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Vitesse Digital All Deals Desktop Customization Software App Launcher Software

Flow

The World's Fastest App Launcher

$19.95

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Platforms: Windows XP, Vista, 7

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Do you realize just how many HOURS of productivity you are losing every year by launching your applications the old fashioned way? Sure, you can put shortcuts on your desktop, but sooner or later you'll run out of space, and it's back to Start ==> Programs ==> and that tedious process we're all too familiar with.

With Flow, the world's fastest application launcher, you'll have access to files, folders, apps, and websites... instantly!

Here's how Flow works -- just press Alt+Q, and Flow splashes an onscreen keyboard showing all of your shortcuts as colorful icons mapped to each key. Just press your desired key, and BAM, you have arrived at your destination! Easy, huh? You can configure each key to launch an app, open a file or folder, or open a website. And adding new shortcuts is as easy as a keystroke!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that you'll run out of keys before you can map every shortcut that you need to use, right? Wrong! With Flow at your command, you can create UNLIMITED shortcut layouts! Imagine using one keyboard shortcut layout for websites, another for apps, and a third for files and documents -- it's all possible with Flow!

Review Written by Derek Lee

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Greg Brown Hi guys - I'm pretty pumped to try your software out, but am having a problem. After looking at the tutorial I'm taken to a screen where I can either enter my email/serial# to activate, or I can order online. That's it - there doesn't seem to be any way to test the program first before buying. I'm pretty sure I've never had this software installed on my system before, so it's not like my trial period has expired. Any ideas? Thank you.

Aug 16 2010 at 3:29pm Copy Link

Morten Kirsbo Hi Greg,

I think it's related to the version actually. The version on Bitsdujour is 1.01, while we have updated Flow to 1.04 in the meantime. Try uninstalling and then download the latest version from www.tryflow.com .

We'll get the version on Bitsdujour updated as well, so when the promotion starts it will be the latest version.

If this doesn't help, please mail me at support [at] theflowsolution.com , then I can help you reset your trial, so you can try it out :)

Thanks. /Morten

Vitesse Digital - Aug 16 2010 at 11:08pm Copy Link

Roger Thomasson Download link is officially updated to 1.04 :-)

BitsDuJour Admin - Aug 17 2010 at 12:04am Copy Link

Greg Brown Hi Morten -

That did the trick - thank you for the timely response. I also downloaded from here to verify that they had version 1.04 available as advertised above - not that I don't trust Roger :-)

I've just started playing with it, but so far, so good. I've tried dozens of launchers over the years, and this one is really outside the box - kudos to whoever came up with the idea. Unless it starts behaving badly, I'm certain I'll be picking up a copy on the 22nd.

Aug 17 2010 at 12:42pm Copy Link

Hansjorn Nielsen Is look like you can do almost, the same thing by your self.
create a map on destop, put your's shortcut's in there.
and launs them from there.
sry my bad English.

Aug 18 2010 at 8:02pm Copy Link

Tome Titpred does this come with lifetime updates?

Aug 19 2010 at 2:23am Copy Link

Morten Kirsbo Greg: Great, glad you got it working properly :)

Tome: No lifetime updates, but free updates until the next major revision.

Peter: We've had some issues with German keyboards, though I haven't heard about this particular one you are experiencing. It would be very helpful, if you could create this problem on http://support.theflowsolution.com , then we can try and find a solution.

Hansjorn: You could of course create a lot of shortcuts on the desktop, though I'm sure that would be quite time consuming :) You would also need to use your mouse, where Flow is mainly keyboard oriented (though the mouse can also be used) and thus much faster. Finally, you would be limited to the amount of shortcuts you could see on one screen. Flow has unlimited amount of layouts which can each contain as many shortcuts as there are keys on your keyboard. You can easily switch between layouts through mapping a key as a link to the layout you need.

Vitesse Digital - Aug 19 2010 at 6:32am Copy Link

H. H. Hallo,
trying flow the following questions occured:
1. is there an opportunity to reduce the ressource hungryness of flow (it needed between 56000k and 75000k memory on my xp sp3 installation)?

2. is there a possibility to show long filenames / filepathes.
When I wanted to assign 2 subfolders (which are located in the same folder) it wasn't possible to distinguish them, because flow only showed the beginning of the filepath not the whole one

3. is there a possibility to easily change between different layout (just clicking on a list of layout names) or is it necessary to always define the wanted layout as the home layout for next start?

Thank you for answering in advance
with kind regards
H.H.

Aug 20 2010 at 7:08am Copy Link

Morten Kirsbo H.H: 1) Flow is built in the .NET framework, which requires quite a few resources. Normally we see memory usage to be between 20 and 30 MB, but in a few cases, like you have experienced yourself, it spikes to higher amounts. It's something that's being worked on, as we want to make it as light weight as possible.

2) You can right click the shortcut on the onscreen keyboard and then cilck the Edit button (it's an icon with a notepad and pen). There you can change the "title" of the shortcut.

3) Absolutely. To setup a keyboard shortcut to another layout, you just click a key on the onscreen keyboard, that does not have a shortcut associated. Then you will be prompted with a menu with the title "What should happen when X is pressed?". In the bottom of that menu is an option called "Navigate to another layout". Click that one, and you'll be able to select which layout the button should lead to.

Best,
Morten

Vitesse Digital - Aug 20 2010 at 7:25am Copy Link

Frederic Pine Hi, are you planning to add a timer so that once a certain layout is launched then that particular application is activated. Is there any multilang support such as french. How many keyboard (launcher) we can have.

