Taskbar-Launcher/docs/DEV-NOTES.md

Developer Notes

This document is for the dev branch only. Do not publish it on main.

Screenshot and Testing Startup Switches

Taskbar Launcher supports a few command-line switches to open specific UI surfaces for documentation screenshots and manual testing:

TaskbarLauncher.exe --show-settings
TaskbarLauncher.exe --show-about
TaskbarLauncher.exe --show-launcher

• --show-settings opens the Settings window after startup.
• --show-about opens the About window after startup.
• --show-launcher opens the launcher popup after startup.

These switches are not part of the normal user workflow. They exist so development and documentation captures can be repeated cleanly.

Future Ideas

These ideas are intentionally tracked on dev only. Do not publish them on main until a feature is built, tested, and ready for users.

Open All for Menu Sections

Add a simple right-click action on menu and submenu headers:

• Open All

Expected behavior:

• Right-click a top-level menu or submenu title.
• Click Open All.
• Launch each direct child item in that section.
• For nested submenus, decide later whether Open All should include only direct items or recursively include nested children.
• Skip unsupported items safely and show/log a clear result if something cannot be opened.

This keeps Taskbar Launcher focused as a launcher. It gives project-style behavior without adding a full project dashboard.

Project Launcher Concept

Parked for later as a possible personal/custom feature:

• Project item type with actions for folder, VS Code, terminal, docs, Git/Gitea page, local server, Docker Compose, and helper scripts.
• Could become useful, but it is larger than the current public app direction.
• Do not start this until the simpler Open All behavior is tested and proves insufficient.