Taskbow is a free portable taskbar replacement for the Windows operating system. Windows users who start the program will immediately notice that it does away with pinned taskbar items. Only open windows are displayed in the taskbar, and the full width of the taskbar is used to display them.

The pinned item functionality has been replaced with quick launch options. This basically adds selected program icons to the right of the Windows start menu button. A click on an icon launches the program. It is effectively the same functionality that Windows 7′s pin to taskbar feature offers.

The quick launch icons are displayed on the left of the screenshot, the actual task bar items on the right. Each window in the taskbar is displayed with its window title. You can hoover the mouse over an icon to display the full title if the space is not sufficient to display it directly on the taskbar item.

Instances of the same program are displayed together, the number of additional windows is displayed as a number next to the window’s title. You can move the mouse over those icons in the taskbar to display all of the instances on top of the first one.

Color matching is another feature by Taskbow. Program windows can be painted with different colors which could improve recognition.

Color codes and quick launch options can be configured in the program options. Here it is possible to define standard and active colors for each application individually. The quick launch options can be used to define which program icons are displayed directly, and which only on hoover over one of the quick launch icons.

Taskbow has a lot to offer for a portable program, especially the ability to display window titles, use quick launch icons and options to color code specific applications may be interesting to some users.

The software can be downloaded from the developer website.

If you add the default Desktop toolbar, you get a seemingly random list of all shortcuts and files that are currently on the desktop. There is furthermore no sorting option available, which can be a problem if you have many items on the desktop as you need to look through all of the listing to find the file or shortcut you are looking for.

There is however an option to sort the desktop toolbar listing by name. This is done the following way:

Right-click on a blank spot on the taskbar and select Toolbars > New Toolbar from the menu. You now need to select the desktop folder in your user profile folder, and not the special folder desktop. You find that folder under C:\Users\username\Desktop. Pick that folder and it should appear on the Windows taskbar.

All that is left to do now is to left-click on the arrow next to the desktop listing to bring up the file listing. You will notice that it appears unsorted.

Right-click any file listed there and select Sort by name from the context menu to sort the file listing alphabetically. Alphabetical access should speed up the recognition and execution of particular shortcuts and files stored on the Windows desktop.

I have tested this method under Windows 7 where it worked fine. It is likely that it will work under Windows Vista and maybe even Windows XP. Please let me know if you have tested it under those operating systems so that I can update the guide accordingly.

Have you activated the desktop toolbar, or any other toolbar for that matter, on your Microsoft Windows system?

Windows 7 displays the taskbar with large icons by default. Large icons look nicer and are easier to reach and interact with. One side effect of large icons is that the height of the Windows taskbar is relatively large, which can be solely attributed to the icon height.

Microsoft has added a simple configuration option to switch from large icons to smaller icons. The main effect is that this change reduces the height of the Windows taskbar considerably.

You will on the other hand notice that smaller icons may reduce visibility and accessibility. The menus, like jumplists or the start menu, on the other hand retain their design and are displayed as before.

Take a look at the two screenshots. The first is showing the taskbar with standard large icons, the second with the smaller icons. The smaller icons are about half the size of the larger ones, not only in height but also in width.

Changing to smaller icons can therefor be interesting for users who have lots of icons pinned or programs open under the operating system.

Here is how you switch the taskbar icons from large to small.

Right-click the Windows taskbar and select Properties from the context menu that opens up. Make sure you right-click on a blank part of the taskbar. You can alternatively right-click the start menu orb, select Properties and switch to the Taskbar tab when the configuration menu opens.

Locate Use small icons and place a checkmark in the box. A click on Apply or OK changes the icon size to small which is immediately visible on the desktop.

Changing the icon size on the taskbar has several advantages. Windows users get more space for open program windows and display more icons on the taskbar at the same time.

The only downside is that the icons themselves are smaller and therefor less visible and accessible on the screen.

This way you could add your favorite tech news site to the taskbar to open it faster than before. Webmasters can configure the feature on their sites to add data to the pinned site. It is for instance possible to add jump lists or notifications to the pinned site icon.

