February 26, 2004

Curious, George - Geeky question: I'd like Windows something differently and I need some help.

(I run 2000 at work and XP Home at home.) I would like to be able to re-order the programs in my taskbar. I'm anal and I like to work in an orderly progression when I'm multi-tasking. Is there an extension out there that will let me do that? Also, have other monkeys made modifications to Windows to make their lives easier? Are there unusual programs out there that are really handy for you? I'd love to hear about it. Thanks!

posted by Kimberly 20 years ago
  • A Google comes up with two utilities for 2k. Taskbar Sorter and ButtonBoogie. XP I'm not so sure about. A quick gander suggests that XP implements the taskbar differently.
  • I abandoned Microsoft and Intel to their sordid world about a year ago, and bought a Mac. That made my computing life infinitely more satisfying. ;)
  • I've tried the same thing, and used half a dozen programs. None of them worked very well & a few were just awful. I'll dig up the list when I get home. But, If you're running XP, you can get the Virtual Desktop powertoy which lets you open up multiple desktops. I wound up having a desktop for programming, one for browsers & etc.
  • Wow! Thanks boo! Dawson: :X
  • Well that put me in my place.
  • Linux! Liiiiinnuuuuuuuxx! Hey! get yer hands off! Oof! *scuffle* Get away! *desparate scrapping*
  • petebest: I'll have some questions for you in the coming days. hoo hoo ha ha ha
  • Dawson: It totally was not an attempt to put you in your place. It was more of an "I'm not going down the PC vs. Mac road even though I'm tempted to by your callout because it will derail the thread and as the chances of me getting Mac are slim to none, I'll just concentrate on getting cool ideas for Windows" kind of thing.
  • This page could be helpful. This sounds like exactly what you want for win2k. As far as useful utilities go, I find that if I'm not careful I spend way more time tweaking windows that using it. My only edit is having the taskbar on the top, mac style, because it makes sense to me to have all the UI controls in one place. (as opposed to the window controls up top and the other ones down below) I do find Scanner to be extremely useful.
  • I tried ObjectDock after a mention of it on Penny-Arcade. It looks a lot like the MacOS task bar thingy, so maybe Dawson & Kimberly can get married after all! I found it useful, but a bit of a memory hog.
  • I'm with you! We can have that debate some other time, which naturally I will win.... :)
  • eh, mac schmack. i see it as a coke-pepsi thing. you either like one, or the other, or you're a spineless fence-sitter, afraid to step into the fray and voice your real opinion. i personally love tweaking windows. i like editing files to replace icons, etc. i used to regularly change the text of my "start" button just for the hell of it. (perhaps one of the reasons i dislike macs is that i couldn't even change the damn mouse cursor without adding a 3rd party extension... that bothered me, for some reason.) winxp is probably the first version that i haven't seriously tweaked. although i would really, really like it if they offered more than three color schemes. that blue... seriously, how hard is it to add, say, green for god's sake? i even tried looking at some of the winxp tweaking sites for other color themes, but for some reason nobody out there seemed content with just changing colors. they all have to "pretty" it up. i don't need KDE-style menubars and blocky buttons and transparent areas. all i really want is the luna theme, except green. do you hear me, legion of XP hackers? make it green!