The new taskbar in Windows 7 is for launching applications as well as showing what is running; and one of the first things you do with a new installation is to pin your favourites there so they are easy to start.
Very soon, you’ll run out of space. This is a problem that will get worse, too, because app vendors will discover that the notification area is no longer effective for getting the user’s attention and background applications will use the taskbar instead.
Unfortunately a scrolling taskbar is not much fun to use. In fact, it’s a disaster. The taskbar divides itself into pages, and a fiddly scroller lets you flip from one page to the next.
Further, if you activate a running application which is on a different page, then its page comes into view, hiding the other icons.
Now let’s say you want to launch an application which is on a page that is no longer in view. Instead of clicking one large target (especially nice if you are using touch), you have one tiny target (especially horrible if you are using touch) – the up or down arrow on the scroller – followed by a second click on the app icon. Maybe there is a keyboard shortcut for scrolling the taskbar, but the only one I know is Win-T which cycles through all the icons – tedious.
At this point, you have two further options. You can increase the height of the taskbar. Right click – Properties – untick Lock the taskbar – then drag the top border up. Now you have more space for icons, but you have also lost valuable working space on the screen.
The second option is to use small icons, which is another option in properties. When you do this, you can fit in a few more icons, though not as many extra as you might expect. It is easy to see why this is so unsatisfactory. Here is the Word icon in normal size, followed by the small icon version:
Two observations. First, the “small” version is not that much narrower than the large one. Second, if you look at the size of the icon versus the amount of background, the small version is mostly wasted space. The actual image on the small icon is roughly 25% the size of the large. You get a poor yield in terms of extra icons, but a severe usability loss in that the small size is hard to see.
I don’t know if this problem can be improved by tweaking other Windows settings, but would be interested to discover.
It is also a shame that the taskbar cannot be extended across a second display, if you are running two or more screens.
The conclusion, in my case, is that neither the double-height nor the small icon view is really satisfactory, though double-height is less bad.
I like the new taskbar, but this is a real annoyance. Any tips I’ve missed?
Related posts:
I find on a widescreen display it’s more efficient to put the taskbar at the side of the screen and set it to Auto Hide.
@Kelvyn
Side-docking makes sense, except that you can’t expand it to two or more columns, which is a shame.
Tim
This is the difference I have argued between Windows and Mac for years.
The reason people like Mac, is because they use a much smaller subset of applications so it gets less cluttered and remains efficient. However now Windows is effectively using the same task methodology as Mac, it proves the point – that people install a lot of more crap on Windows.
But perhaps this is a good thing?
It might force people to prioritise and reduce the amount of junk on their Windows boxes which will also give the impression of improved performance/reliability as they will be using it more like a Mac.
Its not like running out of icon space is a new thing. We have had quick launch for years and it was next to useless. Many people, including me, still have cluttered desktops simply because its the quickest place to find things. The new taskbar is a HUGE improvement and quite frankly, I cannot see a better solution.
The icon size problem is, as you identified, purely a touch problem. Personally, I am glad Microsoft are finally taking touch seriously as its always been a huge drawback with Windows and touchscreens. I have Windows 7 on my tablet PC and its so much more usable than XP Tablet Edition, its even faster, despite the fact the tablet in question has less RAM and CPU power than the minimum recommended for Win7.
So to summarise, the new taskbar might not be perfect but perhaps it will force us to change how we use Windows for better. It certainly makes using touch screens on Windows comfortable for the first time ever. If you are a heavy user shouldn’t you be thinking about a 1080/1200p monitor anyway? That would be a pretty big taskbar IMO.
Tim: what I did was to reactivate the Quick Launch toolbar à la Windows Vista. I can pack a lot of small one-click-to-launch icons in a small space that way. Then I set the taskbar buttons to “Combine when taskbar is full” for convenience.
I’ve also increase the size of the taskbar by one notch (I have a 1920×1200 screen on the laptop, so I don’t lose much).
Cheers, Julian
@Alex @Julian thanks for the tips.
Tim
Interesting comment about how Mac users don’t run as many apps. I certainly run a large selection of applications, but I *do* tend to only run a few simultaneously. Same on Windows though – if I don’t need it for a while, I’ll quit it.
I think the mindset there comes from classic Mac OS days when the machine could crash due to any old application fault, and memory management was primitive. As a result, you tended to run fewer apps.
