In the article, Customizing Vista‘s Taskbar and Start Menu, I will show you how to put the main area of the Start Menu to much better use by configuring it as a launching area for all the programs you use most often. However, Windows Vista provides you with an even better way to quickly access your favorite application. You can assign them to special Windows key combinations.
Launching your favorite applications with the Windows key
To take advantage of this hidden trick, all you have to do is add the shortcuts to your favorite applications to the Quick Launch toolbar, which you can do with a simple drag and drop operation. You can have up to 10 shortcuts on the Quick Launch toolbar to use with the Windows key. By default, the Show Desktop and the Switch Between Windows/Flip 3D shortcuts are already on the Quick Launch toolbar, so with the idea that you’d leave them there, you can add up to 8 additional shortcuts.
Moving left to right, The shortcut on the Quick Launch toolbar is automatically assigned to Windows+numerical keys so the shortcuts would be like
- First shortcut would be Windows + 1
- Second shortcut would be Windows + 2
- Third shortcut would be Windows + 3
- Forth shortcut would be Windows + 4
- Fifth shortcut would be Windows + 5
- Sixth shortcut would be Windows + 6
- Seventh shortcut would be Windows + 7
- Eighth shortcut would be Windows + 8
- Ninth shortcut would be Windows + 9
- Tenth shortcut would be Windows + 0
The tenth shortcut on the Quick Launch toolbar is automatically assigned to Windows+0. By unlocking the Taskbar (via a simple right-click on the Taskbar and clicking Lock the Taskbar) and expanding the Quick Launch toolbar, as shown in Figure A, you can use drag and drop to arrange the shortcuts in any order that you want and use these shortcuts.
You can resize the Quick Launch toolbar so that it doesn’t take space away from the Taskbar, yet still access the shortcuts via the Windows key combination. Once you memorize which numeric Windows keys are assigned to which application shortcuts, you can resize the Quick Launch toolbar to its default size and lock the Taskbar again, as shown in Figure B. This lets you use the all the space on the Taskbar as you normally would and still be able to launch any of your applications with a simple Windows keystroke.
Other Win Key combinations
Here are a couple of other handy [Windows] key shortcuts:
- Windows+T : Cycles through programs using the Live Taskbar feature.
- Windows+Spacebar : Brings the Windows Sidebar to the foreground.
Please comment if you like this trick it.
nice trick