Allow users to customize the application list for each column, possibly via XML.

[DrewNaylor]

This would allow more customizability. In addition to having support for XML files that specify the applications, there would be a UI in the Options window to configure this. Maybe there could be a default XML file in My.Resources that could be written out to a file when the user changes the app list, maybe into AppData.

This could also probably work for a third-party version of the small launcher Microsoft used to have.

Example:

<UXL_Launcher_App_List>
    <SimpleAppsColumn>
        <AppEntry>
            <Name>LibreOffice Writer</Name>
            <Icon>Icons\LOWriter.png</Icon>
            <ExeLocation>C:\Program Files (x86)\LibreOffice\bin\swriter.exe</ExeLocation>
        </AppEntry>
    </SimpleAppsColumn>
</UXL_Launcher_App_List>

Edit: See the latest comment on how I can use YAML to specify the columns and load them at runtime. Allowing the user to easily customize the layouts will take longer.

[DrewNaylor]

That smaller launcher Microsoft used to have was the Office Shortcut Bar. Since it supported multiple shortcut lists, it would be a good idea to support that as well, maybe with multiple sections in the XML file and a dropdown button to switch shortcut bars.

There's another application that recreated this program, and that was called FreeBar, but it appears to have not been updated for a while.

Screenshot of FreeBar's Screenshots page showing a few screenshots from the UI:

Screenshots of the Microsoft Office Shortcut Bar:

[DrewNaylor]

For the button list via XML, it would be a good idea to have an option to say if an entry is an exact folder/file path, or if it's an entry that relies on the Office Folder Location figured out by UXL Launcher itself.

[DrewNaylor]

Actually, maybe I can use YAML files to specify layouts for each Office version, as some versions add, remove, or change apps. There should also be a way for the user to customize this list for each column, but that may take longer. There should at least be a way for the user to say whether to use the layout specified by the chosen version of Office or to use one from a list. If there isn't a layout for a specific version of Office, it'll use the default, which is the one it currently uses.

I can take the tile list-loading code from the Avalonia version of RetiledStart as an example of how to load a bunch of stuff from a YAML file and use classes to store the properties for display in the UI.

The things a layout file can specify are:

• App name
  • Type: String
  • This is the text that appears on the button.
• App icon
  • Type: String
  • Used if different from the default icon for a particular app, such as for Outlook
  • Will either need to be a filepath or the name of the icon in My.Resources. If a filepath is specified, it needs to be a PNG icon, preferably of the same size as the rest of the icons in the main window's columns. I think the complicated icons may be slightly different, so there's some room for size here.
• Load app icon from file
  • Type: Boolean
  • If true, loads the icon from a file path. Any paths that have :// in them will be overriden with the default icon for the app. Apps with no default icon will simply have their PictureBox be transparent.
  • If false, loads the icon from My.Resources.
• App EXE filename
  • Type: String
  • This is the EXE file that's added to the end of the path that's set-up at runtime.
  • Anything that doesn't have ASCII alphabetical characters or a period will cause the app to not be added to the column it's in. This is for security. If it's discovered that some Office apps need non-ASCII characters, exceptions will be made on a per-character basis.