I don’t agree on Microsoft’s convention of hiding my desktop icons in order to make my PC look easier to use (or whatever their reasons!). I have shortcuts to perhaps 15-20 frequently used applications and another half a dozen or so on the Quick Launch toolbar next to the start menu.

During my working day I find that the most important items are never too far away. Back in the days of Windows 95, I was a convert to a small ‘Powertool’ that went by the name of ‘DeskMenu’. The idea was simple - add an icon to the System Tray that when clicked would present the set of Desktop icons as selectable items. This worked great up until Windows XP where it became outdated by not displaying the alpha channel of icons. As an aside, it also didn’t support folders that made it a bit more limiting. To the rescue was Microsoft with their new ‘Desktop’ toolbar which is/was a great idea! Shame is that even though I’ve persevered with it for a couple of years (more fool me!) it highlighted an extremely annoying bug that wasn’t going to be fixed any time soon. So this evening I’ve written a very simple utility that provides me with the functionality I’d want. Feel free to download/try/keep/reject it as you see fit. As you can probably guess it’s a .NET application (V2.0 Framework required) so isn’t the lightest utility around!

Download: DeskMenu.NET