Beginner Builder series 75% done! will probably never be finished. :(

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Taskbar Shuffle: Fate has dealt a good hand.

Taskbar Shuffle is a very simple little program to bring control back to you when it comes to the taskbar. Here are a few of the ways that it does that:

-Install and forget: Just set it to startup, configure your options, and then you will almost forget about it. It doesn't need anything at all, it just runs in your tray, ready to be used. Or, if you want, you can turn off the tray icon, and it will run silently.

-Rearrange taskbar: Ah, yes, the main feature. How many times have you wished that your programs were in a different order in the taskbar? You could quit and restart them until you got them in ther order you wanted, or you can just drag them with Taskbar Shuffle. It works just like rearranging tabs in tabbed browsers, just drag where you want it, and let go. It also has the choice of having to hold down Control, Alt, Shift, or the Windows key if you're afraid of accidentally dragging, or no key if you want to drag quickly.

-Rearrange tray: Everything above, except with the tray. If you are extremely picky, you can drag and rearrange your tray to be in just the order you like.

-Grouping options: I don't know about you, but I never liked it when taskbar items collapsed to one button. (As a kid, one of my greatest joys was filling up the taskbar so much that everything was squished really small. Heh.) Now you can take control. In addition to turning off grouping as a whole, if you do want grouping, you can do "group tasks in order started" (the default option), "group tasks with __ number windows" (my favorite), or "group tasks, but never collapse to one button". I pick the second choice, and set the number to 99, partly for giggles, but also because if I ever have 100 windows of one app open, I wouldn't mind them collapsing into one button. But seriously, it's not a bad idea to pick a large number, like 10 or 20, so that it won't completely take over your taskbar if things get outta hand.

-Allow middle click to close: I don't use it, but you can make it where a middle click will close either an item in the taskbar, or a group.

-On/Off switch: If you get kinda tired of it but don't want to have to start it again, no worries, there's an on/off switch.

-Small: The entire install is only just under 1mb, which is most excellent. All that is required is the program, a dll, and an ini.

-Portable: Download the zip, extract to a USB drive, and you have control on the go. Is this completely practical? Maybe not. But it's good to have the option sometimes.


Visit Taskbar Shuffle (FreeWebs) site for Download

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