What’s wrong with the Windows 7 taskbar?

The Windows 7 taskbar is brilliant in all aspects except for this one and is a very good answer to the OSX dock. However unlike the OSX dock, the Windows 7 taskbar’s default behaviour when dragging files onto a docked program is to pin it to the program’s jump list instead of opening it. Having used OSX for a while, I appreciated the work-flow that dragging and dropping files onto the OSX dock facilitated and was looking to emulate this behaviour in Windows 7.

NOTE: The tooltip does not change when the program is in operation. It will still say “Pin” when it opens the file and “Open” when it pins it. I’m working on a solution.

The default Drag&Drop behaviour

The default Drag & Drop behaviour

The default Shift + Drag & Drop behaviour

The default Shift + Drag & Drop behaviour

Description

Drop2Open is an AutoHotKey script for Windows 7 that reverses the default behaviour when dragging a file onto a pinned taskbar program. Simply dragging and dropping will now open the file in the program, while Shift-Drag and Drop will pin the program to the jump list.

After installation, Drop2Open launches on start-up and runs in your system tray. It detects when you drag a file onto a docked program and proceeds to open it. When running it only takes up about 3MB of memory so speed should not be an issue.

If you like it, spread the word!

Revision history

  • 0.20: Rewritten code. New method of handling mouse delay. [August 20, 2008]
  • 0.11: Bugfixing release. Fixed mouse delay value which broke the script on some systems. [August 14, 2008]
  • 0.1: Initial release. [August 10, 2008]

Known issues

  1. Drop2Open will only work if you have your Windows 7 taskbar docked to the bottom of the screen.

Should you discover any other bugs, please feel free to report them in the Comments section below.

Download

You can download Drop2Open in a few flavours. By downloading you are agreeing to the terms of the license under which Drop2Open is released.

Latest version: 0.20


License

Drop2Open is licensed under the GNU General Public License.