The modifications that Microsoft made to the taskbar in Windows 7 is one of the features that improved how I work with the operating system. The main new feature, the ability to pin programs to the taskbar, provides you with one-click access to these programs which neither the start menu or the desktop did. While desktop shortcuts come closest to this, they more often than not are buried beneath open windows. The same taskbar is also available under Windows 8.
The layout is always the same. It starts with a list of all pinned programs, files or folders followed by open programs that are not pinned to the taskbar by default.
One thing that is missing, at least if you ask some users, is a separator to separate taskbar icons from each other. This is more a cosmetic modification to the taskbar than anything else but it may improve the overview as well.
One of the newest options is a file called blank.exe which as the name implies adds a blank icon to the taskbar when pinned to it. The file has a size of about 1 Megabyte which may seem like overkill for what it does, but if you do have enough memory installed you may not mind pinning it to the taskbar, especially since you are not running the program at all.
To add a separator simply download the 7z archive from the Mediafire hosting site and unpack it on your system. A Virustotal scan returned 0 hits which means it should be safe to run. Right-click the file afterwards and select pin to taskbar from the context menu. You can then drag and drop the blank taskbar icon to the position you want to separate icons on the taskbar.
Note that you can do this only once for each instance of the executable. If you need more than one separator, copy and rename the file and pin the copy to the taskbar as well.
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Surely it must be easier to create a transparent icon and assign it to any shortcut? Haven't tested this, but makes sense. A 1Mb executable seems way OTT.
The taskbar icons seem smaller than on my Win7 x64 Home taskbar. In other words there is more blank space above and below a given icon. Is this another Win8 feature? :-)
I meant to say toolbars instead of taskbars.
right click taskbar+left click properties+taskbar tab+check "Use small icon" box, click "Apply" then "OK".
Failed to execute under win 7 pro / 64 bit
no diag nothing in taskmgr
Tried executing it from the command line - NOTHING
You do not run the program, you simply right-click it and select to pin it to the taskbar.