Microsoft has now made available an online tool to aid webmasters with the customization of the pinned site feature for their own web properties.

The site is not yet fully functional but webmasters can use it to add favicons, jump lists, notifications and thumbnail preview controls to their websites.

The site offers explanations, code examples and live site examples to demonstrate the functionality of each optional feature. Code examples are usually offered as plain HTML code that gets added as a meta tags to the website’s code and JavaScript code that is more dynamic and configurable.

Lets take a look at a live example. For Ghacks, I have made the decision to use static HTML content to avoid loading yet another JavaScript file on page load. That’s the reasonable thing to do considering that the majority of visitors are not using Internet Explorer 9. Another option would have been to implement a browser check during page load to add the JavaScript contents only if a user connects with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9.

I have used sections 1 and 2 on the Build my pinned site website to add jumplists to the pinned site icon of Ghacks.net. Here is the code that I have used to do that:

<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/ico" href="http://cdn.ghacks.net/favicon.ico" />
<meta name="application-name" content="Ghacks Technology News" />
<meta name="msapplication-starturl" content="http://www.ghacks.net" />
<meta name="msapplication-navbutton-color" content="#3480C0" />
<meta name="msapplication-window" content="width=1024;height=768" />
<meta name="msapplication-tooltip" content="Read the latest tech news" />

<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Mozilla Firefox; action-uri=http://www.ghacks.net/category/browsing/firefox; icon-uri=/favicon.ico" />

<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Internet Explorer; action-uri=http://www.ghacks.net/category/browsing/internet-explorer-browsing; icon-uri=/favicon.ico" />

<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Google Chrome; action-uri=http://www.ghacks.net/category/browsing/google-chrome-browsing; icon-uri=/favicon.ico" />

<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Opera; action-uri=http://www.ghacks.net/category/browsing/opera; icon-uri=/favicon.ico" />

<meta name="msapplication-task" content="name=Microsoft Windows; action-uri=http://www.ghacks.net/category/windows; icon-uri=/favicon.ico" />


You can copy and paste the code into the head section of your website. Just make sure that you change the website address and favicon first.

If you pin Ghacks to the taskbar you get the following list on a right-click now:

It is a first step. Recently opened pages on the site are displayed as well in the listing.

Build My Pinned Site helped a lot in the creation of the pinned site feature. It took less than ten minutes to configure and test the functionality. It may take longer if you plan to add dynamic content like notifications to the pinned items though.

Webmasters should consider adding pinned site features to their websites. Recent surveys conducted by Microsoft show that site visitors tend to read more pages and spend more time on site when the pinned sites feature is supported by a website.

Ultimate Taskbar Controller is a free tool for Windows that can change the appearance of the Windows taskbar in several ways. One of its core features is the ability to remove entries from the Windows taskbar. The following elements can be removed with the help of the program:

• Remove Taskbar – Removes the complete taskbar
• Remove Clock – Removes the system clock from the taskbar
• Remove Taskbar Buttons – Removes the system tray area from the taskbar, including the clock and the system tray icons.
• Remove Notification Area – Removes Windows notifications from the system.
• Remove Clock Forever – Does not seem to have an effect
• Remove Volume icon from tray – Removes the sound volume icon from the system tray.
• Remove Network icon from tray – Removes the network connections icon from the system tray.

Changes that you make in the program window are usually shown in realtime on the taskbar. You can click on the Refresh Taskbar option in the program window to refresh it if it is not the case. If the change is still not showing up you may need to log off and on again to see it.

Ultimate Taskbar Controller lists several additional features that some users may find useful. The problem here is that they are not explained at all which sometimes makes it difficulty to discover their purpose. This is true for the entries “Integrate to desktop context menu”, “Make Space between Vol. and Clock” and my personal favorite “Something New”.

Only the options to use another clock and to collapse the taskbar make sense in this regard. Use another clock replaces the standard system clock with another clock that displays only the time and not the date in the taskbar. The clock itself looks out of place.

Collapse Taskbar on the other hand moves the system tray area to the left on the taskbar right next to the start orb. All open programs are not displayed anymore on the screen and it is not clear why someone would want this to happen.

