Below you will find a tour of SideSlide's main features. 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.
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 requests, please let
me know.
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.
Here is an example of the same workspace using different styles:
Other than displaying the default (program's name and version) in SideSlide's title bar, you can select to display the current date and time or the available free memory and CPU utilization:
Right-click the Collapse Now button (the upper right most button) to quickly center the workspace in the selected corner:
The screenshot below shows the workspace in its usual "working-mode". Only a thin line of SideSlide's docking bar is visible:
The Settings & Appearance dialog allows you to change most of the default behavior and completely change the way SideSlide looks.
Add different kinds of objects to the workspace by right-clicking an empty place inside the workspace to show the popup menu. Select New and the object you'd like to add from the menu:
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, lock the workspace for editing to prevent accidental object movement:
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 [Settings → Containers → Draw to Create].
Containers can be used to keep file and directory shortcuts, RSS news feeds, notes, URL's, pictures and you can even add folder connectors that link to actual folders on disk (this is an experimental feature which is not covered in this tour). Containers can be detached from the workspace, shrunk and folded to occupy less space, moved around (Ctlr+Z to undo a move, Ctrl+Y to redo), 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.
Tip: Change the name of a single container to #STARTUP (the number sign followed by the word STARTUP in all caps) and all of the shortcuts inside will be launched when SideSlide starts. This feature is useful to quickly add/remove startup programs when SideSlide is set to start with Windows. You can copy and paste shortcuts that already exist in the workspace or in different containers inside the special #STARTUP container. To place the #STARTUP container out of your way: Maximize the workspace [F7], position the container outside the normal workspace area and then restore the workspace window (Hit F7 again).
The basic operations that can be done with containers in the workspace are shown below:
The animation below shows how you can use the Select Tag button to place many shortcuts in the same container:
Some tips for creating notes:
Detach containers from the workspace using the container right-click menu 'Detach' command, 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:
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 one. Shortcuts can point to files, folders, web URLs or system commands.
Adding Shortcuts
Manually add shortcuts using the New right-click menu (Right-Click the workspace → New...) or by dragging and dropping files from the Windows Explorer/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]. Use [Ctrl+Shift+V] or the menu option 'Paste to Container' to paste shortcuts inside a new container. SideSlide is sharing the global clipboard with Windows so it's also possible to copy files from within SideSlide and paste them to a different location, such as the Desktop folder.
Tip: Add a new website shortcut by dragging the URL from your web browser's address field.
Arranging shortcuts with the mouse
* Basic Drag and Drop
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 (as opposed to the shortcut's icon) 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 or manipulate selected shortcuts: Start all 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:
More on shortcuts:
Tip: Use && to separate multiple commands.
Example 1: To disable hibernation, put the computer to sleep
and re-enable hibernation; paste the following in the command
text field then check the Administrator check-box: powercfg
-hibernate off && rundll32.exe
powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState 0,1,0 && powercfg -hibernate on
Example 2: Exit Skype and Telegram and then restart explorer in order to refresh the
lingering notification area icons; paste the following in the command text field:
taskkill /f /im Skype.exe && taskkill /f /im Telegram.exe && taskkill /f /im
explorer.exe & %systemroot%\sysnative\cmd.exe /c start /B explorer.exe
Press [/] (forward slash) to display the Speed Launch list and refresh your memory:
* Example Speed Launch list
(More on shortcuts)
Scroll through workspace tags using [Ctrl+Tab] or show shortcuts that share the same tag within a single container (see above for the container Select Tag button). Example of flipping through workspace-wide tags:
A shortcut right-click menu example for a shortcut with parameters
Double Line Spacing:
Double line Spacing under the Arrange menu
Select this option to increase the spacing between shortcuts in the workspace when arranging them in columns. You can also change this setting individually for each container from the Container Properties dialog [F2].
Advanced users: To increase the default, open SideSlide settings folder (press [F3] to open the Settings dialog and again to open the settings folder), exit the program and open SideSlide.ini for editing. Change the value under [LineSpacing] and set it to any value above 155 to experiment with an increased space between sorted shortcuts.
