If you ever need to open a command prompt window from a Vista right-click menu (example: you sit down to use your computer and a message suddenly pops up -- "open a command prompt window from a right-click menu your computer will blow up"), how would you go about doing it?

The process is simple: hold down the shift key, then right click on a folder icon, in a folder, or the desktop. An "Open Command Window Here" option will appear in the menu as a result of the shift key's ability to, well, shift stuff. Finally, when the command window opens, take a look at the current path: it's whatever you clicked on.

Tired of right-clicking on a file and selecting properties or rename in order to copy the file name to your clipboard? Shell Tools adds a Copy Filename feature to the Windows right-click context menu, plus several other useful utilities.

You can choose which components to install, and once they're installed, you can choose selectively which ones to enable, so there's no need to clutter your context menu any more than you're comfortable with.

Here are a few of the tools included:

• Copy Filename - Does pretty much what you'd expect
• Filenote - Adds notes to a file by creating a text file with the same name
• Show hidden files - Quickly toggles the Windows show hidden files option
• FontLoader - Adds load/unload/install/uninstall options to the context menu for font files
• CopyURL - Copies URL information from favorites/internet shortcuts to the clipboard
• Fresh Icons - Forces Windows to rebuild icons when for shortcuts and files with the wrong shortcut
• Register Server - Adds register/unregister server commands to the context menu for some DLL, OCX, and EXE files

[via Shell Extension City]

When you first load Windows onto a PC, you have a relatively clean right-click menu. Select a file or folder and right click with your mouse, and you have the option to copy, paste, delete, or do a few other actions. But the more software you install on your system, the longer that window gets with applications asking if you'd like to unzip, play, or do other unspeakable things to your files.

FileMenu Tools lets you customize the heck out of your right-click menu. You can either clean up all of the items you don't use or add a ton of new features like change file attributes, or shred files. You can also show the shortcuts added by other programs if you really want to.

FileMenu Tools is available as a free download, and works with Windows 98/XP/Vista.

[via Life Rocks 2.0]

Remember the days of the one-button mouse? Ahh, things were much less complicated back then. But simple is not always better!

Most people these days can't live without a two-button mouse, and in fact many of us have gotten used to using the click wheel as a 3rd mouse button, for things like closing open tabs in our browser. Without adding yet another button to your mouse, there is a way to get another action out of it. This is by cleverly using a double right-click gesture.

Think about it - you use the double click on the left mouse button constantly. Why not have a double click on the right one? If you'd like to add this functionality to your machine go ahead and download ClickZap, a very small utility for Windows machines that adds this very feature.

ClickZap offers the following actions that can be set for the double right-click:

• Lock Computer
• Log Off Computer
• Shutdown Computer
• Minimize Active Window
• Minimize All Windows
• Close Active Window
• Close All Windows
• Mute Sound

The default action is Lock Computer, but we'd prefer if it was Minimize Active Window, which appears to be the most commonly used action from this list.