Fences® is a program that helps you organize your desktop, and can hide your icons when they’re not in use. A "Fence", a term coined by this program, is an icon group on your desktop. Fences is an add-on to your desktop, not a replacement.
Basic Features
Rope off your desktop
Fences allows you to create shaded areas on your desktop that you can place icons in. You can label them however you wish, and move/resize them anywhere on the desktop. Pre-included layouts help speed the process for new users.
See your wallpaper again! Quickly hide & show all your icons with an easy double-click
Double click blank space on your desktop, and all your icons will fade out. Double click again, and they’ll return. We think this feature is so useful and unique, that we’ve applied for a patent on it. You can even pick icons and individual Fences to exclude!
Create snapshots, and have automatic scaling (for screen size changes)
Take and restore snapshots of your Fence layouts for backup, or for when you are doing different tasks. Change your resolution for playing games and Fences will keep them in the same relative spots. In the Pro version of Fences, the "snapshot" feature has been enhanced to automatically take and keep recent snapshots on hand, ensuring your desktop layout never gets lost.
Pro Features
Hide the desktop shortcut graphic
Fences Pro allows you to set hide the repetitive desktop shortcut graphic from all of your icons. You can also hide the graphic just on shortcuts, executables or URL’s to suit your needs.
The shortcut graphic looks like this:
Set default Fences for new icons
Fences Pro allows you to set a default Fence for all newly created icons. For example, you can create a Fence called "New Stuff" to catch all new icons, and then deal with them when you’re ready.
Automatic sorting keeps your icons the way you want them
Order your icons the way that works best for you. Fences Pro adds ability to create rules, allowing you to send new files to fences based on their type, name, or a variety of other critieria. Rules can be applied either for new icons only, or can be kept applied at all times, keeping your desktop organized 24/7.
Sort your Fences
Also added in Pro, you can now sort icons within a Fence. Sort your icons either by one of the standard methods (by name, type, date created), or by one of the unique options provided by Fences (date added to the fence, number of times opened). Fences allows you to tweak this sorting by optionally always bringing folders to the front, or to reverse the sorting order.
Fade your Fences
Now that you’ve organized your icons, why have them sticking out like a sore thumb? To help keep your icons available but not quite "sticking out", with Fences Pro you can make individual fences appear subtly faded on the desktop, but ready for action as they fade up to full visibility when the fence is mouseovered.
FAQ
I’m a beginner. Is this tool for me?
Yes. Fences is intuitive to use, has a simple user-interface, and is designed to lead you through every step if you want it to. Put it on mom & pop’s computer without fear.
I’m an advanced user. Is this tool for me?
In a big way. Fences is low load, streamlined and unobtrusive. Advanced users will never need to open the config dialog to manage their Fences, and will find that they never notice Fences except for the fact that their desktop is finally usable. Advanced users will love the fact that Fences can maintain different icon layouts on a per-screen-resolution basis.
This is really neat, but I wanted super-3d-futuristic graphics and stuff
Fences was created with maximum compatibility and usefulness in mind. Instead of just making your desktop "totally-cool!"…in a totally-non-practical way, Fences skips the fluff and focuses on doing one thing right: being useful. That said, its slick presentation and smooth animation make it look great while it does that, too. Be sure to catch the video of it in action on the front page.
What are Fences’ System Requirements?
Fences runs on all of Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. On Vista and Win7, both 32bit and 64bit versions are supported.
Since Fences uses nearly no system resources, having the operating system is its only requirement.