Using shortcuts as labels:
Another neat idea is to use shortcuts as labels to further organize other shortcuts (or any object for that matter) in the workspace or inside different containers. For example, you can use this technique to organize a project you are currently working on:
Add a shortcut to any random file and change its icon to any generic icon that indicates it's a label and not an actual shortcut. You can also change the font size and color as shown in the image above.
SideSlide is fully keyboard accessible allowing you to keep your hands on the keyboard and still quickly open any shortcut, website, folder or news feed.
Use the arrow keys to select and move shortcuts (Shift/Ctrl)
Use [Ctrl+Z] and [Ctrl+Y] to Undo/Redo containers and shortcuts position.
Undo/Redo under the Arrange menu
The Keyboard Launcher allows you to start any shortcut in the workspace with any custom parameters, open websites, easily open directories by navigating the directory tree, start all shortcuts that share a specific tag, create notes, calculate an expression, set quick reminders and search the web.
To activate the Keyboard Launcher, simply press on any key when the workspace is in focus:
Press [Enter] to see the result, continue the calculation or start a new one. There is also an option to copy the result to the clipboard:
SideSlide includes support for displaying RSS news feeds inside special containers. You can track multiple feeds in one convenient location. You can either have all RSS containers accessible from the workspace, shrunk, folded or fully visibly, or detached from the workspace to gain additional control. In addition to a built in viewer, SideSlide allows you to track subjects that interest you by highlighting headlines that contain predetermined keywords.
Add RSS news feeds by using the Add a News Feed dialog (Menu → New → RSS News Feed or [Ctrl+E]):
The new news feed will appear inside a container:
* The best thing about the search functionality is when you close the dialog and refresh a news feed, any item that is found containing one of the search terms will be highlighted (see the main RSS menu → Subject Tracker). This feature is useful to track various items that are important to you:
Detaching news feed containers
When you detach RSS news feed containers, you can have them automatically refresh every 5, 10 or 30 minutes by clicking 'Auto':
The animation below shows an example of how you can organize detached RSS containers (or any type of container for that matter) around the desktop:
Add pictures to the workspace or to a container from the New right-click menu, or by dragging a picture file from Windows Explorer or an image from the web browser while holding down the [Shift] key:
There are a few things you can do with each picture, such as, replace with another one keeping the same size, adding a comment (visible when hovering with the mouse over the picture), convert to a shortcut to the picture file, change to a relative path and more. Right-click a picture to see the menu:
Every JPEG picture you add to the workspace can be turned into a slideshow, displaying other pictures from the same folder. Start the slideshow by clicking the [Play] button at the bottom right of the picture, and stop is with the [Stop] button. By default, the slideshow will advance every time the workspace is undocked, keeping things interesting, but you can also disable this behavior by deselecting [Settings → Dock → Auto Slideshow].
SideSlide allows you to add basic quick reminders to the workspace. Add a reminder from the workspace right-click menu, using the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl+R], or by dragging text (e.g. from the web browser, Outlook emails, etc.) while holding down the [Shift] key.
Here's the Add Reminder dialog:
By default, reminders are added as folded containers showing the scheduled date and time.:
Reminders are special containers, so you can edit the text inside, change colors and more. When hovering over the reminder icon (when shrunk) or name (when folded), a tooltip will be displayed showing the time it is scheduled to appear:
The reminder alert will pop up at the bottom right corner of the screen. You can mark it as complete, snooze for 5 more minutes or open the reminder for editing. The color is based on the reminder color in the workspace:
There are many more things you can do with SideSlide and some that I haven't covered (like Folder Connectors and more). Make sure to right-click everything and experiment! Until I come up with a proper user manual, this tour should be more than enough to get you started. There's also tons of information in the Change Log, when new features were added.
Use SideSlide
from a USB drive/Portable Installation
Download the portable version Zip file from the Download page and extract to the USB drive.
Any object (wallpaper, file, folder, picture, etc) you add from the same USB drive will be accessible even when Windows assigns a different drive letter to the drive.
Quickly change the target path for shortcuts be using the "@" (at symbol) instead of the drive letter when editing shortcuts from within the Shortcut Properties dialog.
