PopSel – build your own start menus

Is your desktop or taskbar also full of shortcuts? Admit it, not very clear. PopSel can offer a way out, at least if you like a minimalist approach. So no ‘eye candy’ here, but a light and easily configurable quick menu. This is how customizing the start menu works with PopSel.

PopSel

Price

Free
Language

English
OS

Windows (32 and 64bit versions)
Website
www.horstmuc.de/wpop.htm 7 Score 70

• Pros
• Light and fast
• User friendly

• Negatives
• Doesn’t stay in the memory
• Multiple menus a bit more complex

A first plus of PopSel is that it is a portable program. A second is that it is not visually distracting. When you start it for the first time, you get the suggestion to create a menu, after which a configuration window follows. This is immediately the complete program interface. A third plus is discovered via the task manager: PopSel hardly uses system resources, partly because it does not remain active in the background.

Menu items

To create a shortcut, you only need to add a few ingredients: the name, the command (line) with an icon (refer to the program’s exe file for this), any parameters and startup folder. You also indicate how the program should start: normal† minimized† maximized and – handy – as administrator†

Use the arrow buttons to move the menu items up or down. Similarly, you also add directories and web addresses. Do you find this procedure a bit laborious? Don’t worry, PopSel also allows you to save a file or folder to (the commandline of) the configuration window.

Submenus

When you add multiple menu items, it may become a bit cluttered. A dividing line (separator) can help, but even more useful are submenus (down to one level deep). You create it by checking in submenu and by entering the name of the submenu followed by a / sign.

Once your configuration is saved, you can close the window and open your shortcut menu by restarting PopSel. To see the configuration window again, press esc and choose you PopSel Configuration† You can of course also start your shortcuts from this window. With the tbutton will make it appear on top of other windows. Creating multiple PopSel menus is also possible. Consult the help function for this.

Conclusion

PopSel is a minimalistic and no-nonsense app to put together one or more start menus for frequently used folders, programs and URLs to spare your desktop or taskbar. An option to keep the program in memory and recall it with a hotkey might have been useful.

†