BillW50 said:
Of course, so are desktop icons.
Not quite. Launching is via filetype association. See the CLSID
entries in the registry for the filetype association (e.g., .exe). I
suspect even RocketDock relies on those filetype associations to
"launch" the program. It's just presenting a different desktop manager.
Windows Explorer (explore.exe) is the default desktop manager. So with
RocketLauncher, you are adding an desktop manager atop another desktop
manager.
Of course these desktop tools doesn't do anything for locking desktop
icons. That is because they replace the desktop icons with a far better
solution.
That is what I am saying, why bother with desktop icons at all? Use a
far better solution and get rid of them. My personal preference is Aston
Shell (free trial). As it has the Launch Bar (like RocketDock, but also
adds groups too. Also side Toolbars, widgets (like Windows 7 gadgets),
and many other useful things.
RocketDock manages a grouping of shortcuts along with adding pretty
features. Because all of the managed shortcuts are within the window
for RocketDock, yep, you can get rid of the desktop icons. Instead of
using the default desktop manager to provide launch icons, you can used
a windowed app to show launch icons. While the launch icons remains
inside RocketDock's window, what happens if the screen resolution is
made smaller than the size of RocketDock's window? Does RocketDock
reduce the size of its icons so all of them remain visible at the lower
screen resolution? Does it stick in a scrollbar to keep the icons at
the original pixel size but then require the user to scroll around
through a list of icons? Does its window resize to rewrap the icons
trying to keep visible as many as possible?
In a virtual machine (Windows XP Pro SP-3), I installed RocketDock.
After adding more icons so there were 20 total (in the left-hand side of
RocketDock), the icons started going off screen so they were no longer
visible. No scrollbar shows up to let me get at the hidden icons. I
kept adding more shortcuts but RocketDock did not expand to a 2nd row.
I found no config option to change row/column height nor could I drag
the edge of Rocketdock's window to enlarge it. It looks to be a
single-row/column app launcher. If you're trying to cleanup a messy
desktop that has lots if icons, this app launcher won't do since you
won't be able to see a lot of your icons as they are off the screen.
This VM has a screen resolution of 1024x768. To see how well it handles
screen size changes (what the OP asked about), I reduced the screen
resolution to 800x600 (the lowest I could pick in the VM). Even more of
RocketDock disappeared off screen making most of it unusable. This
certainly doesn't appear what the OP wants to handle screen size
changes.
RocketDock is a one-row app launcher. It gets in the way of using your
regular apps. When an app's window overlaps the RocketDock launchbar,
you can't use that portion of the app's window. If the app's window
overlaps RocketDock sitting at the top of the screen, you can't get at
the title bar in the app's window to drag it down. You have to enable
the auto-hide option (disabled by default) to get at a part of an app's
window that would otherwise be obliterated by RocketDock. So you can
get it out of the way but it still won't show you the icons that are
hidden off screen because you added too many to RocketDock.
To me, RocketDock looks like a single fence provided by Fences but
RocketDock is prettier. With just one "fence" (window) for all the
shortcuts, it seems RocketDock would be more like a Favorites manager.
So I can have N icons sitting on the Windows desktop or I have those
same N icons sitting in a window for RocketDock. Doesn't seem like I've
saved any screen realestate unless I use auto-hide (which obviates the
live preview feature for dragging app windows to RocketDock). It
certainly doesn't handle the situation where screen resolution is
reduced as even more icons will be off screen, invisible, and unusable.
You have to use RocketDock as a short-list app launcher.
