Windows 7 Windows 7 Taskbar: A Step Backwards Aesthetically

I'm very pleased with the new task bar, as it's very functional and easy for me to switch between most used programs that I have pinned. I like the new look, it's refreshing and easy to see. I really like the idea of being able to pin the icons as needed. I also like the idea of being able to customize the color of it.

As far as the start button goes, it's round, big deal, I just deal with it, as I've got more important things to be concerned about.
 
i was bored..... i like the way the task bar is now... but i see what he is saying....

W7biglogo.jpg
 
how does it not equal proof. If microsoft had liked the VISTA start button stick out they would have left it that way in 7. Obviously they didnt. I'm not gonna get into an argument that is pointless. Microsoft made a decision lets deal with it.

again, you have no proof.

instead of saying they increased the size of the taskbar so the start button doesn't overlap maybe...

the taskbars size was increased, so that the new icons in the taskbar could be enlarged (the icons that have completely replaced window tabs). if you switch to the Vista taskbar, the icons become quite small as compared to the old window tabs

what i just did is called speculating, which is exactly what your doing. i say again, since you claim you attended PDC feel free to provide proof. obviously there are some people here who agree with me, or can at least see what i'm talking about. that's fine if you disagree, but if you can't provide any proof to your arguments, i can only assume your making up things for the sake of arguing.

i was bored..... i like the way the task bar is now... but i see what he is saying....

W7biglogo.jpg

thanks for clarify what i was saying, even if you don't agree with my opinion

obviously the picture your showing is a photoshoped exaggeration though, if you used the same scale ratio Vista used the Start button would be MUCH MUCH smaller.
 
The taskbar has been enlarged but I find the icons almost as easily identifiable when in small view, but large view definitely makes me feel more productive.

The new taskbar is great. You can hold a lot more windows and apps, show desktop is in a location where you can't miss, there's Aero Peek and Previews as well. I'm not sure why there has been so much criticism shown towards the new design. These are the only complaints I have:

- The new taskbar is good but doesn't work well for EVERYTHING such as MSN convos. If you have 6 convos going on at once, clicking all the time can be redundant, whereas in Vista and XP, the taskbar there was actually more helpful since most people put their names in the beginning. My suggestion would be that you could assign a program to use hotkey.s And say you have 6 MSN convos, alt+1 will bring up the 1st convo, alt+2 for the second and so on.

- Seems like you have to wait too long for peek to work. You can easily adjust it in the registry but I think you should be able to adjust it from the GUI too.

- Looks too good, makes you put too many icons, realize you don't have enough space, have a hard time deciding which icons to delete xD

Here's my setup right now:
wuqcsh.png
 
i agree, the live messenger could use some work on the task bar, also aero peek only work for IE's tabs and not for chrome or firefox. I use chrome most of the time, and it would be nice for peek to work on their tabs as well
 
I kinda agree it could use some work i hate the little icon thing it leaves up. It is annoying as hell and i gave up on windows live messenger and moved onto pidgin.
 
This is why I prefer the old taskbar with Quick launch. As you can see from the previous posters screen shot, the taskbar gets very cluttered.

In the old style taskbar the program or path to the directory you are in are displayed in plain site. No fumbling around with preview windows, going back and forth from right to left trying to locate the window you want to bring up.

This is another example where Microsoft has made us do additional steps to locate the correct window.

In my attached thumbnail, I think you'll see what I mean.

Make sure to put the finger directly on the line to bring up the thumbnail. I didn't realize it would be so small.
 
This is why I prefer the old taskbar with Quick launch. As you can see from the previous posters screen shot, the taskbar gets very cluttered.

In the old style taskbar the program or path to the directory you are in are displayed in plain site. No fumbling around with preview windows, going back and forth from right to left trying to locate the window you want to bring up.

This is another example where Microsoft has made us do additional steps to locate the correct window.

