After I first got my Motorola Droid, I looked at the default icons on my home screen (Phone, Contacts, Messaging, Web Browser, Google Maps, etc) and thought that these common applications that I'm going to be using all the time take up so much space on my home screen, I really wished that I could compress them down to one row. When I mentioned this to my co-workers (and fellow droid owners) their first response was "You should just write a widget that does that. I'd buy that for a dollar!".
Over the course of the next couple of weeks, I started looking into Android development and after a couple of weeks of research and playing around I was able to create a very basic widget that would launch the application I wanted. It eventually split off from my very basic concept (phone, contacts, etc) to a fully configurable (let me pick the applications) version.
Launch Bar is a widget that allows you to consolidate commonly used icons on your screen to a one row widget. The free version gives you quick access to the stock Phone, Messaging, Contacts, Browser, Maps and Camera. Additionally, there is one configurable button.
Cost: $1.00 USD
Launch Bar Pro is a simple widget that allows you to consolidate your most commonly used icons on your screen to a one row widget. The pro version allows you to configure all seven buttons to give you quick access to your favorite applications.
Future Enhancements
For the most part, all of the enhancements that I can think of are in the current release. However, as I learn more about the SDK and how things work I have some changes that should go into place that should improve the performance.
If you have a feature request for the Launch Bar, please feel free to email me rmueser@gmail.com
If you're new to Android, you may be wondering what the bar code thing is. It's a QR code and is explained very well over at Phandroid.com.
