In a previous article, I showed you how you can make your own bookmark or favorites application where you can attach detailed notes to the bookmarks to help you remember why you created them.
Here I will show you how you can make an Application or Document launcher utility with WhizFolders with the added advantage that you can keep detailed notes on these applications or documents. Moreover, it is easier to arrange your launching links in a hierarchy with WhizFolders by simple drag and drop.
Links in the topic text
If you have already used Links in the text of your topics, you are half way there. There are many types of links possible in WhizFolders. You can read all about them in the tutorial file given with WhizFolders or in the user guide. A topic link when clicked goes to another topic. A file or folder link opens any kind of document or folder on your system. If the file happens to be an application, it is launched.
Links in the topic list
To make a launcher utility, I suggest that instead of inserting links in the text of a topic, you directly insert them in the Topic List. The main advantage of keeping your links in the topic list is that it gives you the power of outlining them in a hierarchy. You can still write notes in them as described below.
The easiest way to insert launcher links is to Alt-drag them from Windows Explorer
Make a WhizFolder file that you want to serve as your application or document launcher. Open a Windows Explorer window on the side and inside it, locate and select the file, application or the folder that you want to launch. Then press the Alt key and drag the selected file to the topic list. This will insert a launcher link. Double-click the topic name in the list to test that the target file opens.
A few tips:
- You can even drop multiple files this way to insert multiple links in the topic list.
- Each link gets the icon of the target file.
- If you drag and drop a text file without pressing the Alt key, you don’t get a link but the whole file contents are inserted as a topic.
- After making these link topics, you can rearrange them like any other topics by Move buttons on the toolbar or by drag and drop.
How do you attach notes to these links?
- Each such topic in the list contains its target link at the top of its topic text. You can write your own notes below that line. Don’t disturb that first line.
- If you don’t want to disturb the link topic’s contents, you can add a child topic that contains notes on that link. You can color your notes and link topics differently so that you can identify them easily.
You can have different WhizFolder files keeping different set of links. All the above features allow you to make very powerful launcher documents where your detailed notes will help you find and remember your documents and files in a better way.
More advanced users can even take help of OLE
WhizFolders also allows you to insert ole objects in the text of your topics. For example, you can keep a spreadsheet directly in the text of a topic. For more details, please see the OLE OBJECTS category on the right.