The other day we wrote about a nifty Yahoo widget called Informer that’s an extremely customizable toolbar. One of the commenters, “Change,” was wondering whether there’s a way to reserve the screen space associated with toolbar like Informer so that other applications won’t cover it up.
What they needed is not simply an “always on top” program which are actually rather abundant, but they needed something that would occupy the screen space in a manner similar to a sidebar or the Windows Taskbar. I spent a few minutes searching on the Internet before coming up with the free DesktopCoral.
This program essentially creates a transparent toolbar that can be docked along any side of your screen. You can adjust different aspects of the toolbar including the height and width:
I have to admit that this is quite a clever concept, and there are a variety of reasons where it could be useful. The Informer widget is a great example, or maybe you want to have a section of your desktop always be visible. Just make sure you check the Transparent Mode box once you get it positioned and adjusted to the correct size.
DesktopCoral officially works with Windows 2000/XP, but I didn’t have any troubles with it on Vista either. It’s completely free, but to get rid of the nag screen you’ll need to create an account over at DonationCoder.com in order to get the free registration key.
This is exactly what I’d like except the inverse. I’d like to define a rectangular area of the desktop which is available but prohibit all the other areas. DesktopCoral will do this if four transparent toolbars are created, one for each side of the desktop. Did you find anything that would allow definining the “usable” area with 2 opposite corners?
That seems as though it would be harder to come by. I searched around a bit but didn’t come up with much. I’ll have to dig a little harder later to see if I can find a program that will do that.
@Fred Thompson
Hawkeye ShellInit ([hawkeyetech.com])and xBar ([myadarola.blizzle.com] scroll down the page for the download link) could do this (and more).
Also, have a look at GridMove ([jgpaiva.donationcoders.com]). It might just be what you are looking for.
Hey that’s pretty cool – thanks for finding this Ryan! And it’s a utility from Mouser.. another one I’m going to use! He makes nice tools
Whoa! Thanks for the tips! Yup, Mouser has really cool stuff.
His tools are really incredible, and I don’t know how he finds the time to whip them all up.