The program can be helpful if you want to remove specific items from the taskbar. The errors and problems on the other hand suggest that it may need an update to fix those issues.

Ultimate Taskbar Controller is compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. Interested users can download the program from the developer website.

The portable applications offers several options to modify the behavior of the Windows 7 taskbar. It works both on 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft operating system and displays the following configuration screen on startup.

Four options are available to change or add mouse-click behavior. It is for instance possible to modify right-click and middle-click functionality or add middle and double-click actions on empty space on the taskbar. The latter offer the options to show the desktop, emulate Ctrl-Alt-Tab, open the task manager or the taskbar inspector.

Taskbar Inspector? The tool is part of 7 Taskbar Tweaker. It offers several taskbar related options, for instance to reorder items within a tab group, group or ungroup items or run close or minimize commands on multiple windows at once.

Back to the main app. 7 Taskbar Tweaker has five additional configuration options:

• Grouping: Change from group by application ID to don’t group or don’t group pinned items.
• Combining: Option to force combining grouped items and to decombine on mouse hover.
• Mouse hover: Option to disable taskbar thumbnail previews
• Dropping: change from pin to taskbar to open with.
• Misc: Make pinned items smaller.

The option to change drag and drop from pinning items to the taskbar to opening them with pinned items is interesting.

7 Taskbar Tweaker is available as a 32-bit and 64-bit download at the developer website. It is only compatible with Windows 7 (and probably Windows Server 2008 R2 as well).

Update: The program has been updated recently. You can now re-group taskbar icons with the right mouse button and without the Taskbar Inspector open at the same time. Windows 7 Taskbar Tweaker is now provided as a setup, which means it is no longer portable.

Update 2: The developer homepage is no longer available. I have uploaded the latest release version of 7 Taskbar Tweaker to the Ghacks server. You can download the program from this link: 7 Taskbar Tweaker (105)

The pinned and open items on the other hand are always located on the left side of the taskbar, on the right side of the start menu orb. Some users may want to change the location, especially if they have a widescreen monitor with lots of space on the taskbar.

Some users may prefer to center the taskbar items on the taskbar to improve their accessibility. A quick hack that does not take more than a minute can take care of it.

Windows 7 users have two options for this. They need another toolbar on the taskbar. They can use an existing toolbar, for instance Desktop, or create a blank folder on the system and select that folder for a new toolbar.

All they need to do to create a new toolbar is to right-click the Windows taskbar, select Toolbars and then New Toolbar. Browse to the location of the blank folder and select it. This adds the folder to the taskbar.

Now right-click the taskbar again, and click on Lock the taskbar to unlock it. This makes it possible to move taskbar items around. The new folder toolbar is added to the right of the taskbar. Move that new toolbar to the left in front of the taskbar items. This pushes the pinned items to the middle. It is possible to extend and move toolbars by dragging and dropping the dividers in front of each toolbar.

To make it quick. Drag the new folder toolbar to the left side in front of the pinned items toolbar. Once that is done move the original toolbar to the middle to center it.

Once the position is fixed right-click the folder toolbar, and remove show text and show title from the context menu. This hides the new toolbar completely from the taskbar, and keeps the normal toolbar with the pinned items and open programs in the middle of the taskbar. Right-click the taskbar again, and lock it to finalize the change.

It is possible to undo the change by right-clicking the taskbar, selecting toolbars from the menu and then the new folder toolbar to remove it from the taskbar.

Recently I noticed a strange behavior that I could not figure out at first. Some pinned items in the taskbar would open right on their pinned icon, showing it as active from that moment on. Others however spawned a new icon in the taskbar, as if they were acting completely independent from the pinned item.

This was highly confusing, and I first thought it had something to do with pinned shortcuts who triggered this behavior. I took a closer look and found out that it was not the case. Firefox was linking directly to the Firefox executable on the hard drive and Chrome was doing the same. While a click on Firefox spawned a new item in the taskbar, a click on Chrome did not.

