sTabLauncher 2.2.3

STabLauncher is a lightweight and attractive dock which makes it easier to launch your favourite apps, web pages, documents and more.

The program is extremely unobtrusive, so on first launch you may wonder exactly where it is. Take a look at the top of your screen, though, and you'll see two tabs: "Internet" and "App". Hover your mouse over either of these and you'll see each tab contains a couple of sample icons (IE, Explorer, Notepad and Windows Calc), and clicking any of these will launch the relevant program.

Basic sTabLauncher configuration is just as easy. You can add items to either tab just by dragging and dropping them from Explorer, for instance. Right-clicking a tab reveals options to add new items, or separators. And you can drag icons around to organise them in any way you like.

Of course you'll probably want more than the original "Internet" and "App" tabs, but the right-click > Options > Tabs dialog allows you to add just as many as you might need.

And while all of this looks great to us (nice gradient colour scheme, Mac-style bouncing icons), the program is highly configurable, so if you don't like something then there's a good chance it can be changed.

Yet for all of this, sTabLauncher remains extremely undemanding, with the core process using less than 3MB RAM on our test PC.

We did find some issues. The Options dialog allows you to add a Music folder, for instance, with what looks like a built-in music player... But, unfortunately, none of its options worked for us.

And troubleshooting this kind of problem, or trying to understand the program's more advanced features, isn't helped by the total lack of any documentation.

Still, sTabLauncher worked just fine with our own tab configurations - even on Windows 8 - so if you're looking for a new launcher then it might be worth a try.

Lightweight and very configurable, sTabLauncher is a simple and stylish way to organise your applications