Northglide

SideSlide

Page Last Update:
Jan. 2, 2011

SideSlide Tour

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Below you will find a tour of some of SideSlide's main features. A full blown manual for SideSlide v3 will one day come to life (unfortunately, writing one is my least favorite activity so it takes time). In the meantime, the more you use it, you will find it to be more useful and powerful than you think.

Please go over this tour at least once. It includes many tips on how to think the SideSlide way and some of them are not so obvious. Don't forget to watch the YouTube clip. Here's the old one.

Before emailing questions, please make sure to right-click everything and check out all the options.
It's very likely that you can do what you want to do, or disable stuff you don't like. If you have any feature request, please let me know and to report a bug use the built in Bug Report dialog.

The Workspace · Settings & Appearance · Adding Objects · Containers · Detached Containers · Shortcuts · Keyboard Navigation · RSS News Feeds · Pictures · Reminders · Extras

The Workspace

SideSlide is based around a configurable workspace that can be tucked away in any corner of the screen, top, bottom, right and left:

Drag the workspace via its title-bar and once you drag it to a screen corner, it will tuck away.

SideSlide fully supports multi-monitor setups so you can use it from anywhere.
Resize the workspace by moving the mouse pointer over the borders of the window.
Using the Appearance dialog [F4], you can tweak just about any aspect of the program to fit your personal style. Select a theme, change colors, buttons, fonts and background image or gradient fill.

Here is an example of the same workspace in different styles:

Right-click the Collapse Now button (the upper right most button) to quickly center the workspace in the selected corner:

Suspend Auto-Collapse: Select this option when adding a bunch of shortcuts to the workspace and you don't want the workspace to collapse back until you finish arranging them inside.

The screenshot below shows the workspace in its usual "working-mode". Only a thin border line is visible:

You can make the thin border line completely invisible from the Settings dialog [F3].
The workspace springs into action as soon as you bring your mouse to that corner and keep the mouse in the same location for half a second.
Click if you don't want to wait.
Use the global hotkey (Win+S by default) to invoke the workspace using the keyboard.
From Settings dialog, you can disable the delay (half a second before the workspace pops out if the mouse stays in the same place) or select to ignore the mouse when it hovers over the workspace, and only show it on click.
The workspace will grab the focus allowing you to use the Keyboard Launcher if you click to show it, when using the global hotkey or when the Grab Focus option from the Settings dialog is selected.
By default, the workspace will be on top of other windows (you can also keep it on top of the Windows Taskbar), but you can disable this setting under the Settings dialog and completely hide it from the system-tray menu.

Settings & Appearance

The Settings & Appearance dialog allows you to change much of the default behavior and completely change the way SideSlide looks.

Click to see a larger image

Press [F3] to open the Settings dialog, [F4] to load the Appearance dialog and [Ctrl+Tab] to switch tabs.
Go over the options with the mouse to see quick info tooltips that explain what each option does.
Global Hotkey: Enter [ _ ] (underscore) instead of a letter to use the spacebar key.
All of SideSlide settings are stored in a single folder (press [F3] when the Settings dialog is active). For backups, all you need is SideSlide.ini and the files under the Containers folder.
Changes you make while the program is running are saved to temporary files until the program is properly closed. If there is a system or program crash, you can either restore the last saved session or the most recent changes. You can also select Ignore Changes [F4] and restart the program loading the last saved session.

Adding Objects

You can add different kinds of objects to the workspace and there are several ways to choose from, depending on the type of object you'd like to add.

Left-click the workspace without moving the mouse to show the Floating Toolbar. Once the toolbar is visible, click on any one of the colored bullets to add the corresponding object or move your mouse away to close it:

You can disable the Floating Toolbar from the Settings dialog.

Right-click an empty place on the workspace to show the menu, select New and the object you'd like to add from the list:

Use the accelerator keys shown in the menu to create objects with the keyboard. The new object will be positioned where mouse pointer is.

There are other ways of adding objects to the workspace, such as, using the Online Library, dragging and dropping from Windows Explorer (e.g. your desktop) or the web browser, copying and pasting and more. More info can be found below.

Once you finish adding objects, you can lock the workspace for editing to prevent accidental moves:

When the workspace is locked for editing, the Lock button will be briefly shown above objects you are trying to move, allowing you to unlock the workspace for a period of 10 seconds before locking up again.

Containers

The workspace is expandable beyond its limits by the use of containers. New containers' size is initialized to a default value, but you can also create new containers inside the workspace by drawing them in the desired dimensions (see the Draw to Create setting under the Settings dialog). 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, moved around (Ctlr+Z to undo a move), resized, renamed, arranged, displayed in different colors and more. You can add many shortcuts to the same container and group a bunch of them together using tags, or simply start multiple shortcuts at once.

The basic operations you can do with containers that are in the workspace are shown below:

Select Tag/Refresh RSS: This button is used to refresh selected RSS news feeds when the container is a news feed container, or to list container shortcuts that belong to the same tag (more on that below).
Besides the Fold/Unfold button, you can also fold and unfold containers by dbl-clicking the container name label. Once you dbl-click to unfold a container, the previously unfolded container will fold back, keeping the workspace clutter-free.
Move the mouse over the Shrink/Expand button to expand shrunken containers. Click the container icon to expand it. You can start all shortcuts within a container by dbl-clicking the container icon when shrunk, but you might need to disable to 'Click to Expand' option from the Settings dialog or simply hold down the [Ctrl] key when dbl-clicking the icon.

