A Quick Walkthrough of Fences
Friday, March 27, 2009 by Island Dog | Discussion: Personal Computing
Fences is one of my favorite applications I have running on my desktop. Having a clean and organized desktop is very important to my productivity, and Fences solves any issues I had with a messy desktop due to icons scattered all over the place.
I wanted to give another quick walkthrough of Fences in case this is the first time you have seen it.
Fences is available as a free community preview, which you can download from here.
https://www.stardock.com/products/fences/
Fences on the Desktop
You can organize your Fences however you want on the desktop, but there are also pre-defined styles you can also use. You also have a preview Windows shows an example of how they will look.
There are also a variety of options for customizing the look of Fences. You can easily adjust the opacity of Fences by using the slider control, and you can even adjust the colors to fit the theme you are using.
My favorite feature of Fences is the ability to hide the icons currently on the desktop. By simply double-clicking the desktop, the icons will disappear and re-appear when double-clicked again. As you can see in the screenshot below, the Recycle Bin icon didn’t change. That is because you can right-click an individual icon and exclude it from being hidden.
Reply #2 Friday, March 27, 2009 3:00 PM
Hmmm, it's great, but between objectdock and impluse dock (or whatever it's called). My desktop is already nice and tidy :/
Reply #3 Saturday, March 28, 2009 5:44 PM
I have a hypotheitcal wad of money set aside for when you start charging for Fences. It's a bigger wad than I care to think about. Economic collapse of the western world > what's fair to charge for fences > death taxes
ssshhhh, we can beat them...
Reply #4 Saturday, March 28, 2009 7:16 PM
Looks kewl, but is there a version for XP Pro? And what about Windows 7, when that comes out? Gotta think about these things...
Reply #5 Saturday, March 28, 2009 7:29 PM
Does it work with xp? I don't like vista, Windows 7 is better
Reply #7 Saturday, March 28, 2009 8:37 PM
Someone mentioned he tried Fences on Win7 and it worked. However Windows 7 is not yet completed and M$ may add some new features that make some aplication not to be functional.
Reply #8 Sunday, March 29, 2009 7:07 PM
I'm more or less ready to pay a small license fee for the grownup version. Windows is 'too helpful' about file management these days, and Fences helps make the Desktop location useful to me. Plus, it seems like the first decent advance on the desktop metaphor via Windows since the original Mac.
My only complaint is that the app seems to force a button for my username folder onto the Vista taskbar (I suspect this is related to using the Desktop toolbar, which I normally keep minimized to just the >> icon).
Reply #9 Sunday, March 29, 2009 7:31 PM
I've been using Fences for around a month though, and it is great, but not just for organizing; which was never a problem for me. When I play some games, they will periodically change my resolution just long enough to reset all my carefully placed icons, scrambling everything and messing up my order. With fences, they all stay in their little fences when that happens, and go back to their original places in the fences when the resolution goes back to my preference. This is software that I would pay for, thank you Stardock for making it free as well 
Reply #10 Monday, March 30, 2009 3:04 PM
Reply #11 Tuesday, March 31, 2009 7:50 AM
Reply #12 Wednesday, April 1, 2009 2:44 AM
I personally love how Fences allows me to keep all the files I want to work with and have easy access to right on my desktop and then hide them when I don't want to be looking at a cluttered desktop.
Fences looks right at home in Windows 7. Nice.Reply #13 Thursday, May 28, 2009 11:57 AM
Reply #14 Thursday, May 28, 2009 6:39 PM
I am going to have to do this when i am not busy later 
. Looks nice!
Thx for the guide 
Reply #15 Thursday, May 28, 2009 10:07 PM
Fences is awesome! I like that I can put my games and utilities in seperate areas and then hide most of them, until I need them. I had object dock too but it either got in the way or I forgot it was there Now that my friend has his system running again I'm going to put fences on his machine. And I would pay for it. That makes it that much better for free!!! 
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Reply #1 Friday, March 27, 2009 2:56 PM
Fences is seriously great.