My next thought was that it maybe had something to do how the items were pinned on the taskbar. You know that there are different options available. It is for instance possible to drag and drop an item on the taskbar to pin it, or to right-click it in the start menu or while it is open as a normal item in the taskbar.

While I was not able to figure out what caused this odd behavior, I was able to find a fix for it. If you encounter pinned taskbar items in Windows 7 that spawn a new icon on startup do the following:

Unpin the original item, right-click the newly spawned item, right-click the program executable and select to pin it to the taskbar. Move the new pinned item to the location of the original item, close it and see if that resolved the issue. It did it for me.

Enter ShellWin, a third party software that can be used to hide and show the Windows 7 taskbar. The portable software displays a basic menu with two buttons and a pulldown selection menu.

hide windows 7 taskbar

The Hide and Show button do exactly what they are supposed to do; Hide or show the taskbar. A click on the hide button hides all of the taskbar, with the exception of the the start menu button, which remains on the screen.

The Shellwin window stays on top, to give the user options to Show the taskbar again, if it is needed. The pulldown menu can be used to display an active window on the screen, something that users would probably use the taskbar for otherwise.

windows 7 without taskbar

It is a shame that the developer has not implemented hotkeys to hide or show the taskbar more easily. As of now, the program window stays on top all the time, as this is the only way of showing the taskbar again which can interfere with any fullscreen window on the screen.

The developer has however announced to add more improvements to the program. While hotkeys have not been mentioned, the next version will include a feature to disable specific parts of the Windows 7 taskbar.

Users interested in downloading the ShellWin application to hide the taskbar in Windows 7, can download the application from the Seven Forums thread where it was announced by its developer.

Fvwm will make you feel like you are using the love child of some UNIX desktop and Windows 95. That’s right, I said “95″. It’s Windows 95 with a few very UNIX features added for good measure. And in this next few articles I am going to help you get to know Fvwm. Why would you want to use it? Because you feel like being a part of a history that is as important to the PC as Bill Gates’s brining Windows 95 to the market.

Features of Fvwm

Fvwm, believe it or not, does have features. Included in this list are:

• Anti-aliasing font support
• Internationalization.
• Side titles with vertical text.
• Various application managers (taskbar, buttonbar, etc.)
• Wharf.
• Small memory usage.
• Tiny footprint.

And much more. For the full list, take a look at the Fvwm official features page.

Installation

Installation is simple…even from the command line. I will illustrate the installation on a Fedora 13 system using the command line. Here are the steps:

1. Open up a terminal window.
2. Change to the root user with the command su.
3. Enter the root user password and hit Enter.
4. Issue the command yum install fvwm.
5. After installation close out your terminal.
6. Log out of your current desktop.
7. Log in using the Fvwm desktop.

That’s it. You should now be on the Fvwm desktop (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

The desktop

The Fvwm desktop will look very familiar to anyone who has been around Linux for a while. For those of you who have not been around the Linux block long enough, some of the features will look rather archaic – especially the Wharf (bottom right edge of screen in Figure 1). The Wharf is very similar to the Wharf in the AfterStep window manager. The Wharf is a single tool that houses the features of multiple tools, it is a:

• Pager.
• Application launcher.
• Mini application launcher.
• Module holder.

Figure 2

If you look closely to Figure 1 you will notice two modules in the Wharf (xload and xclock) that are missing. This is because they weren’t installed (this was done on purpose). To install them you would need to install the application xorg-x11-apps. Or you could just issue the command:

yum install xclock

which would actually install xorg-x11-apps. Once installed click on the left click on the desktop anywhere (to bring up the desktop menu (see Figure 2) and click Restart > Fvwm. Believe it or not you can issue this restart with all your work open and not lose anything. You will need to issue this restart any time you make a change to the window manager (although some changes are applied instantly).

You will also notice, on the Fvwm desktop, a typical taskbar. This taskbar contains all the usual features:

• Start menu.
• Window list.
• Notification area.

These are all used in the same manner as you would expect.

Final thoughts

You have officially been introduced to a bit of history that refuses to go away. I recommend playing around with Fvwm even if only out of curiosity. And now that you’ve seen how Fvwm looks, in upcoming articles we’ll take a look at how to configure this old-school desktop.

