Hi jtretiree...
Hehe... I should have tried the easiest thing
first :-)
I left my original answer at the bottom of this
answer, because that info is good for folder
views not on the task bar.
The really simple way it is done:
Left-click and drag the 'My Computer' icon from an
Explorer view (if it's not on the desktop) to the
start button. *Pop*, it's there.
You just click on the 'Start Button' and it's at
the top. You don't even have to click on 'My computer'
it works with a mouse hover.
This works on Windows XP and Windows 2000, Windows
95 requires a registry patch and I can't confirm
or deny Windows 98 currently.
-Search Techniques-
I just tried it.
thanks for asking your question,
-AI
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Sigh, I hope the rest of this is worthwhile to
someone out there... at least I found a new
useful applet. hehehehe.
*!*!* Original Answer Follows *!*!*
Thanks for your question, this seems to be a
handy item to have.
Secret901-ga's answer relies on you having the
original XP start menu setup. I guess I might
live in the dark ages but about two minutes
after XP was installed on my first computer,
the original XP menu was the first thing to
go. Out of fairness, I did go through Secret901's
methods, (after reapplying the original XP menu),
and it will show the contents of "My computer."
Such as all drives with letters, the documents
directories, etc. It will not however show a
cascaded menu of items that are contained in
each of those. What I found from Tech-TV's
website I believe is closer to what you are
wanting. You will have to install a small
program to make it happen. (I just downloaded
and installed it myself.)
[ http://www.bubblepop.com/opensub/opensub.zip ]
After I installed it, a right-click menu option
called 'Open Subfolder' appeared about 2/3rd
of the way down the menu. You click on it, or
hover the mouse cursor over it and are presented
with a submenu of all the items below whichever
folder you have clicked on. This applies in any
type of folder view. Like in Microsoft Word,
you are wanting to open or save a file perhaps.
You can click on folder icons in the 'Save As'
window dialog box and show the subfolders.
A forewarning. If the directory structure is
deep and / or wide... it will take a while for
the program to enumerate everything. I heard
my Hard Drive crunching away on a particularly
large directory. When you go back to the
subfolder view, after it has made its initial
"discoveries", it seems to take less time to
display. (For reference this is on a P4-1700)
so, the program might not be as efficient on
older or slower systems.
As a bonus, if you do have the original start
menu to XP and you do Secret901's method of
turning the "My Computer" into a menu view,
you will then be able to right click on the
items it contains and show their contents as
submenus. Very nice.
But as I said, I hate the new start menu and I
have the "traditional old school" menu. In
case you or anyone else reading this has the
same, or if you happen to have the other
operating systems such as Windows 9X, NT4,
2K, and ME, the Open Subfolder program will
work for you also.
If you wish to have a "My Computer" view on
your task bar by itself, all you have to do is
right-click the task bar, select Toolbars, New
Toolbar and on the new toolbar window, select
My Computer, and click on OK.
Voila... My Computer view on task bar. It's a
little big though huh? That's not a problem. Just
right click on the new My Computer menu, and
uncheck the show title, and change the view to
small. You can also elect not to show the text
labels but that's only if you have memorized
which icon is which.
I don't usually just get a random program and
install it... but if this one doesn't give me
any headaches, it will be allowed to stay on my
computer. I might even place it on my others if
there are no conflicts.
[ http://www.techtv.com/callforhelp/interact/story/0,24330,3368048,00.html
]
[ http://www.bubblepop.com/opensub/ ]
For Windows systems, direct download here:
[ http://www.bubblepop.com/opensub/opensub.zip ]
For Mac OSX direct download here:
[ http://www.bubblepop.com/opensub/OpenSubfolderX.zip ]
-Search techniques-
site:techtv.com "right click" "my computer"
[ ://www.google.com/search?num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=site%3Atechtv.com+%22right+click%22+%22my+computer%22
]
& other variations of the site:techtv.com searches.
thanks
-AI
*!*!* Original Answer Ends *!*!* |
Clarification of Answer by
alienintelligence-ga
on
30 Aug 2002 08:05 PDT
Hi jtretiree,
If you want it 'ON the taskbar itself', with no
start button activation needed, I posted that info
near the bottom of my original answer, maybe I
wasn't clear with all of the instructions.
"If you wish to have a "My Computer" view on
your task bar by itself, all you have to do is
right-click the task bar, select Toolbars, New
Toolbar and at the new toolbar dialog box, select
My Computer, and click on OK."
Then, to make the items cascade, move the toolbar
slider over til only "My Computer" is visible.
When you place your mouse over the arrows that are
now next to "My Computer", left OR right click and
cascading menus will appear. All you have to do is
hover the cursor over each additional menu after
that.
This is how this website describes it also:
[ http://www.windows-help.net/windows95/ie40-171.shtml ]
"Make a Cascading My Computer Toolbar
~ to have a cascading menu of the My Computer
folder on your Toolbar:
Just right-click a blank part of the Taskbar, select
Toolbars from the context menu, and choose New
Toolbar from the menu. Then use the dialog box that
appears to select a folder. select the My Computer
folder.
Now resize this folder, by "grabbing" it's handle,
and dragging it to the right site of the Toolbar,
until you only see the words My Computer, and all
icons will be hidden. You will also note a » sign.
When you click on it, a cascading menu will appear
with the contends of My Computer."
My suggestion that puts a link to "My computer"
on the start button menu will unfortunately work
on the classic start menu only. I neglected to
mention that in my original message. Sorry.
Hope this clears it up for you.
-AI
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