Posted on September 29th, 2009 by Barry Collins
How to make the Windows 7 taskbar better in an instant
I’m a huge fan of the new Windows 7 taskbar. From Jumplists, to pinning icons to the taskbar, to the long-overdue option to juggle icons into whatever order you wish, it makes my working day precisely 62% easier.
However, there is one thing I’m not so keen on: the habit of piling multiple windows from the same application behind one another like a deck of cards, like so:
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This is particularly problematic with Outlook 2007. Quite often I have multiple emails open at the same time, and there’s no way to sort between them at a glance. Yes, I know I can hover over the Outlook icon to get the thumbnail previews, but that makes opening the email a two-step process with a little pause in between, while you wait for the little thumbnail animation to appear. In the words of the immortal DI Grim from The Thin Blue Line, I haven’t got time to “fanny around” with that “namby pamby, hoity toity” nonsense.
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Worse still, alerts such as meeting reminders often get hidden behind that Outlook icon. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to apologise for arriving late at a meeting recently because the alert was tucked behind the fourth blade.
There is, however, an easy solution. Right click on a blank space on the taskbar, choose Properties and choose Combine When Taskbar Is Full from the Taskbar Buttons dropdown menu. Now you’ll get the best of both the Vista and Windows 7 worlds: chunky taskbar icons, with each window given its own icon and small text labels to boot.
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On a 1,280 x 800 screen you’ll get enough space to squeeze in six or seven icons, which is probably enough to suit most people’s needs. The worst that can happen is the windows start stacking up again, so you’re no worse off than you were previously. And you won’t need to apologise for missing meetings.
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14 Responses to “ How to make the Windows 7 taskbar better in an instant ”
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September 29th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
The downside of this is multiple tabs of IE8 disappear into a single tab on the Taskbar as it’s on the system side.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:32 am
It seems nice feature. The look of the toolbar is very cool. I am excited to try it out.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:39 am
I generally have around 10 or so different application windows open, so that wouldn’t really help, once I start opening multiple windows within an application.
That said, I’ve had the entries on the task bar grouped together since it was introduced in Windows XP…
September 30th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I have 14 shortcuts in my XP quick launch by increasing the height of my taskbar, ranging from app’s, network drives to documents.
Nothing in W7 allows me to do this from what I’ve seen. And I hate the way icons in W7 you’ve purposely ‘pinned’ can end of anywhere a long the task bar once you start oepnning different app’s, docs etc
PS- this recaptcha thing is a joke.
September 30th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Drag your taskbar over to the side of the screen (I always choose the right but it makes no odds) and auto-hide it. Now, each icon is stacked vertically leaving room for about 25-30 icons and it takes up no space on the screen unless you need it.
In these days of widescreen monitors, it seems bizare that everyone still accepts the default position for their taskbar as being along the bottom, taking up valuable space.
September 30th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Well we still write horizontally, so horizontal space is at more of a premium, and if you don’t auto-hide then a vertical taskbar takes up a huge width to display names.
I wish this Windows 7 setting could be set per-application. The single icon idea was really nice at first, but stacking’s bad when you have multiple IM windows open. Having to turn it off completely made me sad
September 30th, 2009 at 11:41 pm
@telemetry I think if windows live adopted tabbed conversations like a lot of the alternative IM clients, then stacking may be more acceptable. In fact it’s a wonder windows live hasn’t been redesigned for windows 7. In saying that, we are a few weeks away from the official launch, so maybe something will be done about it by then.
October 1st, 2009 at 12:33 pm
If you “upgrade” with the Messenger Plus! patch you can have tabbed IM conversations.
October 1st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
AnonnyMuss – been able to have those since year dot with a multiplatform client – pidgin
October 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Get a bigger screen! … but seriously, I do think there’s a stacking/focussing problem in Win7. I am one of those “gazillions of windows” types from way back, and alerts in XP with over 20 windows up seemed to be more findable than they are in the same state in Win 7.
October 5th, 2009 at 11:36 am
Hi…
I just have the new Windows 7 taskbar and happy with its work. I will surely bookmark this site for my future use. Thank you!
November 9th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Win7 Taskbar and the sending off of the custom toolbar is one of the reasons Win7 sux. The explorer windows are just as bad. The new Firewall control panel is retarded. Many, many things are just as bad as Vista, and in some cases, worse.
December 21st, 2010 at 9:59 am
Never Combine makes the icons never stack up. However, I like the superbar.
June 10th, 2011 at 7:15 am
i prefer windows 3.11 or windows 95 taskbar style….