Application Launcher trick, using Windows own methods

For quite sometime that I've been trying to find the best way to call the programs I tend to use the most. My first choice was to add them to the Windows 7 Desktop context menu, but each cascading menu has a maximum number of items that can be added. 11 if I'm not mistaken. That resulted in a bloody mess in the context menu...

For instance, let's imagine you got 12 different commands of a given application you'd like to add to the context menu, under the same category. Well, you could only add 11 of the 12. Bummer. The alternative would be to add a new cascading menu just for that single command. Bloody insane.

Then, I thought of adding custom Jump Lists to the Windows 7 task bar. Either the applications I tried were buggy or I couldn't get them to work.

I could use application launchers, such as Launchy, etc. But, I decided to use Windows own methods.

Moments ago, I was playing around with C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar. This is the folder where Windows 7 actually stores task bar jumplist icons.

I just created a folder within TaskBar, named Chromium, where I created the shortcuts for my different Chromium profiles. I created a shortcut named Chromium - ssj100 Security Forums, and I liked that shortcut to the batch file that I use to run my SSB (site-specific browser) for ssj100 Security Forums.

The beauty of it is that, the shortcut won't be automatically pinned to the task bar; you can pin it yourself later on. You don't have to, though. I didn't. To open this Chromium-SSB profile, I simply press the Start Menu and type ss, which will make the shortcut name Chromium - ssj100 Security Forums be the only one appearing in the list. Then, I just press Enter.

It would be faster to just pin the shortcut to the task bar itself, but I got quite a few profiles, so adding them all would result in poluting the task bar.

So, I found in this the right balance.

Note: You could easily achieve the same in other Windows versions. You just have to find a folder that Windows treats as "special". I'm not that familiar with other versions of Windows, so I don't know their paths and all that.

I'm loving this... I've created the same type of shortcuts for HitmanPro. I just got to type h p, and the two HitmanPro shortcuts will be called, and will be the main shortcuts in the last. There are a few more Windows own shortcuts appearing as well.

Your imagination is the only thing stopping you... No cluttered Desktop, no cluttered Task Bar... No need for third-party application launchers either.

For instance, a shortcut pointing to "C:\Program Files\HitmanPro\HitmanPro.exe" /scan /noupload will perform a default scan with no uploading.

"C:\Program Files\HitmanPro\HitmanPro.exe" /scan /ews /noupload will do a Early Warning Scoring scan with no uploading.