Fences: Enhancement suggestions

from Stardock Forums

Firstly, just to say- what a superb product!!! I've recommended this to about 10 other people and they're all using fences and finding it as useful as I am.

Some of the features / effects which have really impressed me are:

1) Proportional resizing when moving the desktop between primary screens- this has been a great time saver for me

2) When you move a fence to the top of the screen the title drops to the bottom- a small, but well thought out detail

3) The smoked glass effect on the fences- wow! it's obvious alot of time, and effort, has gone into the aesthetics of this product

For me, I really only would like to see 3 new features- which would make this product nothing short of perfect for my use:

  • I would love to be able to specify the outer margin on a fence. I have a fair bit of screen real estate and currently, without this feature, I find my icons look quite close to the edges of the fence. This acutally makes the screen look quite cluttered, even though it's not.
  • A default drop fence would be great- when I save something to the desktop (especially when I'm working multi-screen) I find I have to go hunting for the new icon. If there was a fence that you could specify as a default for all new icons, that would be fantastic and make it alot easier to find new desktop content.
  • Finally, skins ... if the fences could be skinned (as with the object dock toolbar), this would allow me to blend my fences into any of my chosen wallpapers

Thanks again for a wonderful product! I look forward, with interest, to seeing the new developments on this.

Sera

thinkdesk
7,371 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Also would be nice to be able to adjust the distance between icons in a fence

like tighten, loosen

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

I have been using Fences for a month or so, but I have just uninstalled it. I don't keep icons for programs on my desktop, as pinning programs to the taskbar (a Windows 7 feature) along with the All Programs search introduced in Windows Vista do the job admirably, but I do often use the desktop as a convenient place to keep a small number of files for something I'm working on, and I had hoped that Fences would allow me to do this with multiple projects concurrently. Unfortunately I found myself choosing to use directories elsewhere in the filesystem rather than Fences on the desktop, because any "Open File" or similar interface would be totally unaware of the fences - meaning if I have a handful of projects on the go, whenever I'm hit with one of these dialogs I have to sift through the files of all of them. Which leads me to my suggestion - would it be possible to display folders stored on the desktop as Fences. If this is possible, an even neater feature occurs - doing the same for shortcuts to folders!

Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Thank you for your suggestions. Fences feedback can also be delivered to the developer via fencesbeta@stardock.com

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Is there anyway to turn off the icon auto arrange within a fence?  The constantly moving icons was too much for me.. I had to finally uninstall and go back to  wha tI had before fences.

Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top

And offcource we need INDIVIDUAL Icon sizing for instance of a more important or less important object!!

And the double click on the desktop NEEDS to be customizable atleast. Since it already "owned" by the best software IMHO Directory Opus!

Other than that no need for nothing but optimization :)

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

What about simply being able to set different colors and/or transparencies to different fences?

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top

Here is a program I made just about when fences got released (or before). Didnt know about fences. (late summer last year). Its not completely finished. Missing shell context menu on icons within the groups.

http://halsvik.net/downloads/desktopicongroups.zip (requires .net 3.0 or newer)

Maybe you can incorporate some ideas into your prog (features):

  • Create groups(fences in your case)
  • Drag and drop to and from groups
  • Select a primary group that will snatch any new icons on desktop and add it to its group.
  • Colors on background/foreground.
  • Header. Colors and font.
  • Icons. Select size from 16, 32, 48 or 64. + fonts.
  • Icon text placement. Below or at the right side (screenshot below is the right side variant).
  • Icon text. Shadow or no shadow (pic below is shadowed).
  • Store layouts on groups. Apply them on other groups.
  • Sorting on extension, name or date etc.
  • Flow direction of icons within the group.
  • An option to duplicate a window. Very nice when you got 2 monitors. 2 views on the same group.
  • System tray icon that lets you browse the groups when you left click it. Right click will open the normal settings menu. Very handy and an alternative to the double space tap.

Desktop screenshots below. It'd be nice if these things to get into the program. Then I don't have to work on it any more and can just use Fences instead.

