PortAL

We think you can agree that Windows does a good job at providing its users with a lot of ways to quickly open apps, either from the desktop, the taskbar, system tray or the Start menu. But, despite this, improvements can still be made as shown by the following app.

PortAL is a lightweight and unobtrusive piece of software designed to make it as easy as possible for you to launch your most used applications directly from your computer's system tray.

Subsequent to its installation, the application is smoothly integrated with the system tray, from where it can be easily accessed with either a mouse click or a via a custom keyboard shortcut.

Upon first opening the application, you quickly discover that PortAL sacrifices its looks for usability since its interface is more or less comprised out of a simple menu. By default, it comes with quick-launch shortcuts for Command Prompt, Notepad, Portal Documentation and its configuration XML file.

The way it looks is not the only thing this app gives away to be as lightweight as possible and it is clearly not the most user-friendly app out there. This said, now is a very good moment to tell you all about its configuration file.

In order to add new shortcuts, you need to manually edit the XML configuration file, fact that clearly recommends it towards the more advanced Windows users. Put simply, the XML configuration file contains the structure of menus and applications folders found within PortAL's interface.

We highly recommend that you take a careful look at all its commands and basic configuration modules found within the provided documentation. After you have finished editing the configuration file, you need to save it and preferably restart the application for the changes to take effect.

Taking all things into consideration, PortAL is a small and efficient application, but everything it provides does not come without certain drawbacks. While advanced users might find working with it and its configuration file a simple task, novices might not feel the same way.

In other words, if you are willing to go through a short documentation and you have the patience to manually configure the app accordingly, the provided advantages of PortAL might just be over your expectations.