Still, Windows fundamental problem to me is that each *window* gets a place on the taskbar. Now Windows 7 has significantly improved matters there, but that always was the critical flaw to me in the Windows GUI – it scaled horribly.
First, why not pin the apps you use most frequently to the taskbar? On a 1280×800 laptop you have room for roughly 20 icons. You’ve pinned more than that? Prioritise! Move the secondary apps to the Start menu, thus increasing the odds that a pinned app will be on the main row.
Also, the keyboard shortcut you’re looking for is Ctrl+Alt+Tab, which displays all running apps in a preview window. It’s touch friendly and allows you to flip through windows using the Tab key.
@Ed
On my desktop 1280×1024 I get about 15 icons; I can’t get 20 without going to small icons which as I’ve noted are unsatisfactory.
Ctrl-Alt-Tab cycles through running apps. I was looking for a shortcut to page through the taskbar when it has multiple pages – there isn’t one that I know of, except Win-T which is icon by icon, not page by page.
I agree though that the solution is to restrict the number of apps you pin – but it is a shame it scales so badly.
I did say I was getting picky
Tim
In XP (which I’m still running at home), I have folders (Apps, Development, Utilities, etc) on the desktop with the shortcuts inside. I then have the Desktop as one of the toolbars on the task bar. This way, I can get to any of those shortcuts in 2 clicks and my desktop is uncluttered.
You can do something similar in Windows 7 by adding new toolbars to the toolbar.
Right-click the toolbar, select toolbars and new toolbar. It’ll ask for a folder. Create one and select it. Once you put shortcuts in there, you can get to them in 2 clicks.
I’m not running Win7 full time yet (only in VMs for software testing), but I have played with this and will definitely be using it in the full release.
It’s true that I don’t have as many OSX apps installed as I do Windows apps, but it’s down to about a 40% difference.
I think the main reason OSX handles this much more elegantly is the “zoom” functionality in the dock. Reducing icon size to 25% isn’t a problem when the icons grow to full size when you move your mouse over them. It’s simple, but effective.
Unfortunately, that still doesn’t help anybody using a tablet PC (or any other sort of “touch” interface).
The lack of any sort of “pager” functionality in Windows 7 is the biggest disappointment the OS has provided me so far. I’m so used to that functionality in X/OSX that I find it a pain not to have it in Windows. While there are add-ons that provide the same functionality in Windows, none of them work as well as the X/OSX equivalents. Overall Win7 is a vast improvement over Vista, but that is one feature I think is way overdue.
My solution was to add a so called 2nd “taskbar”, docked to the side, set to autohide.
I use http://rocketdock.com because of its simplicity.
Even though it doesnt have all the strong features of the taskbar, its still a great solution which ease my life.
It would be a good idea if Microsoft would give such a solution, a second taskbar, with all the good featues, as one of its widgets.
I pin only my absolutely very frequently accessed applications, basically browser, e-mail, and windows explorer. This leaves a lot of room for running applications. So how do I get to my other favorite apps quickly? Find and Run Robot.
That problem is driving me nuts. While still using XP I got used to actually having 3 rows at the bottom, one was the normal taskbar with active tasks and two were for two seperate sets of programs (and both were almost full, although I admit I only needed like 70% of them regularly).
In Windows 7 you spare some icons by using the jump lists (like I don’t have links for 3 folders anymore, just one for the explorer) although you can’t access them as quickly.
I don’t put anything one the desktop because the quicklaunch was quicker(!) AND looked much better. The start menu is completely out of the question for me for regular programs because it’s too complicated, let alone the search programs feature.
But so far so good. The trouble starts now with my now widescreen monitor. Because now I want to put the taskbar to the side to save room and immediately it’s full and forces me to use the horrible scroll bar. Especially horrible because you have most programs on the first column and unpinned programs will always go to the second colum.
Apparently I can’t even put additional toolbars as columns next to it, they all go below each other. That’s really bad design.
I guess most people don’t realize the problem here but if you are used to accessing all your programs with one click, and using jumplists seems slow to you, then using that scroll bar drives you nuts.
Not to mention the lost overview because you only see some of your running applications.
ps: The advice to use fewer programs isn’t very helpful.
I think it’s funny that several folks, including a Mac user, propose that the solution is that we change our habits. I’m glad you guys aren’t in charge of UI design anywhere important.
I too find it extremely annoying that the taskbar, when side-docked, does not allow multiple columns. This is the most logical place to put it on a widescreen monitor, but its usefulness is several hampered by this oversight.