Instant Toolbars?

I came across this completely by accident.  I was dragging a folder up to the Recycle bin, which I normally keep in the upper left hand corner of the screen (not sure why I was dragging as I usually just use the Del key…), but I must have had my mouse all the way up against the edge of my screen when I let go.  A new toolbar docked to the top of the screen appeared!  The contents of the folder were displayed.  I could close the toolbar by right clicking and selecting close, or by turning the toolbar off by right-clicking and deselecting it in the Toolbars content menu. 

Turns out you can do this in Windows XP as well as Vista.  I wonder when this feature was introduced.  I’ve never seen it before or quite know what I’d do with it.  Interesting all the same.

I created a screencast of this and I’ve put it up on Silverlight Streaming beta.

I posted this to the Silverlight Streaming site partially because I wanted to see how that worked (dead easy for videos) and partially because Screencast is now a pay site.  If you are interested in Silverlight Streaming site you can host videos and Silverlight applications on it (currently for free, but look for ad-based free accounts or pay ad-free accounts coming sometime).  More info can be found here.

I should mention that I recorded this with Camtasia from TechSmith.  Also dead simple.

Update [Oct 20th, 2009] : Silverlight Streaming is being shut down (at least this incarnation of it), so I’ve brought this video back to my server.  There is no fancy Silverlight player to watch it yet, but at least you can still get the video if you want it.

Download Video