Manage your documents and applications with ease !
For Windows 10, 8, 7.
What is ALLPROGS ?
AllProgs is a free application and document manager, just like the traditional Welcome screen of Windows 10 or the Start menu of Windows 7.
Just press 
once and AllProgs appears. Press the same key again and it disappears.
AllProgs lets you run your installed applications and your documents, just like the traditional Start Menu, but in a more straight way.
Different areas present the recent and the favorite applications & documents.
AllProgs manages the installed applications, just as the
Windows' Star menu, but in the form of a window and not a
menu.
It can be seen as an equivalent to the Windows 10 Start menu, but it works with
any version of Windows* (I test it regularly under Windows 7 and 10).
- The applications:
- A tree shows the installed applications.
It is organized as columns, one per directory.
- A list of the recently launched applications.
- Your favorite applications list.
You can add, remove and sort them as you like.
You may use it as a kind of desktop.
- A tree shows the installed applications.
- The documents:
- A list of the recently open documents.
- Your favorite documents list.
You can add or remove them as you like. - ( Future: a file explorer. )
And you can filter your applications
& documents by entering a name. That helps you to search
something by part of its name.
The filter accepts jokers ( ? and
* )
as well.
On the upper screen shot, you can see the documents on the left, and
the applications on the right.
In the installed applications list, the Accessories branch is
expanded to the right, showing the System tools.
The document explorer is not implemented yet, so it is empty for
now.
Once AllProgs has been started, you can show or hide its window by
hitting the AltGr key once. Just as easy as showing or hiding the
ordinary Start menu (under Windows 7 and sooner) or the launch menu
(under Windows 8 and later) with the Windows key !
Why did I make this application since Windows already has the Start menu ?
The first reason is I have never been very happy with the
Windows' Start menu, since Windows 95.
Mainly because it is a menu. If you click a few pixels out, it
disappears. When you open an application, the whole menu
disappears. When you open a recent document, it disappears and you
have to open it again and scroll a long list to find the next
document, etc...
This menu behaviour is annoying. So I wanted to make a real
software that manages the applications, as a real window and not as
a menu.
The second reason is the preliminary version of Windows 8 (the Preview version of 2011), which had no Start menu at all, replaced by this abominable and over-simplified Welcome scrolling toy acting as an application launcher.
This launcher is absolutely not adapted to the desktop computers, it is a pure joke on them. Why ? Because it does not display all the shortcuts of the installed applications, because it is not sorted hierarchically (I sort my applications when I install them, so they are a lot easier to be found later) and because it takes a lot of time to find an application with it. A desktop computer is definitively not a phone !
My answer is an application manager, fully adapted to the desktop computers.
New features are added from time to time, and this software updates automatically.
Enjoy it !
Requirements
Software
- Windows Vista and later (Windows 7, 8, 10).
- The Microsoft .NET 4.5 platform.
It usually comes with Windows.
Hardware
- A desktop or laptop computer is highly recommended.
AllProgs is not adapted to the low-power computers as the slowest netbooks or some low-power tablets, although it should run (slowly) on them, depending on the Windows version.
AllProgs will not run under Windows RT (the Arm version of Windows 8), and it will never, due to this system limitations.