>>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.
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>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.

You sacrificed part of your desktop just to be able to launch apps, period.

I was doing exactly wht you describe, ten years ago. It sucked.