Klip The Web to Your Desktop With KlipFolio

KlipFolio is a desktop dashboard for news, blogs, photos, the local weather and a lot more.

It’s one of these addictive little tools that I just can’t stop playing around with, and I have been using it for over two years.

KlipFolio sits on your desktop. It can float freely or dock to either side and work as a sidebar. It can be as large or small, as flashy or unobtrusive as you want it to be. It’s fully customizable. That’s its beauty.

What can KlipFolio do for you?

It could be used as a tiny desktop feed reader, but that’s not really how it works and as such it may not be very convenient. As you may realize, KlipFolio is more sophisticated than a simple, text based feed reader, yet it can not really replace your feed reader. You can use KlipFolio to track eBay auctions, follow YouTube video additions, see what’s up on MUO, keep a To Do List, follow the news or always know what’s hot on Digg.

Reading Klips is simple, no matter how small it is. When you scroll over a Klip it will automatically expand, and when you scroll over the entries, a preview window with more details will appear. To get the full story however, you will still need to load it in a browser, and that’s the drawback compared to a dedicated feed reader. A great advantage of course is its versatility and style.

I want more!

You should start with adding some more Klips that interest you. Visit the KlipFolio website and browse what they have. Once you find something, click the Add Klip link and it will automatically attach to your collection. To add RSS Feeds you first need to get the Feed URL, then click on the Feed symbol in the KlipFolio toolbar, eventually paste the URL, click Add Feed and you’re done. You can add multiple feeds to a single Klip, for example add all MUO feeds to one Klip and some other blogs feeds to another. To remove a Klip, right-click on it or click the tool symbol and go to >Manage Klip >Delete.

How can I customize it?

It’s easy as pie! You can drag&drop your Klips around and resize them by holding down the bottom right corner. Through the tool symbol that sits in the title of each Klip, you can edit its display settings or further customize each Klip. If you’re in for some serious customization, right-click the KlipFolio toolbar or the tab symbol in the top left, and choose >Options. Here you can change the settings of single Klips, select a skin, change KlipFolio’s Transparency, edit its text font and size, and more.

It’s taking up too much space!

The number of Klips can easily get out of hand, even when you resize them to tiny buttons. Running it as a floating window may subsequently become inefficient. As mentioned above you can run KlipFolio as a sidebar. With Auto-Hide enabled it will not take up any screen space at all. Drag the bulk of Klips to the top, bottom or side of the screen and it will dock. Next go to >Layout and check >Auto-Hide to make it vanish.

If you like you can even run two sidebars or a floating window and a sidebar or two floating windows at the same time. Start with dragging out one Klip and see how it suddenly has its own toolbar (possibly minimized), then proceed to add Klips to it as you like. The cool part is that even when you re-arrange and re-size the Klips in a docked sidebar, it will jump right back to its previous order when you undock it. You see, the tool is very versatile indeed.

Have you tried KlipFolio? What do you think? What are your favorite Klips? Please share!

Filed Under: Cool Software Apps ¦ Windows
Tags: dashboard, desktop enhancements, Vista, widgets, windows tips