Multiple Workspaces
To use more than one workspace, extract the portable version into different folders (e.g. SideSlide1, SideSlide2, ...) and launch SideSlide.exe from each folder.
Show/Hide the Workspaces using a 3rd party software
When starting SideSlide.exe from the same location (e.g. the default installation folder), the workspace will show if it's hidden or undock. You can use a 3rd party software such as Logitech SetPoint, Microsoft Keyboard and Mouse Center or the Surface Pen to set a button that shows and hides the workspace by pointing to SideSlide.exe.
Themes
Download additional themes to completely change SideSlide's appearance:
Command line options:
/?: List command line options
/loadrss: Load RSS newsfeeds on startup
/nosplash: Suppress
splash screen
/backup: Backup SideSlide settings into a zip file. The zip file,
"SideSlide_Backup.zip", is
created in SideSlide's settings folder.
/silent: Do not show the Backup Complete notification.
Windows Vista/7/8/10/11: Starting an app that requires admin
privileges without the UAC prompt
You can select the Administrator check-box for shortcuts that require admin privileges, but you can also run shortcuts with the highest privileges without the UAC prompt:
From SideSlide:
Shortcut to My Computer
Shortcut to delete folders and files:
@echo off
if exist %1\ (
rmdir /s %1
) else (
if exist %1 (
del %1
)
)
Warning! Only use if you know what you're doing: Save this file as "Delete.bat" anywhere on your hard disk and it to the workspace (rename and set other options from the Shortcut Properties dialog). Now you can drag files or folders straight to this shortcut in order to completely delete them.
Taking back Win+S shortcut key:
Since Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the key combination Win+S opens Search/Cortana.
If you would like to use it in SideSlide again, follow the steps below:
Open the Registry Editor and naviage to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\
Create/edit DisabledHotkeys as Expandable String Value.
Double-click it and type s
Log out and log back in.
You will now be able to use Win+S as SideSlide's Global Hotkey.
You should always back up the registry before making changes!
Shortcut to 'Show my Desktop' (hide/minimize all windows and show the desktop):
Create a new System Command shortcut (Ctrl+O), then copy and paste the following in the Command field:
%windir%\explorer.exe shell:::{3080F90D-D7AD-11D9-BD98-0000947B0257}
Set the "Run:" dropdown list to "Minimized".
Windows 10/11 apps
1. Open the Container Library [F6].
2. Enter 'apps' in the Search field and press the Enter key or click the 'Go' button.
3. Select a container and click 'Add'.
Shortcut to Task Manager:
Search for "Task Manager" in the Container Library [F6] and add the container. You can then move the shortcut to any location in the workspace and also set it for Speed Launch.
Shortcut to Microsoft Edge Browser:
Create a new Web URL shortcut (Ctrl+W) and paste the following into the URL field:
microsoft-edge://
Shortcut to Windows Update:
Create a new System Command shortcut (Ctrl+O), then copy and paste the following in the Command field:
start ms-settings:windowsupdate
Select "Minimized" from the "Run" drop-down list.
Other Windows apps:
Create a new Web URL shortcut (Ctrl+W), then copy and paste one of the following in the URL field:
bingweather://
bingmaps://
ms-clock://
ms-photos://
microsoft.windows.camera://
onenote://
mailto://
ms-windows-store://
mswindowsmusic://
mswindowsvideo://
ms-settings://
calculator://
ms-todo://
Close Windows Metro Apps with a mouse click (Windows 8):
ClickToClose is a tiny utility I wrote that allows you to click the upper right corner of a Windows 8 Metro app (where the Close button should be) in order to close it and switch back to the Desktop.
Download ClickToClose.zip, extract to any folder (there are 3 files in the archive, a DLL file, an executable and a batch file to close the program) then run ClickToClose.exe (you can also place a shortcut to ClickToClose.exe in the Start Menu Startup folder).
If you find SideSlide useful and would like to show your appreciation, please consider a small donation by clicking the Donate button above. Your donation is a huge help to keeping SideSlide alive and kicking!
If you do not want to use a PayPal account, notice on the PayPal page there is a link to continue without a PayPal account.
Donate Bitcoin: bc1q7d2t39wqzse85u96frmpzms98e5r9365qp0f9y
Thank You!