That’s an interesting preview feature which comes in handy whenever there is no other way of finding out which window contains the information that need to be accessed. A practical example would be multiple Windows Explorer windows that are open. To access a specific one the user would need to click on them until the target was found. Windows 7 makes the selection process easier thanks to the preview thumbnails.

The information that are displayed cannot be customized in Windows 7, at least not in the Control Panel or by looking at the properties of the taskbar.

The Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer program changes that. It can be used to change several parameters of the taskbar thumbnail in Windows 7 including the minimum and maximum size, spacing, delay time and margins.

Sliders next to each parameter can be used to change the values. It is for instance possible to increase the thumbnail size from the standard value of 200 pixels to a maximum of 512 pixels.

The parameters are self-explanatory and the Restore Defaults button ensures that the default values can be restored if needed.

The portable software program can be downloaded from The Windows Club website.

Taskix is just one program for the Windows operating system that allows users to move Windows taskbar items around. A new version of the software program has been released as a beta recently adding support for 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 and 2008.

By default only the function to move items in the taskbar is activated. This is simply done by left-clicking on a tab in the Windows taskbar, holding the mouse button down and moving it to another location. The cursor changes as soon as the user begins to move the mouse after selecting an item in the taskbar.

Taskix supports multi-monitor systems and can start with the Windows operating system. Both of these features are optional. As are the following features which can be enabled in the program’s options.

• Scrolling tabs in the taskbar with the mouse wheel
• Configuring middle-clicks on the taskbar
• Configuring middle-clicks on items in the taskbar

The first option makes it possible to scroll through each tab with the mouse wheel so that each window – with the option exception of minimized windows – becomes the active window on the system. Middle-clicks on the taskbar can be configured to either show the desktop or restore all visible maximized windows. The middle-clicks on tabs on the other hand can either maximize that window or close that window immediately.

Taskix is a lightweight software program. It runs in the background and consumes about 1 Megabyte of computer memory.

Multi-Monitor Taskbar by Mediachance (via Shellcity) ends that by adding a unique taskbar to every computer monitor that gets connected to the computer system. Each taskbar is only displaying the folders and applications that are started in its boundaries which makes the file and folder management that much easier.

The free version of Multi-Monitor Taskbar comes with a few additional handy features like a move to monitor button in Windows XP. It is however limited in comparison to the commercial pro version which adds features like theme support or the ability to resize windows across multiple monitors.

The main function however is available in the free version and that’s probably all that most dual-monitor users need. The pro version comes as a Shareware trial which can be used to test the additional features to see if it’s worth the money.

The interesting aspect of this application – besides it minimal resource usage – is that it comes as a 32-bit and 64-bit application, something that contenders like Taskbar Shuffle fail to do. Taskix does not have to be installed and can be started from any location on the computer. It displays a basic menu that gives the user the option to activate it, autostart it with Windows and to leave it inactive.

Upon activating Taskix its main function becomes active. The user can now move the mouse over an entry in the Windows Taskbar and move it to another location. The feature itself works pretty well. Just left-click an entry, hold the mouse button and move it to the desired location.

It is working even if the Windows Taskbar has been moved to the sides of the screen, the top or is hidden until the mouse hovers over it. The main reason why I do not need such a tool is basically that the position on the side offers so much space for items that the taskbar never gets completely filled with them.

Taskix provides one additional interesting feature. Pressing the middle-mouse button on an item in the taskbar closes that item which speeds up that process. The commenters over at Lifehacker seem to love it and I was wondering if someone who uses it would like to explain why he is using a program to change the order of the Windows Taskbar.

No third party software or add-on is needed for this little tip that saved me lots of time over the years. All you need to do is to press the CTRL key and left-click the folders that you want to close. Once all folders have been selected right-click the last and select Close Group from the menu.

This closes all the selected folders at once. This works pretty well with other windows and can be used to quickly close multiple programs that reside in the taskbar as well and it is even possible to mix applications and folders.

