Help Desk Geek – Help Desk Tips For IT Pros

Welcome to the second part of this two-part series about Appetizer, a customizable, free, portable application launcher for Windows that allows you to conveniently launch your favorite applications, files, and folders from your USB flash drive or computer with one click.

In Part I, we talked about initially importing shortcuts, resizing and showing and hiding the dock, manually adding shortcuts, creating shortcut groups, adding special items, changing the properties of a shortcut and removing a shortcut.

In this post, we are going to discuss manually importing shortcuts, launching multiple shortcuts at once, configuring Appetizer’s general, appearance, and operation settings, excluding files from the automatic import of shortcuts, extending Appetizer’s functionality with plugins, and applying skins to Appetizer.

As we stated in Part I, you will need to download Appetizer from http://app.etizer.org/download and unzip it to the desired location. We recommend reading through Part I before continuing with Part II.

Import Shortcuts Manually

At the beginning of the first post in this series, we mentioned that Appetizer automatically asks you if you want to import shortcuts when it runs for the first time. To import additional shortcuts after the first run of Appetizer, click the Import shortcuts button on the Options panel.

The Import shortcuts dialog box displays. Select a check box indicating from where you want to import shortcuts and click Start.

Launch Multiple Shortcuts at Once

Appetizer allows you to launch multiple shortcuts at once using the Multi Launch group. To add a shortcut to the Multi Launch group, right-click on the shortcut you want to add and select Add to Multi Launch group from the pop-up menu.

A small, sideways lightening bolt displays below each shortcut that is part of the Multi Launch group.

To launch all shortcuts you have added to the Multi Launch group, click the Multi-launch button on the Options panel.

Configure General Appetizer Settings

There are many settings available for customizing Appetizer. To access these settings, click the Configuration button on the Options panel.

The General tab displays. Select any desired options. Click the Check for update button to see if an updated version of Appetizer is available.

Change Appetizer’s Appearance

Click the Appearance tab on the Configuration dialog box to change how Appetizer looks. You can specify the Icon size for the shortcuts, the Label position for the shortcuts, the Orientation of the entire dock, and the Skin to use. Use the Show tray icon and Show taskbar icon check boxes to choose the icons that are available for accessing Appetizer.

You can also change the skin on the dock using the Skin drop-down list and download additional skins for Appetizer using the Download more skins link. More information about installing new skins is available at the end of this post.

NOTE: After testing out Appetizer, we recommend that you choose at least either the Show tray icon check box or the Show taskbar icon check box, if not both. It makes it easier accessing Appetizer. If there is no icon, Appetizer starts in a minimized size and you have to drag the dock and resize it to see the shortcuts.

Change How Appetizer Operates

Click the Operations tab to choose how Appetizer operates. On this tab, you can specify a Hot key to hide / show the bar. This is useful if you have turned off the Show tray icon and Show taskbar icon check boxes on the Appearance tab, removing any Appetizer icon that can be used to access the dock.

Exclude Files From Automatic Import of Shortcuts

The Import tab allows you to specify certain files that are to be excluded when importing shortcuts into the dock. Type each type of file you want to exclude on a separate line in the edit box, using the asterisk (*) as a wildcard symbol. There are some files listed by default when Appetizer is installed.

Extend Appetizer’s Functionality With Plugins

Appetizer has several plugins available that extend the functionality of the dock. The Plugins tab on the Configuration dialog box allows you to download and install these plugins.

To download plugins for Appetizer, click the Download more plugins link on the Plugins tab. Once you have downloaded the .zpl file, click the Install button on the Plugins tab.

The Select a plugin package dialog box displays. Navigate to where you saved the downloaded plugin you want to install, select the .zpl file, and click Open.

A dialog box displays when the plugin has been successfully installed. Click OK.

NOTE: To activate a plugin, you must close Appetizer and restart it. To close Appetizer, right-click on the icon in the system tray or on the taskbar and select Close.

You can choose to disable a plugin on the Plugins tab on the Configuration dialog box. Access the Configuration dialog box from the Options panel as described above. Click the Plugins tab and select the plugin in the list that you want to disable. Click the Disable button. To enable the plugin again, select it from the list and click Enable.

To save your changes to the settings and any plugins you installed, click the Save button. Remember to close Appetizer and restart it to activate any newly-installed plugins.

The plugin we installed added an option to the pop-up menu for a shortcut that allows you to move that shortcut to a group without having to access the Organize shortcuts dialog box to do so. To use the Move to group plugin, right-click on a shortcut and select Move to group from the pop-up menu. A list of your groups displays in a submenu. Select a group from the menu.

Apply a Different Skin to Appetizer

There are several skins available for Appetizer to change the look of your dock. Download skins for Appetizer from http://app.etizer.org/skins.

To install a skin, unzip the downloaded file to your “Data\Skin” folder where you installed Appetizer. Each skin must be placed in a separate folder in the Data\Skin folder.

For each skin, there is an XML file and some .png files.

Close Appetizer and restart it to make sure the newly-added skins are available. Click the Configuration button on the Options panel and click the Appearance tab. The skins you placed in the Data/Skin folder should be available in the Skin drop-down list. Select a skin and click Save.

You do not need to restart Appetizer. The skin is immediately applied.

Wrap Up

In this post we covered manually importing shortcuts, launching multiple shortcuts at once, configuring Appetizer, excluding files from the automatic import of shortcuts, extending Appetizer’s functionality with plugins, and applying skins to Appetizer.

In Part I of this series, we covered initially importing shortcuts, resizing and showing and hiding the dock, manually adding shortcuts, creating shortcut groups, adding special items, changing the properties of a shortcut and removing a shortcut.

This series was meant to provide a convenient, free way to launch your favorite applications, files, and folders whether they are on a USB flash drive or on your computer. Appetizer allows you to launch files, folder, and URLs with one or two clicks. Appetizer is also extendable with plugins, customizable with skins, and you can configure Appetizer to your liking with the many settings available.

Appetizer is an easy-to-use, free launcher that provides an alternative to the PortableApps.com menu (see our posts, Install a Suite of Portable Apps on Your USB Flash Drive – Part I and Install a Suite of Portable Applications on Your USB Flash Drive – Part II for more information about the PortableApps.com suite), or a method of launching frequently-used programs, files, and folders on your computer.

by Lori Kaufman