-to-Geek for the find!

5 Stars Out of 5 (SUPER AWESOME)