Organize Your Messy Desktop with Stardock's Fences
Do you have a messy desktop full of icons and shortcuts and are looking for a way to organize them? Today we will take a look at a solution from Stardock called Fences, which organizes your icons into groups for a more efficient desktop.
After a quick installation you are presented with options for setting up your fences. Choose an existing layout to get started or create your own right away. If you go with a custom layout and don't like it no worries as it is very easy to customize.
If you go the layout route you are presented with a couple of layouts to choose from. If you have a messy desktop you might want to go with the sort icons layout. It will put everything into a labeled fence then you can tweak them how you want as you begin using them.
After choosing your layout Fences is ready to go. At any time you can go into Fences Settings to change different features, layout, and look of Fences.
You can place as many icons into each fence by dragging the shortcut or icon into the fence. Individual fences can be easily resized by dragging the outer edges.
Now the desktop icons will be arranged into different categories. You can drag the fences to different areas on the desktop that make most sense to you. You can also rename, customize, and create new fences.
You can customize the how the fences look by adjusting Transparency, color, and Brightness.
To rename a fence just right click on it and select Rename then type in a new title.
Fences is a free, customizable, and very easy to use application for organizing your desktop. It will work with XP, Vista, and Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit editions). If you are looking to make that messy desktop more efficient Stardock's Fences may be exactly what you need.
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WoW, i had this idea of a program about 5 years ago..
Finally it's here! :p
Nice post, very useful.
IS there any truth to the claim that storing files on the desktop slows down XP machines? It seems… unlikely.. but XP's such a mess in so many ways that it also seems possible…
There is no truth to that claim at all. Also, I would disagree, XP is very well optimized and efficient. One of the reasons I will not upgrade to Vista is XP is just perfect as it is for now!
LOVING this! Definitely going to try it out. Love Stardock to begin with, but this is just right up my OCD alley.
Does Fences remind anyone of the old Windows Program Manager?
Wow. I was just thinking the other day about a desktop layout similar to Windows 3.1, and here it is. Nice one.
Looks like KDE4.
Chris: I was just about to say the same thing. Windows 3.1 FTW
This app going to be in windows 7
OH MY GOODNESS!!!!
This program just solved my messy desktop problem, and it works fine, too!!!!
It's sooo easy to use, really!!!
Thx alot , Geek, you're the greatest!!!
You should mention the current release is a community preview-beta, and expires on August 31, 2009.
I posted this in a thread on the forum a while ago. After going to download it myself, I realized it was a beta and would expire, so I quickly came back and edited my post to reflect that.
I loved fences until I realized that it disables Ultramon's ability to do multiple wallpapers..
*hoping for a fix*
I have been using the same thing on my Kubuntu system since KDE4.x came out.
You forgot the one of the neatest features. If you double click on the desktop, all the fences and icon temporarily desappear, and you get to enjoy your desktop wallpaper, free of icons, for a moment. Double-clicking on the desktop again brings them back. You can also set some icons to never disappear.
To Philip: KDE4 has a similarlooking feature, but it is not the same. In KDE4, they show you the contents of another folder, while in Fences, the icons are still on the desktop.
It's just a copy of KDE4 and his plasma technology
This is probably my favorite thing that i have downloaded for my computer so far
Seems to be a nice program,
I tried to download it a several times - the installation routine always reported the file to be corrupted :-(. Maybe this is temporary or the prog has a problem with running on a German XP?
Besides, the article could have mentioned, that this is still in beta (wich will expire end of Augus 09) and will be replaced with the final product sometime this year.
Greetings,
SuAlfons
Dear All,
Fences has been here a while, a month or more!
Lot of things about beauty, functionality, similarity to some KDE4 app (which is not available standalone for Windows) and all. All with some valid reasons and understanding, but according to me, the basic feature it lacks is the install for one / current user or all users.
Basically all my limited users are puzzled with the new entries in the right click menu even though I tried to keep my installation under wraps
Now will a fellow geek please stand up and do the needful. I tried /? with the setup file but it just starts the setup process.
Anybody?
Regards,
sunshine
This would be a great prog for me…if I had icons on my desktop.
Thanks a lot for this. I really appreciate it, I,even myself, coded something like this but never succeeded neatly.
Yes, it has been around for some time, but did anyone attempt to bring it back? No, hence the credits for stardock and of course as usual, howtogeek for leeting us know about it.
looks really nice can't wait to try this one
I have always had a notoriously messy desktop. I seem to, for one reason or another, store all of my files onto the desktop. It's like my regular desk.
I had read about fences somewhere else, but never downloaded it until today. I must say, I really really like this program. It's a simple way to organize things. Great suggestion!
I really like this program. Out of habit I don't have alot on my desktop just because I can't stand all the icons. Now I will have shortcuts to the programs I use most because I can keep everything nice and neat and organized!
You must remember "there can only be one." Fortunatly for you I am only mortal.
I've been using this for several weeks now. Very nice (free!) program. My favorite feature is double clicking the desktop to 'hide' / 'unhide' the fences.
I loaded Fences on a Vista ultimate machine … while it worked just fine, after a while some of the icons that were placed in the fences started to disappear. Vista said they were still on the desktop, but you couldn't see them. When i deleted the fences, Vista said the icons were no longer on the desktop. The issue happened multiple times, with different icons. I tried uninstalling/reinstalling and the issue reappeared.
Not sure what is causing the problem. (All my graphics drivers are the most current as well — for an ATI HD4850 … anyone that uses ATI knows that the Catalyst Control Center can be quite finicky … maybe this is the cause???) The program is very easy to use and adds very-needed organization and flare to busy desktops. I am concerned about this anomaly though. I've stopped using Fences for now and will keep an eye on Stardock to see if they put out any newer versions.
I remember from a long time ago using Object Desktop (and its peripheral components) and experiencing very unusual behavior, performance degredation and graphics odditites … that was resolved only by uninstalling the Stardock programs. I wonder if quality and design is still an issue?
This program looks nice but sucked up 50% of cpu until I killed it.
its fantastic, i was looking for this for years…!!
Hi just put the fences on my desktop, it looks pretty good, but where have my vista desktop widgets gone? Cant i have both on my desktop?
This feature I think borrow from the KDE4.x.x. I'm just curious how well windows in managing cpu cycle & memory to have such features.
Any way its good to have a less clutter desktop on windows. Nice.
I love this, but I'm looking for a way to order the icons in my fences myself and do a bottom, right, top … alignment. I also wanted to put the icons on my open desktop where I wanted. For this I found a registry tweak:
in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Stardock\Fences\Settings
set DesktopAutoArrange to dword:00000000
enjoy
Check out the about page, Fences was thought up long ago and there were posts with screenshots back a year before KDE4 was out
@ jmb1984,
I checked and found nothing of the sort. And KDE 4.0.0 was released January 11th 2008.
A FolderView (what KDE has) is a real containment which shows you whatever files or folders you want to see, from wherever you want, be it local or over a network and with filtering if you desire. FolderView also has Nepomuk semantic search integration. It is not limited to sorting desktop icons on a 'traditional' desktop/icons metaphor but rather it works with KDE's Plasma shell and does away with such arbitrary limitations.
All Fences does, is sort desktop icons.
A poster further up the page was referring to CPU usage with these Fences. Does it really take up a lot of memory? Thank you.
@ Katherine:
I have not noticed a performance decrease in anything while fences is running for both my desktop and laptop. From what I see in task manager, it doesn't have a seperate process, it most likely adds itself into explorer.exe or something similar to that.
W O W !!! It's got to be magic !!!!