Change

Monday, 30 December 2002
There are many concurrent windows open at my Win98 PC. With the task bar I quickly swap to another application. I like that task bar. It is a major improvement, ever since Win95 compared to the Alt-tab function. So far so good.

It gets a bit more complicated when there are many windows open at the same time. The task bar gets too crowded, reducing overview. It takes more effort to find a specific application window.

Several application try their best to limit the number of task bar options. They administer their own windows, in their own task bar.

Task bar in Opera

Opera taskbar

The Opera web browser (opera.com) offers the option of an own task bar (.../opera/v6). That takes a bit of extra screen space, but only when Opera is the active application.

The number of options in the Windows task bar remains OK, handy to quickly switch to other applications.

Tabs in TextPad

TextPad taskbar

TextPad has a similar option, albeit with tabs instead of a task bar.

Combination

It is tempting to combine the two kind of tabs.

Nice try. The Windows XP task bar implements such a combination. And see: the obvious idea is not handy at all.
Unpredictable Tricky
The task bar becomes unpredictable.
  • Sometimes an IE browser window is listed separately in the windows task bar,
  • Sometimes it is clustered with it's kindred windows.
The clustering and declustering happens when my locus of attention is not targeting the task bar. So it is magic out of view, a sneaky game of hide and seek while I'm looking another way.

Even though the possibilities are limited, it is always a surprise to discover where a window is hiding. I get fed up with this game of hide and seek quickly, especially as I am always on.

My graphical memory gets seriously confused. Especially the unpredictability troubles me.

I consciously try not to remember the position of a window on the task bar.

As soon as windows get clustered, they are hidden, not reachable anymore with one single click.

I have to

  1. see if the windows are clustered.
  2. click the application button in the Windows task bar,
  3. search the right window,
  4. move the mouse pointer,
  5. and click again.
Quickly change windows has turned into a heavy mental process. When you've finally got the right window on screen you have forgotten why.

Alt-tab

To me it is too tricky to swap windows this way. I simply stopped using the XP task bar. It annoys me so much that I fallback to the Alt-tab method. At least that is predictable and less troublesome.

When possible I even ignore XP and change back to an old computer using Win98. I wish there was a recycling fee on software components. How I'd love to swap the new XP task bar for a Win98 version.

Till next week,
Nut

  • For freaks: Control the task bar hocus pocus with a parameter in the registry: (activewin.com/winxp/tips...).
  • Tip from anonymous reader: Right click on the taskbar properties and untick Group similar taskbar buttons.