Section 3.9. The Taskbar


3.9. The Taskbar

The dark, translucent stripe across the bottom of your screen is the taskbar , one of the most prominent and important elements of the Windows interface (Figure 3-17).

Figure 3-17. On the left is the Quick Launch toolbar; drag favorite icons here for easy launching. In the middle are buttons for every program you're running (and every desktop window). When you see nothing but microscopic icons, point without clicking to view a thumbnail.


The taskbar has several segments, each dedicated to an important function. Its right end, the notification area (or system tray , as old-timers call it), contains tiny status icons. They let you know the time, whether or not you're online, whether or not your laptop's plugged in, and so on.

The main portion of the taskbar helps you keep your open windows and programs under control. You can even dress up your taskbar with additional little segments called toolbars , as described in the following pages. This section covers each of these features in turn .

3.9.1. The Notification Area (System Tray)

The notification area gives you quick access to little status indicators and pop-up menus that control various functions of your PC. Many a software installer inserts its own little icon into this area: fax software, virus software, palmtop synchronization software, and so on.

Here's your system-tray crash course:

  • To figure out what an icon represents, point to it without clicking so that a tooltip balloon appears. To access the controls that accompany it, try both left-clicking and right-clicking the tiny icon. Often, each kind of click produces a different pop-up menu filled with useful controls.

  • See the time display at the lower-right corner of your screen? If you point to the time without clicking, a tooltip appears to tell you the day of the week and todays date. If you single-click , you get a handy date-and-time -changing panel. And if you right-click, you get a pop-up menu that lets you visit the Date & Time Control Panel applet.

  • If you dont use a tray icon for a couple of weeks, Vista may summarily hide it. See Figure 3-18 for details.

    Figure 3-18. Top: If you see a < button, Windows is telling you that it has hidden some of your notification-area icons.
    Bottom: Click this button to expand the notification area, bringing all of the hidden icons into view.


3.9.2. Taskbar ButtonsNow with Thumbnails!

Every time you open a window, whether at the desktop or in one of your programs, the taskbar sprouts a button bearing that window's name and icon. Buttons make it easy to switch between open programs and windows. Just click one to bring its associated window into the foreground, even if it has been minimized.

On PCs that are fast enough to run Aero, in fact, the taskbar does more than display each window's name. If you point to a window button without clicking, you actually see a thumbnail image of the window itself . Figure 3-19 shows the effect.

Figure 3-19. Top: Pointing to a taskbar button without clicking produces these "live" thumbnail previews of the windows themselves , which can be a huge help. After all, you're much more likely to recognize the image of the brochure you're designing than some truncated text button label.
Bottom: If a taskbar button is grouped, then you see only one thumbnail (representing whichever window you opened first in that program). But if you click the button to open its pop-up menu, you can point to each listed window in turn to see its own preview.


3.9.3. Button Groups

The taskbar is the antidote for COWS (cluttered, overlapping window syndrome), thanks in large part to taskbar button groups .

In the old days, opening a lot of windows might produce a relatively useless display of truncated buttons. Not only were the buttons too narrow to read the names of the windows, but the buttons appeared in chronological order, not software-program order.

Nowadays, though, when conditions become crowded, the taskbar automatically groups the names of open windows into a single menu that sprouts from the corresponding program button, as shown at bottom in Figure 3-19. Click the taskbar button bearing the program's name to produce a pop-up menu of the window names; now you can jump directly to the one you want.

Second, even when there is plenty of room, Windows aligns the buttons into horizontal groups by program . All the Word-document buttons appear, followed by all the Excel-document buttons, and so on.

Despite these improvements (which appeared in Windows XP), most of the following time-honored basics still apply:

  • To bring a window to the foreground, making it the active window, click its button on the taskbar. (If clicking a button doesnt bring a window forward, it's because Windows has combined several open windows into a single button. Just click the corresponding program's button as though it's a menu, and then choose the specific window you want from the resulting list, as shown at bottom in Figure 3-19.)

  • To hide the frontmost window, click its taskbar buttona great feature that a lot of PC fans miss . (To hide a background window, click its taskbar button twice: once to bring the window forward, then a pause, then again to hide it.)

  • To minimize, maximize, restore, or close a window, even if you cant see it on the screen, right-click its button on the taskbar and choose from the shortcut menu (Figure 3-20).

    Figure 3-20. The number on a button (like "5 Windows Explorer") indicates that several windows are open in that program; the is another cue that you must click to see a list of windows. Right-clicking one of these buttons lets you perform certain tasks on all the hidden windows together, such as closing them all at once.


  • Windows can make all open windows visible at once, either by cascading them, stacking them, or displaying them in side-by-side vertical slices. To create this effect, right-click a blank spot on the taskbar and choose Cascade Windows from the shortcut menu.

  • If you change your mind, the taskbar shortcut menu always includes an Undo command for the last taskbar command you invoked. (Its wording changes to reflect your most recent actionUndo Minimize All," for example.)

3.9.4. The Quick Launch Toolbar

At the left end of the taskbarthat is, just to the right of the Start buttonis a handful of tiny, unlabeled icons (Figure 3-21). This is the Quick Launch toolbar, one of the most useful features in Windows.

Figure 3-21. You can add any kind of icon to the Quick Launch toolbar by dragging it there (top); a vertical bar shows you where it'll appear.


It contains icons for functions that Microsoft assumes you'll use most often. They include:

  • Desktop , a one-click way to minimize (hide) all the windows on your screen to make your desktop visible. Don't forget about this button the next time you need to burrow through some folders, put something in the Recycle Bin, or perform some other activity in your desktop folders. Keyboard shortcut : +D.

  • Switch between windows , a one-click trigger for the Flip 3D effect described on Section 3.8.

  • Launch Internet Explorer Browser , for one-click access to the Web browser included with Windows.

But what makes this toolbar great is how easy it is to add your own iconsparticularly those you use frequently. There's no faster or easier way to open them, even when your screen is otherwise filled with clutter.

To add an icon to this toolbar, simply drag it there, as shown in Figure 3-21. To remove an icon, just drag it off the toolbardirectly onto the Recycle Bin, if you like. (You're not actually removing any software from your computer.) If you think you'll somehow survive without using Internet Explorer each day, for example, remove it from the Quick Launch toolbar.




Windows Vista for Starters
Windows Vista for Starters: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596528264
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 175
Authors: David Pogue

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