Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware
WinExt is a powerful alternative to the Windows Taskbar
by Brad Linder Oct 13th 2009 at 11:00AM
For instance, it automatically grabs the bookmarks from your default web browser and adds them to the URLs menu allowing you to launch your web browser and open any of your bookmarks in just a few clicks. (Arguably, you could already do this in just a few clicks, but this way you can do it without waiting for the browser to load in between clicks).
There are also drop-down menus for files and shortcuts stored on your desktop, in your My Documents menu, and your My Computer area. Programs are grabbed from the Windows Start Menu, and any items that appear in your Windows Quick Start Menu will be added as icons to a quick launch area of WinExt. In other words, WinExt does everything the Windows Taskbar does, and then some, allowing you to hide the Windows Taskbar if you don't need it anymore.
You can also enable a CPU and RAM usage meter, a time and date area, a battery indicator, and an uptime meter. The size of the menu bar can be adjusted, you can customize the theme, and use WinExt to create and store notes. An error message pops up every time you try to save a note, but it seems to store them just fine anyway.
[via instant fundas]
I don't know if this is a labor of love or merely the brainchild of four very gifted games designers, but Level Up is a really weird mash-up of gaming elements that you have probably never seen in a Flash game before.
Let's start with the premise itself: Groundhog Day meets Memento. The game experience revolves around 'days': you explore the world and the clock slowly ticks towards the evening. You bounce around picking up gems and talking to the denizens of 'Level Upland'. Eventually you feel tired and head back to ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
blogward said 1:54PM on 10-13-2009
Not bad, but not being able to edit the default dropdown links - like delete IE - is a dealbreaker.
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quidam said 6:30PM on 10-13-2009
can i display systray icons in it?
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rob said 8:06PM on 10-13-2009
This program is effectively dead, hasn't been updated for months, the author said hes no longer interested in updating it. He mentioned making it open source but said organizing the source code so its readable is a problem.
On a side note i wouldn't want to use any task bar for windows unless i could remove(not hide), the crappy default start/task bar.
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crosenblum said 10:27AM on 10-14-2009
Why are you reviewing a product that is nice, but is dead, and hasn't changed since 2008?
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Brad Linder said 10:29AM on 10-14-2009
Because the site is called Download Squad, not frequently-updated-applications squad.
WinExt is a neat application that many people will find useful even if it has a few bugs. And we've never covered it before on the site so I wanted to let people know about it after I first learned about it.
It doesn't really matter if it hasn't been updated in a while. Some of the best applications around are oldies but goodies.
Night Owl said 9:43PM on 10-14-2009
+1
Well said, Brad.
crosenblum said 9:43PM on 10-14-2009
I like winext, too, and have actually used it. But since there has been no chances since last time it was mentioned, why mention it again?
Didn't mean to be rude...just was wondering...
Brad Linder said 9:45PM on 10-14-2009
When was the last time it was mentioned? I did a site search before writing this article and didn't see anything about it.