.


deal all,
i absolute agree with reghakr .....

just imagine in the real world, you sitting in front of your desktop table.
you have all the files (apps) piled up at your left side with all the documents inside ...
if you want to work with a particular doc for example a 'letter', you take it from its 'word' file, and put it to your right side.
and you want to work a 'calculating doc to put some calculation in your 'letter doc' - you take the doc and put it to your right side of your table
you know exactly where the opened docs are... "No fumbling around with preview windows..."
everything is neatly arranged - files (apps) on the left side, and 'opend docs' at the right side

if you are finished with your docs, you close the docs and put everything in their respective 'files' and you have a clean desktop.
it is so natural 'copying' the real world.
but it seems that in win 7, microsoft is trying 'copy-catting' the mac dock - yelckkk !!!!!
i've tried the mac dock - you are just a lost to locate the small tringle to know which app is running..
i don't find any troble to locate the running apps in vista, not even in win95 (10 years ago!)
even my 9 year old daughter knows exactly where to locate the opened 'doc' or 'app'.
i wonder if the win 7 development team gets some 'children user' to test the win7 'logical UI'...?!
cheers.
 
I was gonna add to this that I miss the quick start menu a lot and was really bummed that I couldnt add that in or make my start menu back to clasic without all the bells and whistles that just make me have to click more crap. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but I just like striaght forward stuff like that over them putting the programs at the bottom and you have to click them and then click again and again to get to the folder your program is in.

Again, I'm gonna give it a real shot, and I love that you can turn off peak if you so choose now.
 
Hi Guys whilst we won't get the Classic Menu back again you CAN reset the task bar so the "Old Quick Launch" facility works just like it did in XP / Vista.

I can't remember the actual thread but it's somewhere in the Windows 7 tips on these Forums. It involves a Registry hack but you'll get the old "Quick Launch" back again.

Actually once you organize your work in a slightly different way I quite like the new system - it takes a bit of getting used to however and I suppose with computers people - especially Power Users - don't like changing the way they have been used to working for a few years (Not a criticism by the way so please no offence).

What I DO miss was the old power toy in XP where you could have up to 4 independent Virtual desktops and just switch between them. (Screenshot enc)

( BTW Linux has had this facility for AGES and it's not restricted to just 4 Virtual desktops).

Cheers
jimbo
 
Credit to iroken22 for the for this section:

Right click the taskbar and choose properties.
Check \"Use Small Icons\"
Taskbar Buttons: \"Never Combine\"

Credit to Tim Sneath for parts of this article:

For those of how how would like to bring back the Quick Launch feature,
Tim Sneath : The Bumper List of Windows 7 Secrets
http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2...7-secrets.aspx

If you'd like it back, I've slightly modified his to make it easier.
Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars > New Toolbar
In the folder selection dialog, choose the Browse folder and navigate to::
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Intern et Explorer\Quick Launch
Select that folder and now you have the Quick Launch bar

Turn off the "lock the taskbar" setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that "Show text" and "Show title" are disabled and the view is set to "small icons". Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again

One problem, it disappears if you uncheck it. I'm working on that one.

You can also bring back the switch between windows feature by navigating to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Intern et Explorer\Quick Launch
Right-click on the switch between windows shortcut and drag it to the Quick Launch bar and choose copy here, You now have the same features as Vista. Open a bunch of windows, then choose switch between windows. Pretty cool! :D

Also, Sysinternals (now Microsoft) has an excellent freeware utility called desktops, which gives you four desktop (like Linux, yes).
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...c5a693683.aspx

Another must have utility is Sysinternals Autoruns.This a an extremely powerful tool. You can download it here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb963902.aspx

If you don't like the Libraries view
First, it can be done any easy way, but you first have to go to Control panel and choose Folder Options, click the View tab and check Always Show Menus, your old style menus will now appear in Windows Explorer and other programs as well.
Click Show hidden folder, files, and drives. uncheck hide extensions for unknown types and uncheck Hide protected operating system files. click Apply, then OK.