Aug 20 2010 at 8:58pm Copy Link

Morten Kirsbo Hi Frederic,

All keyboards are supported (including French), however the application itself is currently only in English.

You can have as many onscreen keyboard layouts as you want. Each of them can naturally hold shortcuts to websites, apps, files, folders etc.

As for the question about the timer, I do not completely understand it. Could you please elaborate a bit?

Thanks,
Morten

Vitesse Digital - Aug 20 2010 at 11:28pm Copy Link

Frederic Pine Hi, Thanks for the reply, wanted to find out if launching a particular application can be triggered by a timer. Such as open a web page, or a word file prcisely at a certain time. Well If a timer is not included in flow (current version) then this cannot be possible.

Aug 21 2010 at 9:21am Copy Link

Steven Curcuru Hi,

What a great idea ! And nicely presented, too!

A couple questions :

1) Can I copy one layout to another? For example, I may want to have the same 6 programs on *every* menu (like Office) - rather than reprogramming those 6 keys over & over, I'd like to "reuse" them on a new menu.

2) Can I change which menu is the startup? I'd like to use this on both my notebook & my regular desktop PC; I'd like to be able to just copy all the program files to my notebook, *but* have a different Start page for that one . . .

Thanks for your help - great idea !!

The Wiz

Aug 22 2010 at 3:54am Copy Link

Louis H Very nice app. I've purchased a number of other app launcher programs and grew weary with them. They each have other functions - not all of which I want or use. Flow is simple. Direct. And it was quite easy to set up additional layouts for different tasks and groupings of programs (such as one for Games - one for Audio Visual editing - one for Internet Favorites.)

I've posted a suggestion over at your support site after I purchased the program, but I'll ask it here as well.

Is there any current way to change either the size of the layout or the icons in each layout?

I am dealing with some vision problems and having this option would be very helpful. Not an absolute necessity - I bought the program without knowing if it's possible - but it would be a nice feature to have available.

Thanks for making Flow available through BDJ today.

Aug 22 2010 at 6:35am Copy Link

Morten Kirsbo Hi guys, thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

Peter: We'll take a look at the german keyboard issue on Monday, to try and see if we can get that resolved.

Frederic: There is unfortunately no timer in Flow, so I'm afraid it's not possible to "schedule" an application / file launch.

Wiz: 1) You can duplicate an existing layout in the Layout manager (accessible by clicking the Flow button on the onscreen keyboard (upper right corner). So you might for example create a layout and call it "Base layout" and then duplicate it each time you want a new layout.

2) This functionality is also in the layout manager. Just chose the layout you would like to act as "home" layout / menu, and click the "Make this my 'Home' layout" button.

Louis: Thanks for the feedback - It's currently not possible to change the size of the icons. We're working on making a fully resizable onscreen keyboard, but it will take quite a while before that functionality is released, since it requires a major re-design of large parts of the code.

Vitesse Digital - Aug 22 2010 at 6:45am Copy Link

Tazzie I have purchased one copy of Flow since I think it has a great deal of potential. I am a bit hesitant to get more copies, though, since I'm not sure how workable it will be for a while. For example, how I keep the keyboard window open while setting up a new layout? The keyboard window closes quickly, making it difficult to add a lot of items at once, such as when setting up a new layout, etc. What type of files can be used for icons? My icon files are exensive and include not just app icons but also those that can be used for folders, files, etc. They are primarily in .png or .ico. Thanks!

Aug 22 2010 at 2:01pm Copy Link

Stephane M Hi,
I saw in the forum discussions that ctrl, alt and win keys cannot be used to create shortcuts to apps, folders and so on.
Are you planning to get them available?

Also, do we actually need to show Flow and click on a particular key everytime we want to launch the associated action?
We cannot directly use the shorcut we have created without activating Flow first???

Thanks.

Aug 22 2010 at 3:58pm Copy Link

Morten Kirsbo Tazzie: We currently only support .PNG files for the icons, but we will start including .ICO in the next release, which should be out in a few weeks. Here it will also be possible to have Flow remain visible (i.e. No autoclosing).

Stephane: We don't support Ctrl, Alt and Win key as we would then overwrite standard shortcut keys used in other applications.

It is also correct that you have to activate Flow and then either click the icon with the mouse, or (much faster) just pressing the corresponding key on your keyboard. We have made it like this, as the main problem with keyboard shortcuts is not being able to remember them after a while. We have visual shortcuts, so it's always very easy to see what a certain shortcut does.

If you'd like this functionality of accessing shortcuts via shortcuts like "Alt+w" or whatever, I can recommend Autohotkey, which is a free opensource "shortcut" application. It's far from Flow in terms of how you use it (it takes much longer to setup as you have to write scripts), but it seems to me it might fit your needs.

Thanks for the feedback :)

Best,
Morten

Vitesse Digital - Aug 23 2010 at 6:30am Copy Link

Jason Howard Flow is now Free and "Open Source".

http://theflowsolution.com/

Download:
http://flowlauncher.codep...view/56990

Jan 17 2011 at 7:25am Copy Link

Loco78 * Flow was previously a commercial product, so I have not made ??a single installer that does not require activation.
That's why we ask you to turn the flow, use the following credentials. E-mail (case sensitive): open

source.com Activation code: 437A3CD700AB8C9D56275EBCDC134F96 Download Latest version (1.4). Codeplex available source code.