Add ready-made containers from the Container Online Library which is accessible via the Floating Toolbar, by pressing [F6] or from the workspace right-click menu:
- Click the Go button when the search field is empty to list all containers in the library sorted by date.
- Submit containers to the library by right-clicking a container and selecting Submit to Library. At this time, you can only submit RSS containers. The functionality to submit notes and shortcuts is still there but it's disabled in the server since when it was enabled, I had a lot of cleaning to do as users sent containers that are not really (by that I mean, not at all) appropriate for other SideSlide users (in spite of all the warnings in the program). The option to submit non-RSS containers might be re-enabled in the future once I figure out a way to keep it clean.

Make shrunken containers even smaller using the 'Shrink Size' setting under the Settings dialog, or set the Shrink Size of individual selected containers using the container right-click menu: Arrange >> Shrink Size:

To add shortcuts to shrunken or folded containers, drag them to the container and hover for half a second over the container in its folded or shrunken state so that it will expand and allow you to place the shortcuts inside.
When the container is folded at the bottom of the workspace, it will unfold from 'bottom to top':
Drag a folder from the Windows Explorer to the workspace to quickly create a container with shortcuts to the files within.
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.
When set to auto-expand (default), a container will shrink when you move the mouse away or click an item inside. You can keep the container expanded using the container right-click menu command Keep Expanded, or click an empty place inside to keep it open until you click on something else outside of the container.
The icon for a shrunken container will be based on the first shortcut you add to it, but you can also select a different one via the container right-click menu, or by right-clicking a shortcut inside the container and selecting the 'Use icon' command.
Select multiple containers with the mouse or by holding down the [Ctrl] key and clicking the container name label when it's fully visible of folded, or icon, when shrunk. When dragging a single container while holding down the [Ctrl] key, all other selected containers will be repositioned as well.
When the container note is not empty but hidden, an indicator will appear in the container toolbar:
Use the mouse wheel to resize the text in notes and headlines font in RSS news feed containers by holding down the [Ctrl] key. You can also use the Pinch Zoom gesture in supporting touchpads.
Make sure to check out the sub menu items under the container Arrange right-click menu that let you organize containers in several ways:
Use the Select Tag button to hide certain shortcuts and show others that share specific tags:

Here's an impressive GIF animation (created using Microsoft GIF Animator version 1.00 and Windows 7) that shows how you can use the Select Tag button to place many shortcuts in the same container:
The Select Colors dialog (accessible via the container right-click menu) allows you to choose custom colors for each container in the workspace:
- The new color will be set for all selected containers.

Some tips for creating notes:

Drag text from your web browser to create a new note container. Hold down the [Shift] key to create a reminder.
Copy text to the clipboard and use the right-click menu command Paste Text [Ctrl+V] to create a new note container with the copied text.
Drag a text file (.txt) while holding down the [Shift] key to create a note with the file's content.

Detached Containers

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 (Arrange >> Attach >> ...) 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), completely hide it (a thin border line is always visible) 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.

Here's a sample of a few detached RSS news feed containers:

Collapse a detached shortcuts container by double-clicking an empty space inside the container, and RSS containers by a right-clicking between the headlines.
Right-click a shortcut in a detached shortcut container for options.
Keyboard navigation: [Alt+F4] to close and delete the container, [Alt+A] to attach it back to the workspace, [Alt+Left], [Alt+Right], [Alt+Up] and [Alt+Down] arrow keys to dock the container.
Right-click SideSlide's system-tray icon to see a list of all detached containers. Undock or bring forward a detached container by selecting it from the list.
Right-click the detached container name label or an empty place inside, in case it's a detached shortcut container, to show the menu:
You can quickly create additional detached notes with the same colors and settings as the one that's in focus, by clicking the [+] button in the note container toolbar:

Shortcuts

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

Adding Shortcuts

Manually add shortcuts using the New right-click menu, using the Floating Toolbar or by simply dragging and dropping files from the Windows Explorer or your web browser to the workspace or to different containers (drag the file to the corner of the screen the workspace is located at and it will pop out). You can also copy files from the Windows Explorer and paste them in the workspace or inside a container [Ctrl+V].

Tip: Add a new website shortcut by dragging the URL from your web browser's address field (Works with FireFox, IE, Chrome and maybe others. Does not work with Opera).

Arranging Shortcuts

Select multiple shortcuts with the mouse (in the same way you select icons on the desktop). Then, click and drag a single shortcut by its name label to sort all the rest accordingly.

Shortcut Mini-Toolbar

Select newly added shortcuts with the mouse to show the shortcut mini-toolbar. 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), select color and remove selected shortcuts:

You can also show the mini-toolbar when clicking a shortcut while the [Ctrl] key is pressed.
Hold down the [Ctrl] key and scroll up or down with the mouse wheel (or use the Pinch Zoom gesture) to zoom in and out of shortcuts.
Clicking the color box in the shortcut mini-toolbar, allows you to select a custom color for the shortcuts or different colors based on the shortcut icons: