NorthGlide

Donations

Although a lot of time is dedicated to SideSlide's development, it is completely free. If you find it useful and you'd like to show your appreciation, please consider a small donation. Your donation is greatly appreciated and will help keeping SideSlide alive! Click here. Thanks you!

Basics

SideSlide is a highly advanced program launcher that goes many steps beyond all other available launchers. SideSlide includes unique features to simplify your day to day desktop experience, save you time and make you much more productive.

The Workspace

SideSlide is based around a configurable workspace that can be docked to any side of the screen: Top, bottom, right and left. The workspace springs into action as soon as you bring your mouse to that edge or use a keyboard shortcut.

The screenshot above shows the workspace on top of the desktop and the locations you can drag and dock it to. Drag the workspace to any edge of the screen via its title-bar. SideSlide fully supports multi-monitor setups so you can use it from anywhere.

Right click the Collapse Now button, which is the upper right most button, to quickly change the workspace position and more.

You can override much of the default behavior using the Settings & Appearance dialog and get rid of the workspace all together and work with containers alone (see below for more).
Note: You should not position the workspace in the same place the Windows taskbar is located at because it might not always be accessible with the mouse.

Workspace Style

You can tweak just about any aspect of the program to fit your own personal requirements.

A screenshot of SideSlide's about dialog on top of the workspace when the workspace itself is using transparency. The containers are also shown using different custom colors.

In the screenshot above the colors have been modified and the containers are all using the same color.

In this screenshot, a wallpaper is used as workspace's background. Some sample wallpapers are included, but you can use any image you like.

The screenshot above shows the workspace in its usual "working-mode" as it hides at the edge of the screen until you bring your mouse to that edge. In this example, it is docked to the right side.

You can either have a thin border line visible when the workspace is collapsed so that you can quickly find and undock it with the mouse (this is the default mode), or you can make the border line completely invisible.

The screenshot above shows the Appearance dialog from which you can change every bit of the way SideSlide looks. You can choose the individual component colors, ready made themes and create your own.

Adding objects to the workspace

There are a few ways of adding new objects to the workspace. The default way is by using the floating toolbar.

The screenshot above show the floating toolbar (indicated by the red arrow). To show the floating toolbar, left-click the workspace without moving the mouse. Once the floating toolbar is visible, click on any one of the colored bullets to add the corresponding object or move your mouse away to hide it.

Shortcuts

The most common objects you will add to the workspace are shortcuts. Shortcuts can use any custom size, emphasis and colors which allows you to quickly find what you're looking for. Shortcuts can be grouped and identified by tags so that you can focus on task you are working on, and even launch multiple related shortcuts at once just by starting a single shortcut. Shortcuts can point to files, folders, web URLs or system commands.

Adding shortcuts

You can manually add shortcuts using the New right click menu (See below for more about popup menus in SideSlide), using the floating toolbar or by simply dragging and dropping shortcuts from the Windows Explorer or your web browser to the workspace or to different containers. You can also copy files from the Windows Explorer and paste them in the workspace or in the various containers.

The shortcut mini-tool bar

The image above shows the shortcut mini-toolbar. Select newly added shortcuts to show the shortcut mini-toolbar and use the toolbar buttons to quickly apply style settings on selected shortcuts: Zoom-In, Zoom-Out, manually set the size, toggle bold font, sort ascending (A to Z), sort descending (Z to A) and select color.

Tip: You can also show the mini-toolbar when clicking a shortcut while the <Ctrl> key is pressed.
Tip: Hold down the Ctrl key and scroll up or down with the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of shortcuts.
When you click the color box in the shortcut mini-toolbar, you can select a custom color for the shortcuts or different colors based on the shortcut icons.

The screenshots above shows sample file shortcuts added to the workspace. In the picture on the left all of them are using the same color, and on the right picture the color is based on the shortcut icons to help you easily differentiate between multiple shortcuts.

Tip: You can move multiple selected shortcuts together and keep them in the same order by holding down the <Ctrl> key while moving (otherwise, the shortcuts will be automatically arranged).
Tip: You can swap the location of two shortcuts by dragging a shortcut by its icon and dropping it on top of another icon. This will only work if both shortcuts are in the same container or in the workspace.

Tip: Drag a shortcut from the shortcut icon and drop it on top of another shortcut label to activate the latter using the first shortcut as the command line argument.

The screenshot above shows the Shortcut Properties dialog that allows you to change advanced settings for each selected shortcut. The dialog is accessible via the shortcut's right click menu.

You can also locate and launch shortcuts using the keyboard. Focus on the workspace using the activation hotkey (Win+S by default) and enter any part of a shortcut you want to launch.

Open folders by entering the folder name and a backslash (e.g. windows\system32).
Launch URLs by entering the web address (e.g. google.com).

Containers

The second most common objects you can add to the workspace are containers.

Containers are added to the workspace using the New right click menu or via the floating toolbar. Draw the new container inside the workspace to set the desired dimensions.

Containers can be used to keep file and directory shortcuts, RSS news feeds, notes, URL's, pictures and you can even add folder containers that link to actual folders on disk. Containers can be detached from the workspace, shrunk and folded to occupy less space. You can add many shortcuts to the same container and group a bunch of them together using tags. Containers can also be used to start multiple shortcuts at once and much more.

You can add ready-made containers (and submit your own!) from the Container Online Library accessible via the floating toolbar, by pressing F6 or from the workspace right-click menu.

The screenshot above shows the the container online library dialog that allows you to search for various containers (shortcuts, notes and RSS news feeds) using tags and add them to the workspace.

The screenshot above shows an expanded container. To shrink and expand containers, bring your mouse over to the Shrink/Expand button (indicated by the red arrow).

Tip: To add shortcuts to shrunken containers, drag them to the container and hover for half a second above the container's icon so that it will expand and allow you to place the shortcuts inside.

Tip: Drag a folder from the Windows Explorer to the workspace to quickly create a container with shortcuts to the items within.
Tip: You can shrink expanded shortcut containers by double-clicking an empty place inside, or in the case of RSS News Feeds containers, you can also shrink them back with the right mouse button.
Tip: The icon for the shrunken container will be based on the first shortcut you add to it, but you can also select a different one via the right click menu, or by right clicking a shortcut inside the container and selecting the 'Use icon' command.

The screenshot above shows how you can keep large shortcuts inside shrunken containers. These shortcuts would have taken far too much space without the use of containers and the ability to keep them shrunk.

Fold and unfold containers by clicking the Fold/Unfold button (indicated by the red arrow). You can also Dbl-click the container name label to toggle between fold and unfold. Once you dbl-click to unfold a container, the previously unfolded container will fold back, keeping the workspace clutter-free.

The screenshot above shows the container Tag button (indicated by the red arrow). It's the second button from the left, next to the Shrink/Expand button. You can use this button to hide certain shortcuts and show others that share specific tags.

The screenshot above shows the container color dialog (accessible via the container right click menu) allowing you to choose custom colors for each container in the workspace.

Detaching Containers

You can detach containers from the workspace using the container right click menu or by dragging containers out of the workspace. Attach container back by clicking the attach ("^") button at the top of the detached container, using the detached container right-click menu (right click the detached container name label or an empty space inside) or via the workspace right click menu that allows you to attach all or individual containers back.

Containers will attach and detach to the last used location, unless you drag a container out of the workspace (in this case, it will detach next to the workspace on the side it was dragged from) or if you attach a container back to the workspace while the workspace is visible and the container hovers directly above it (in this case, it will attach to the exact place in the workspace it's above).

Once the container is detached, you can dock it to any side of the screen (top, bottom, left and right), hide it completely or show its name in a tab so that you can easily find it. There are more settings you can control for each detached container individually by accessing the detached container right click menu.

The screenshot above shows a couple of detached containers docked to the right side of the screen while the container tabs are visible.

In this screenshot, the containers are docked to the top.

Tip: You can quickly collapse detached news feeds using the right mouse button or with double-click.

The animation above shows an example of how you can organize detached containers around the desktop (in this case, they are all RSS news feed containers).

Other objects

You can add and organize other objects to the workspace such as pictures, notes and reminders.

The screenshot above shows sample notes and a few pictures.

You can add pictures to the workspace using the New right click menu command, using the floating toolbar, and by dragging a picture file from Windows Explorer or from your web browser while holding down the <Shift> key.
Pictures can be resized to any size you desire, and once you are happy with the size you can lock them using the picture right click menu.
You can add notes in the same way you add pictures, as well as by dragging files that end with the .txt extension while holding down the <Shift> key, or by using the Paste Text... menu command when you copy textual content to the Windows clipboard. You can also drag text from the web browser to create a new note container with the text inside, or use the Shift key to create a new reminder.

SideSlide allows you to add basic quick reminders to the workspace.

The screenshot above shows the Add Reminder dialog that allows you to set the reminder note, color and time.

The screenshot above shows different reminders in the workspace. Go over the reminder with the mouse to see the time it is scheduled to appear, and expand it (it's a special container) to see the text.

This screenshot shows the reminder notification dialogs allowing you to delete, snooze or open the reminder for rescheduling. The color is taken from the reminder color in the workspace.

Right-Click popup menus

Many of SideSlide's functions are controlled via right-click popup menus. Be sure to right-click the different objects to see what else you can do with them. Basically, right click everything you can just to see the options.

Program Settings

The settings dialog (above) allows you to change much of SideSlide default behavior. Make sure you go over it at least once to familiarize yourself with the various options.

There are many more things you can do with SideSlide so experiment, read the manual (coming soon) and watch the YouTube clips! (coming soon).