Here

 

 

 

 

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello all , i'm copy-pasting the mail i just sent at the fences support :

 

Hello and congratulations for this great programm !  It is the first time a write a
support - email and this is because i really liked fences and would love to see it
improved  .

 The aesthetics are great ,the usability however can be improved . The thing that came to
my attention after a 2-day use of the current beta version is that the user cannot control
every aspect of the programm from the "fences control panel"   . For example , a new fence
can be created from the desktop ,but not from the cpanel  .
 And why would this be a problem ? Well , i like my right-click context menu 'clean' and
uncluttered   .With that in mind , I disabled all those right-click fence entries from the
registry , but , alas , i can't find all of them on the cpanel  .

 Another one that bugged me was that even after disabling those entries , one little
fence-option remained on the right click menu (the 'create new fence' one ) !?   That left
me buffled ...do you have any suggestion on how to remove it as well  ??
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Simply awesome - what a wonderfully useful little app!

If I had any input into the development team, I'd really love to see the following:

  1. Customising fences title bars -- esp. thickness/depth, font size and family. (The titlebars are pretty ghastly now!)
  2. Sorting icons in fences on a per fences basis, i.e., create/access/modify time, name, type, etc. per fence
  3. Per fence translucency, colour, etc., cutomisablity. (But then again, this'd probably lead to all sorts of visual abominations.)
  4. Clipping icons/icon text to the fence region when the fence is not active.

Here's an example of what I mean (for all 4 wish list points, but esp. illustrating point 4):

 

Thank-you again to StarDock and the Fences developers.  Kudos.  Amazingly great work!!!  (Keep it free, keep it clean!)

Catillyza.

 

 

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top

My $0.02

I have multi-monitors and I like to keep all of the fences on the alternate monitor.  However, if my displays ever get reconfigured, or if I even reboot the computer, then the monitor settings 'reset' and all of the fences revert back to the primary monitor.  I then have to move them back to the secondary monitor one by one, which is a pain.  Maybe there could be an option to automatically move everything to the second monitor.  Also try to make it keep the settings after a reboot.

If you have a solid black background, you can't see the edges of the fences and it makes them hard to resize or move around.  Maybe make them 'glow' when you are working with them.

Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top

Hi. as soon as i saw this, i downloaded it - LOOOOOVE the aesthetics - clean, simple, inconspicous. my kind of software.

about 2 minutes playing with it, i deinstalled it. why? because currently, Vista has a built-in feature (i've been using it about a year now) which does much better in terms of functionality. (shame that it looks like it's from the 90's!)

What i would like to see in Fences (mainly because i have become acustomed to it in Vista)

a ) remove the "shortcut" arrow from icons

b ) allow individual fences to have different:

     1) icon sizes

     2) icon text/no text

     3) fence labels

c ) 'dock'ing - snap one fence to another (or allow user to specify a gap that can be used for all fences, or some)

d ) 'create new fence' (and some other features) from the control panel

...that's about it for now. i'll also copy this feedback to the email someone provided earlier on...

if i could upload a photo on the post i'd show everyone how i'm setting up my Vista desktop icons. i like everything about it EXCEPT the aesthetics! and in fences, i LOVE the aesthetics, but the feature-ness of it lets you down - OH FOR A HYBRID!!! ;)

Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top

I like all three of the OP's suggestions and the other suggestions about the text for the icons and fence labels. In fact I just installed this program and was testing it out, when I thought about the Text for there fence labels. that was my main reason for coming to this site and checking through the forums. I wanted to see if it was suggested and if not, then to suggest it. Luckily my initial search did not take long as I found it right at the top of the search list. So I registered to comment on that suggestion.

This product is good, by the way. I find it very helpful. With the suggestions that were made here it would be even better.

That one the OP mentioned about the default drop fence is another one that caught my eye right away. As I just registered to this site I had installed the Impulse application. I noticed that the Icon went to the desktop instead of the "Recent Things" fence. To go a little further in that, it might be good for it to be done by right-clicking on the fence itself and/or within the fence in the layout section like how you can rename it. Add an option there called :Make New Icon Destination" or something along those lines.

Anyways I guess that is it for now.