Useful taskbar buttons, at last (Home SR1)

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Like several others, I disliked the “Group similar taskbar buttons” option at first. When enabled, I found it arbitrary and confusing, rather than helpful. Having buttons disappear (group) and reappear according to when windows decided it was time wasn’t my cup of tea. But the concept seemed to have potential, so

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Couldn’t find ‘Taskbar Grouping’ in Tweak UI. What version are you using with XP-Home?
I have yet to find anyone that has a general solution to the lack of Notification Bar icon consistency. This is really frustrating because I’d like very much to see, or select, those operations that are running but not shown.

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This works for me too (Win XP Pro SR1). Tweek UI version 2.00.1.0.

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v2.00.1.0 – see screenshot for button grouping.

Have you tried the icon behaviour options? You can get to them from the Taskbar properties by clicking “Customize

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I guess I don’t personally see how this is helpful at all nor any different than the way XP handles it.

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Different strokes for different folks. I found it useful, and thought others may also. No drama if they don’t.

I found the XP default an annoying nuisance. For example, say I had 3 IEand 2 Excel windows open, each with its individual button on the taskbar, in the sequence opened, and I then started another app. At around this level of “congestion” XP would decide it was time to group some of the buttons. So on the next visit to the taskbar (mine is auto-hidden) the 3 IE buttons might be replaced by just one. Open another spreadsheet, and the Excel buttons become one

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Hi, Tim ~

I, too, do not like the grouping of similar taskbar buttons and all I do is right-click the ‘start‘ button > ‘Properties‘ > ‘Taskbar‘ tab > uncheck ‘Group similar taskbar buttons‘ and now each instance of all apps each have their own button.

I am just trying to figure out your explanation as you say in one paragraph that 3 instances of an app would be replaced by one button and you don’t care for that, but then in the next paragraph you say there is one button for for each group of apps. I know you may mean something else, but it sounds they are the same set-up. Would you care to elaborate, please and perhaps also include a SS?

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You’re right, what’s that old saying about picture and words? So, here you go

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Hi, Tim ~

Ok, thanks! What you’ve described and shown with TweakUI is the same thing as XP’s right-clicking the ‘start‘ button > ‘Properties‘ > ‘Taskbar‘ tab > ‘Group similar taskbar buttons‘. The only thing that is different is you can force the grouping starting with 2 – is that what you were getting at? I don’t want to beleaguer this but I thought there was perhaps an additional different feature that I may have wanted to utilize.

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I guess that’s pretty much what it boils down to. Not a big change in itself, but a big impact (for me at least). It changed the grouping from a nuisance to useful. May be I can come up with something a bit more exciting for you some other time.

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