The feature can be useful if you work with applications that provide independent windows, say a color palette in Adobe Photoshop, the project manager in C++ builder and basically any other window that you need from time to time but not constantly. You could for instance add and hide a notepad window on the right side of the screen and use it to write down comments, remarks or to-dos.

The application is very simplistic, it provides only two shortcuts to hide applications and an interface where you can remove panels again. Pressing CTRL ALT A adds the panel of the active window to the list of panels that are automatically hidden when you move the window near one of the screen edges. The window automatically docks to the screen and minimizes itself.

Please note that I said panel and not window that is added to the list that gets automatically minimized. If you do that for an explorer window all explorer windows will have that behavior. It does not really matter for Notepad or other applications that you usually only open once though.

The second option is to press ALT A if the Panel Hider window is active and your mouse hovers over another window. The application adds an icon to the system tray providing options to restore the settings and to remove panels from the list of windows that are automatically processed.

Once the window is docked to the screen you can reveal it by simply moving the mouse over the title bar of the window. Yes that is right, the title bar will still be visible but the rest of the window won’t be.

I did that for a purpose of course, not to train my brain or see as a test on how I handle new situations. Moving the taskbar to the side makes it possible to display additional windows before the Windows grouping feature kicks in. If you have disabled the grouping feature you will notice that the window titles become unreadable pretty soon which makes it hard to pick the correct Windows Explorer folder from the open ones.

I can put roughly 25 minimized windows in the taskbar when it is on the right (or left) side of the screen and all window titles are still readable. They become unreadable at about ten minimized windows when the taskbar is at the bottom of the screen.

But don’t get me wrong. The first days after the change will be really mean. Your mouse cursor moves automatically to the bottom left of the screen if you want to open the start menu only to realize that it is now on the opposite end of the screen. It happens and it does take a few days. but once you get used to it you will surely love the new look and usability.

Were is your taskbar located ?

Guess what. Ten hours after making the request Skrommel posted a reply in that thread with a link to a software that he had created that would do exactly what the thread starter wanted it to do. To be more precise Skrommel posted the Autohotkey code that could be used to make the Taskbar behave this way.

To sum it up again. This little piece of code automatically hides the Windows Taskbar and prevents it from showing up when the mouse is moved in the area of it. The taskbar is only shown when the user presses the Windows key on his keyboard and hidden again when the key is released.

If you have not checked it out yet I suggest you do so. The Donation Coder forum is a excellent place to learn about new applications and ask for software advise. As you can see if it does not exist it could be that it will be created just for you.

Some users might already be using the so called Quick Launch toolbar in their taskbar. This is for example the case when you see some icons in your taskbar that open programs like the Internet Explorer or the Windows Media Player. If you do not see the Quick Launch toolbar you can enable it by right-clicking your taskbar and choosing Quick Launch from the Toolbars menu.

This Quick Launch toolbar can be customized. If you want to remove a shortcut you right-click it and select delete from the menu. New folders and applications are simply added by dragging and dropping them in the Quick Launch area.

It is possible to change the icon by right-clicking the shortcut, selecting Properties from the menu and choosing Change Icon there. I have added several of my most commonly used applications such as Firefox, Thunderbird, WinSCP3 and Putty.

The second taskbar enhancement are Links to websites that you can add there. To add it you right-click the taskbar, select Toolbars there and choose the Links entry.

Once that is done you can get rid of the Microsoft links in there if you do not use them and drag and drop your own favorite sites to this section. It is then possible to access those sites by left-clicking on them which is a very convenient way.

The last screenshot is showing both my Quick Launch toolbar and my Links toolbar.

The list shows the current items at the top and past items below the current item list. I had about thirty entries of programs of which I was not using more than ten which ment that there were twenty entries with no meaning at all in there. Clearing this list is pretty easy, do the following:

• Backup your registry first
• Open your registry by hitting the left windows key + R ; Navigate to
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current-Version\Explorer\TrayNotify
• Remove the keys IconStreams and PastIconStreams.
• Close the registry and reboot your machine.

Windows will compile a list of available icons after the restart which means that all entries of programs that you used in the past will be gone.