Windows 8 App Launcher

Program launchers are the best way to keep your desktop short-cuts manageable, and provide a more efficient solution for running applications rather than having your desktop cluttered with icons. The approach adopted by these programs varies for each, with some being like the OS X dock, while others working via system tray icons, launcher rings at the centre of your desktop, hot corners and what not.

8stack
Developed by deviantART member LangLe, 8Stack is another application launcher designed to work with Windows 8 by taking advantage of the operating system’s Modern UI. It displays a vertical sidebar on the right side of the screen, from where you can easily launch your applications. While it’s not a perfect solution for launching each and every file or program, the app does provide quick access to popular programs, eliminating the need to enter the Start Screen in order to find and launch them. 8Stack doesn't require any sort of installation and works out of the box. After downloading it via the link provided at the end of this post, just extract the contents of the ZIP archive to an easily accessible location. You can then create a short-cut to the program’s EXE file on your desktop for quick access.
However, It’s worth noting here that 8Stack isn’t that feature-rich nor customizable. It only allows you to launch a predefined set of popular third-party programs including Firefox, Photoshop, CCleaner and many more, (provided they are installed on your system). However, the app will still display icons of all these apps, including the ones not present on your machine. The app’s usage is pretty plain and simple; upon launching it, 8Stack displays a vertical black bar on the right edge of the screen, carrying different short-cuts under Programming, Applications and Websites sections. If you've used Windows Phone, it’ll look quite familiar to you, since it resembles the App list quite closely. 8Stack also lets you launch popular websites like Facebook and Bing without having to enter their URL in your web browser.

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