Windows Visual Tweaks: Remove Start and Send Applications to the System Tray
You can tweak and customize your machine as much as you want, one thing remains unchanged: the Start button with its Microsoft logo in the bottom left corner of the screen, and a wide array of taskbar buttons depicting all the applications you have currently opened. Here are two software applications that will deal with those issues.
The thing about the start button is that even though it is useful, you do not really need it taking up precious space on the screen. From a personal perspective I can say that nobody I know uses the mouse to click on it when the Microsoft logo is so boldly displayed on the keyboard (perhaps not on the pink keyboard for blondes). With that in mind, I present to you Start Killer – which as the name suggests will kill the Start button in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 Beta 1.
Another way of cleaning up your taskbar would be to simply send some of the applications you have running on your machine to the system tray. Some software programs already have this feature, all you have to do is poke around the settings, but the majority of them do not and this is where Minime will come in handy.
To my mind there are tow situations when Minime will come in handy: when you cannot be bothered to check if a software application has the “Minimize to Tray” option and when the application does not have such an option and you are sick and tired of seeing the tab in the taskbar.
Keep in mind that Minime is all about getting you to focus and saving you precious screen realty. What this means is that freeing up the taskbar will not clutter the system tray. All the minimized apps that no longer appear in the taskbar will be featured in Minime’s context menu.
For the Windows XP user we have some additional tweaks to offer: how to modify the size of taskbar items and how to enjoy the Vista sidebar in XP.
If you would like to get Start Killer 3.0, a download location is available here.
If you would like to get Minime 1.8, a download location is available here.
The thing about the start button is that even though it is useful, you do not really need it taking up precious space on the screen. From a personal perspective I can say that nobody I know uses the mouse to click on it when the Microsoft logo is so boldly displayed on the keyboard (perhaps not on the pink keyboard for blondes). With that in mind, I present to you Start Killer – which as the name suggests will kill the Start button in Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 Beta 1.
Another way of cleaning up your taskbar would be to simply send some of the applications you have running on your machine to the system tray. Some software programs already have this feature, all you have to do is poke around the settings, but the majority of them do not and this is where Minime will come in handy.
To my mind there are tow situations when Minime will come in handy: when you cannot be bothered to check if a software application has the “Minimize to Tray” option and when the application does not have such an option and you are sick and tired of seeing the tab in the taskbar.
Keep in mind that Minime is all about getting you to focus and saving you precious screen realty. What this means is that freeing up the taskbar will not clutter the system tray. All the minimized apps that no longer appear in the taskbar will be featured in Minime’s context menu.
For the Windows XP user we have some additional tweaks to offer: how to modify the size of taskbar items and how to enjoy the Vista sidebar in XP.
If you would like to get Start Killer 3.0, a download location is available here.
If you would like to get Minime 1.8, a download location is available here.
