So Jeff wrote a blog post wondering “What’s in Your Quick Launch Bar?”. It’s definitely interesting to see what other people have in their Quick Launch bar, if they even use it.
I sometimes use mine, but I have a nice keyboard at work that I can bind keys to programs, so I don’t use my Quick Launch at work much. Now my personal laptop, on the other hand, doesn’t have that functionality, so I end up using the Quick Launch more often.
So… what’s in my Quick Launch bar?
- Switch between windows: After this post, it’ll get removed. It must be stock down there, but I don’t use it. Alt-Tab is good enough for me.
- Windows Live Mail: I check most of my email accounts through Windows Live Mail. I started playing with it one day and have just kind of stuck with it.
- Digsby: I use this to keep track of all of my IMs, Twitter, and Facebook. Two AOL IM accounts, 1 ICQ account, 1 Facebook, and 1 Twitter… and a partridge in a pear tree.
- Microsoft Office Outlook: Yes, I know… two mail clients in there. Outlook keeps track of specific email, my appointments, and my phone contacts.
- Microsoft SharedView: I originally installed it after seeing people talk about it on Twitter, and I’ve used it to help one of my buddies learn PHP programming. I really like this tool, as it helps to see what the other person is working on.
- Spybot Search & Destroy: Not so much a problem anymore, but I used to use Spybot to keep out pesky spyware.
- Apple Safari: On those days where I just get tired of IE 8 and its quirks… and get tired of telling sites to run in compatibility mode… then I switch to Safari for Windows.
- Subcommander Beta: This is a SVN client that I was looking into. I haven’t had enough time to comment either way.
I try to keep a lot out of my Quick Launch, as I don’t like it cluttered. Then again, I tend to do a lot of keying rather than mousing, so I’m more likely to key Windows key-R, notepad, Enter than click the icon in Quick Launch.
As for my hot keys at work, they are:
- Visual Studio 2008
- Internet Explorer
- Firefox 3
- Safari for Windows
- Opera
Looking at a list like that, you’d think I’m a web developer or something like that. Oh wait… I am.
So… what’s in your Quick Launch?