Jump Stacks

Description

Quick Start

Loading a Stack

Creating a Stack

.Stacks Syntax

Limitations/Known Issues

To Do

Download

Description

The release of Windows 7 brought about some major changes to the traditional taskbar.  One of the new additions to the taskbar was the application-specific Jump List menu.  Just think of it as the traditional right-click menu on steroids.

In many ways, Jump Lists mimics a lot of functionality from OS X’s Stacks. Not only can users access recently/frequently used files per application, but they can also “pin” various files to the special Explorer icon in the Taskbar, which comes in handy for anyone researching an essays for online degrees to someone simply getting a few work tasks done on Excel over the course of the week.

Now, being a former Mac user myself, I found this to be quite limiting.  I wanted to group a whole bunch of files and executables into one Jump List menu.  At best you could was to pin  individual executables to the taskbar, but that takes up way too much space.

Jump Stacks tries to solve this problem by mimicking certain features from OS X’s Stacks into the JumpList menus of Windows 7.  Its a very lightweight application and runs with every little overhead (i.e. doesn’t require fancy graphics).

Quick Start

Jump Stacks uses files that end in the stacks extension to load Jump Stacks with a set of pre-configured Jump List entries.

For a quick peek on the features of Jump Stacks, access the samples folder in your install folder located at: %ProgramFiles%\Jump Stacks\sample

Simply double-click on a stacks file to run that particular Stacks.  Once the application is running, you should be able to see the Jump Stacks icon in your taskbar.

To launch the Jump List menu, simply right-click on the icon in the taskbar, or alternatively, left-click on the icon and drag the mouse up.

Stacks files are actually just plain text files, so you can edit existing Stacks files using your favourite text editor (Notepad, Notepad++, Vim, Emacs, etc.)

Load a Stack

Option 1:

1. From the Start Menu, select Jump Stacks to run it
2. Drag your stacks file over the Load Stacks icon to load that file
3. Alternatively, double-click on the Load Stacks icon to run the file browser.  Select your Stacks file and click OK

Option 2:

1. Simply double-click on your stacks file

Create a Stack

Creating a Stacks file is as easy as creating any other regular text file.

1. Open your favourite text editor (Notepad, Notepad++, Vim, Emacs, etc.)
2. Add your Stacks directives
3. Save the file as a plain text file with the “.stacks” extension

If you are using the “::TITLE” directive to set titles to your Jump Stacks entries, you can enhance readability by adding tabs to the entry directly below it.  Tabs and whitespaces before and after entries will be ignored.

.Stacks Syntax

===
Inserts a breaker between menu items in the Jump List.
For this to work you will need at least 3 “=” characters, the more the merrier.

::TITLE
Sets the text to be displayed in the JumpList menu for the entry
directly below this directive

@open PATH
Opens the contents of the specified PATH, and tries to create an
entry for each file and folder within the specified PATH.  Note that
all shortcut files will be ignored (Windows Jump Lists blows up if they’re included)

@link PATH
Adds a Jump List entry that directly links to the specified PATH.  For an example take a look at LinkOpen.stacks in the samples folder

@web WEBSITE
Opens the target WEBSITE in the default web browser.  If you just want to go to your homepage then give ” ” as the argument.

@gmail
Opens the default web browser and goes to http://www.gmail.com

@gmail -compose
opens the default web browser and goes straight to the  gmail compose new mail page

@gmail -inbox
opens the default web browser and goes straight to the gmail inbox page

@gmail -contacts
opens the default web browser and goes straight to the gmail contacts page

@gmail -starred
opens the default web browser and goes straight to the gmail starred mail page

Limitations/Known Issues

Limited number of displayable list items.

Windows 7 limits the maximum number of displayable Jump List entries for every application.  You may notice that not all of your entries are being displayed if you have multiple directives, or if you used the @open directive on a folder with many files.  You can try increasing the maximum number of displayable Jump List items from the taskbar Properties.

1. Right-click on the taskbar and select Properties
2. Go to the Start Menu Tab
3. Click on the Customize… button
4. Increase the value of “Number of recent items to display in Jump Lists” at the bottom of the window.

In all likelihood, this will not help at all, but who knows, it might actually work.  Windows limits the maximum number of possible Jump List entries so that the Jump List does not take over your entire screen.  This is a feature, and  not a bug, and there really isn’t much we can do if we choose to use this  lightweight OS feature.

Multiple Jump Stacks

Opening multiple instances of Jump Stacks will group them together, making only one of the multiple instance available/accessible.  There’s probably a way to fix this programmatically.  Please contact me know if you have any ideas!

To Do

• Create a better icon, I’m no artist and this icon isn’t the prettiest it can be.
• Create a config GUI that lets users do all their stacks configuration instead of through text editors
• Somehow make the JumpLists menu come up when a user left-clicks on the app  icon

Download

Binary Executable: MSI Installer (1.77 MB)

Source Code: Download