The only thing I love more than great apps is a tool that offers a simple way to organize and launch great apps. So I was naturally excited when Windows 7 introduced a new feature that allowed you to "pin" your favorite applications (and websites) to the Taskbar, figuring my need for third-party app launchers would become a thing of the past. Very quickly, however, I encountered a new problem with the pin-to-the-taskbar feature; I enthusiastically pinned a bunch of apps to the Taskbar, and I very quickly ran out of space. I was forced to result to scrolling through my Taskbar to find the apps I wanted. I don't know about you, but to me scrolling through the Windows Taskbar is akin to trying to get through AT&T's customer service voice prompts – annoying, to say the least.
1-Up Your (Windows) Life
That's where Bins comes in. Bins was created by famed Windows enhancer Jeff Bargmann, whose work includes StarDocks' Fences and ObjectDock as well as the Dell Dock which comes preinstalled on many Dell machines. His latest venture is a company called 1-UP Industries, which is dedicated to making Windows enhancements that make your daily routines less painful and more productive.
Pin It and Bin It
If you're familiar with iOS 4's ability to group applications into folders, then you'll quickly understand how Bins works. Currently in beta and available for free (it will cost money upon its release), Bins allows you to group Taskbar icon's together simply by dragging one Taskbar icon onto another and "dropping" it into a pop-up menu. You can categorize your launched and pinned apps to your heart's content by creating as many "bins" as you'd like (though eventually you'd probably have to start scrolling through the Taskbar again, something we're trying to avoid here).
Once you've created your Taskbar groups, it's a simple matter of hovering your mouse over a group's main icon (you can pick which icon is the "main" icon for the group) and the rest of the group's icons slide out a slick little box. One of the nice things about Bins is that your favorite features like live thumbnails and Aero Peek still function properly.
A Bin for Your Toolbox
Bins is as handy an app for people with giant screens as for those using laptops with smaller screens or netbooks. With Bins installed you can move the taskbar to the side of the screen and get more vertical space while keeping all your favorite apps a hover and click away. Give Bins a try today and by the time the final version is out, you can decide whether it's worth keeping in your desktop enhancement toolbox. It's definitely staying in mine.
Shout out to my co-worker Barrett for tipping me off to Bins! :)
Dr. Apps -- Follow me on Twitter! Software Community Guru for OpenCandy
This post is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
(Material Disclosure: None. Neither Dr. Apps nor OpenCandy has received compensation from the makers of Bins for the creation or posting of this content.)