>>I use desktop shortcuts for programs but not documents. It makes me a little dizzy when I see a PC with the desktop practically covered with shortcuts. The half dozen programs I use regularly have desktop shortcuts, which I consider the best shortcut of all. No navigation required, just double click.
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>Mmmmhh... no good. You have to reveal the desktop (aka ikonostas) to find those icons, which means that if you're doing anything at the moment, you have to hide it in order to display the desktop and make these visible. So to do something else, you have to clean up your table, stash everything in a drawer, find that hammer, then pull that drawer back out.
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>Or you can keep your icons near the edge and keep your open windows a bit narrower so they don't get covered. Which is roughly equivalent to making your workbench smaller so you can have space for tools - as if shelves weren't invented yet.

I mentioned in another post that I keep a limited number of desktop shortcuts in a stack on the left and position all windows to the right of that stack. The shortcuts are visible at all times, so active windows don't need to be hidden before accessing one of them.