Click the change desktop icons and make sure to include Computer in the list. Now, with that icon on the desktop, you can right-click and choose open to view all your drives and click on any one to explorer it. advanced user typically browse the file system regularly.

In regedit, locate the FoldereDesciptions key and chose File > Export before using the registry hack.

Try the above first, if it doesn't work, here's the reg hack:
===========================================
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\FolderDescriptions\{52a4f021-7b75-48a9-9f6b-4b87a210bc8f}]
"Name"="Quick Launch"
"Category"=dword:00000004
"RelativePath"="Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Quick Launch"
"ParentFolder"="{3EB685DB-65F9-4CF6-A03A-E3EF65729F3D}"
==========================================
Copy and paste the lines in Notepad, choose Save As. the choose All Files under Save AS, and choose All Files, then manually add the .reg extension.

Save it to your desktop and double-click on it to merge it into the registry
 
Oh dear! I guess I am a defeatist. I like innovative things, and like to experiment, but the new taskbar was not on my agenda. I must say I did not ues it much in XP or Vista.
I have placed the shortcuts/prograns on my desktop, my normal practice. I delete everything on the taskbar. Works for me!
 
Here are 2 other examples why I prefer the old Start Menu

Also, to get rid of all the icons on the desktop I created a "special" folder as shown in the top of the Start Menu and called it desktop. That's whee I keep all my programs which I run most frequently. Right now, I have twenty shortcut in the Desktop folder

I also have the ability to add new folders to the Start Menu Instead of having 7 additional folders, As an example, I have seven different graphics programs. Instead of having seven folders, I create a new one, name it graphics, then drag those program shortcuts to that folder, then delete the originals

The Find File entry is from an excellent Windows Explorer replacement called Powerdesk, which I purchased years ago and can search my 500GB hard drive and 2 large external USB hard drives much faster than Windows Search can search the the hard drive. And in there help file, Windows suggests not to add the entire computer in the Indexing option, as it will slow down the Windows search.
If you'd like to download te trial version of Powerdesk. it's located here:

http://www.avanquest.com/USA/pc-utilities/utilities/desktop-tools/PowerDesk_Pro_7.html
The older free version is available here, but has a nag scrren and doesn't include the Quick View Plus viewers that read over 100 formats of files without even having the program installed on your computer:

http://freepctech.com/rode/019.shtml

As you can see I use other Tools that I can't use anymore. Check attached thumbnail.
 
Credit to iroken22 for the for this section:




If you'd like it back, I've slightly modified his to make it easier.
Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars > New Toolbar
In the folder selection dialog, choose the Browse folder and navigate to::
C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Intern et Explorer\Quick Launch
Select that folder and now you have the Quick Launch bar

Turn off the "lock the taskbar" setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that "Show text" and "Show title" are disabled and the view is set to "small icons". Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again

One problem, it disappears if you uncheck it. I'm working on that one.

thanks reghakr .... i just tried it and it works perfectly... now i'll never miss vista by switching to win7 :D

btw is there any hack to make gadgets in win7 placed on a 'pane' like vista?
i love having some 15 or so gadgets in vista and it is really easy to switch between the 'panes' by clicking the right or left triangle at the top of the 'pane' especially when you have a 22 in wide screen.
i really hate to have all the gadgets laying around my desktop.. and when you hide desktop - your gadgets dissappear too - :confused:
cheers
 
No, Unfortunately not

The sidebar has been replaced by the desktop gadgets.

But I'll work on it
 
I had no idea that tutorial existed.

My posting is very different anyway, no changing permission are involved.

I thought the people in this post might not have seen any posting like this

Besides I can't be expected to know every site that exists on the Internet.
 
LOL

"Besides I can't be expected to know every site that exists on the Internet"
No one "expects" anything M8. My intention was to save a little time and space.

"My posting is very different anyway, no changing permission are involved."
Sorry. Missed that one. I don't see a post concerning the sidebar reinstallation.
 
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