How many is too many?

Minimize all windows, or show desktop. The "Windows+M" key combo.

Link to my documents, all programs

Shutdown, Logoff, Restart

Link to the messageboard

I second the message board one.

Other wise, My Documents or the ultimate a graphics programs (Bryce)

Bryce...here here

Some of the older skins had a button call WinMenu. I'd like to see that brought back.

Anything that can assist in task managment would be great.

For instance, there are the good old Rollup and Always On Top are very useful when flipping between two apps (say the calculator and some other app)

What I think would be really cool: A button that brings the last previously active app to the foreground. This would allow you to flip between two apps much like you can with the standard Alt-Tab simply by pressing the button. That would extremely useful. Much cleaner than using rollup and always on top buttons to juggle between two apps.

A button to bring a configurable/specified running app to the foreground. For instance, I could have it bring mIRC to the foreground.
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I liked the win menu. The problem I sometimes had with skins that had many buttons was that many of them pointed to aps that I didn't have and I didn't know how to reprogram them. Programmable buttons would be nice.

I think a button that would "show your desktop" QUICKLY would be good. But that is because right now I have no privacy and sometimes I am caught scrambling to hide stuff.

That has to be a rare thing, so probably not so useful.

Maybe ones that activated Stardock Central, WC browser, Object Edit, .... OD applications in general!

I second kith's suggestion for Show Desktop. Also, as a systems person I find my self regulary in the control panel. So I would love a control panel button.

Or how about Display Properties!

Display Properties and other Control Panels I can do. I can do My Computer, My Documents etc. too.

Right now the only way to do Show Desktop seems to be through a copy of the 'Show Desktop.scf' file that you can find in your Quick Launch. I'm having a real headache working out how to get this file to run on the click of a button though. It's driving me insane!

Display Properties! I like that Idea T-Man

Notepad and the windows calculator. And show desktop wouldn't be such a bad idea either.

Grayhaze, for the "Show Desktop" look in Documents and Settings.

Put Show Desktop.scf into the skin directory and for the action choose execute command. Then for the command type in the full path for Show Desktop.scf.

Tab launchpad would be nice.

A smart button that did all those things (depending on how each individual configured it) would be great.

Use the following lines in a vbscript and run it with windows script host (wscript, standard on XP and 2K, available for other flavors).

set shell = wscript.CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Shell.MinimizeAll
set shell = nothing
wscript.quit

You know how on the browser you can click history and that side panel will open? Maybe a skin could offer something like that to provide unlimited selections.

I'd like to see the start menu

hehehe, ctrl-alt-delete

Maybe I'm just not as good as I used to be Sylva, but I can't get anything other than a '.exe' file to run with the 'Execute command' buttons. If I could just execute the '.scf' file, it would make things so much simpler.

I seem to remember at some point there was talk of how to get an associated application to run just by entering the file extension too. So for instance, to run the configured text editor and not just Notepad, you would put '.txt' or something for the command. I could be wrong, but can anyone else shed any light on this.

While your method would work for 2K and XP, LS_Boreas, I'm trying to find generic actions that will work for all flavours of Windows. I've done this with a few of the more useful ones already, but it's just this damn 'Show Desktop' that's proving harder than it should be.

What would be nice is the ability to execute keyboard shortcuts on the press of a button. There are quite a few very useful shortcuts which are common to all versions of Windows, and it would be nice to have simple one-click access to these.

My next task of course is to find a way of getting all these buttons on a titlebar without it appearing cluttered.

I've managed a maximum of around 12 titlebar buttons before things start to look unintuitive.

erm, that could be quite bad from what i heard, more buttons on titlebar and the skin can become very slow.

Just something to think about here, or otherway you could do this is make buttons slide out, have a look at GreenReaper's Blackcomb grayhaze just to see *always ontop and roll up/down buttons* so it is not cluttered.

This you coming back to WindowBlinds again grayhaze?

Good to hear if you are.

Make a skin with 10 smartbuttons and let the user decide (pre-configuration allowed)...