Control Panel

[Dave-UK]

Has anyone found a way to make Windows 7 sort the control panel names in
columns instead of rows when in "icon" mode, other than by making the window
so narrow that it has only one column?

Joe Morris

How about resurrecting the old 'God mode'?
Right-click on your desktop and select New > Folder.
Rename it to: AllTasks.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
Open the new folder and over on the top right select Tiles from the
drop-down 'Change your view' menu.
Now it lists the main headings in columns (but sub-headings in rows).
Unfortunately this only lists Microsoft entries, not third-party Control
Panel additions like Nvidia etc.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Thanks, Gene. I see what you mean. Slightly more difficult in
comparison to simple row printing, but not extremely difficult in
practice.

I'm thinking Microsoft could very easily achieve this level of
difficulty, (after all, you and I were able to), but their focus
groups probably never identified a desire for it.

Or they ignored them...

Nah - that couldn't happen

BTW - I mentioned earlier in this subthread that I've run into lots of
programs that sort output in rows instead of columns, but in all fairness,
I should have also mentioned that I have seen plenty of programs where the
sorting was in columns.

 

[Joe Morris]

Try this workaround - add Control Panel to your Start Menu and set it to
display as a Menu...

That would provide one way to see the list, but I'm trying to do this in the
"official" Control Panel layout since it would be going into an image for
several thousand systems worldwide and I really don't want to add a
non-standard context if I don't have to.

Joe

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

Actually, you'd have to rewrite the program. How are you in C++?

The reason it sorts in rows and not in columns is that it is *much*
easier to do that in code. And it is hardly unique to Windows or even
to Windows programs.

I've always hated sorting in rows too...

Yeah, I know. I write code to put stuff in sorted lists, and the code to
put stuff in column-row order is a more complicated than code for putting
stuff in row-column order because columns are the children of rows.

 

[ClueLess]

For curiosity's sake, how was it done in previous versions? I don't see any
'sort by column' setting on my XP machine.

Simple. Just decrease width of the window to just one icon's width. And you have
every icon in a single column!