Easily expose hidden application functions with WindowsMenuPlus 1.1

Sometimes Windows can be really frustrating, with lots of useful tweaks and tools buried away beneath layers of dialog boxes and hard-to-reach system tools. WindowMenuPlus 1.1 aims to place some really useful tweaks for your apps on to the menu that pops up when you either right-click its titlebar or taskbar button (Vista and XP only).

Options include being able to keep the current window on top of other windows (and make it semi-transparent at the same time), team a program's priorities, kill its parent process, get more information about it and quickly reposition or resize the window a number of custom ways.

Once installed, WindowMenuPlus resides in the Taskbar's Notification area where you can selectively show or hide the various options it offers, or you can ignore this, fire up a program and see what new functions are available by right-clicking its titlebar. "Keep on top" ensures the application window doesn't disappear behind other program windows as they're brought into focus, which has most use on small handy apps like the Calculator.

If you find these apps distracting, and don't want to move them out of the way to view the windows beneath, you can also set degrees of transparency to ensure the content beneath the window can be seen through it.

Windows 7 introduced the Aero Snap feature, whereby dragging the window to one side of the screen or the other resized it to take up half the available screen space. WindowMenuPlus takes this even further, with a host of options underneath the Move to and Maximize to windows.

"Move to" allows you to pin the window to any screen edge or align it centrally, while "Maximize to" includes options for resizing windows to fit on the edges and corners, making it easy to set up dual- and four-paned windows. You can also maximise the window by its width or height only.

Techies will enjoy options such as being able to kill the parent process, set the program's priority or free up any unused memory the program has harnessed. You can also opt to open the program's folder with a single click, view lots of useful information about the program (this can all be copied to the Windows clipboard for diagnostic purposes) and even minimize the program to the Notification area instead of the Taskbar.

There are some drawbacks: any configured options are lost when the program is closed, and it won't work with all applications, specifically those that don't utilize the standard Windows menu bars -- including Google Chrome and later versions of Microsoft Office. Despite these shortcomings -- an option to remember a program's options would be incredibly useful in a future version. WindowMenuPlus remains an interesting tool that could prove useful to anyone who struggles to manage multiple windows and applications on a single desktop.

WindowsMenuPlus is a free download for personal and non-commercial use, and works on any PC running Windows XP, Vista, 7 and Server.