The taskbar offers
many shortcuts that can greatly speed up your work. Let’s start by
exploring the taskbar’s context menu, because you can use that to open
the various toolbars and options.
To view toolbars
1. Right-click, or tap and hold, the taskbar to view the Taskbar menu .
The Taskbar menu
2. Select from the Toolbars submenu to display one or all of the toolbars.
To change the height of the taskbar
1. Deselect the Lock The Taskbar command to disable it (remove its check mark).
2. Drag the top edge of the taskbar up or down as desired.
Notice that with the taskbar unlocked, each
toolbar has a resize edge that you can drag.
To pin a program icon, folder, or other object to the taskbar
• Tap and hold, or right-click, the tile
for the object in the tile-based interface, and then tap or click the
Pin To Taskbar button in the bottom bar .
The Pin To Taskbar button in the tile-based interface
• You can also drag an object from the Desktop—a program, a folder, a drive, and so on—onto the taskbar to anchor it there.
To set taskbar options
Several important options for taskbar icons are set in the Taskbar Properties dialog box . Its command is the bottommost one in the menu .
The Taskbar Properties dialog box
• Select the Auto-hide The Taskbar check
box to hide the taskbar automatically when it is not in use; tap or
click the bottom edge of the screen to restore the taskbar.
• Select the Use Small Taskbar Buttons
check box to reduce the size of the icons, which is valuable for work on
a smaller screen.
• Select an option from the Taskbar Location On Screen drop-down menu to move the taskbar to different edges of your display.
• Select an option from the Taskbar
Buttons drop-down menu to control how multiple instances of open like
objects are displayed. (I like to combine them.)
• Select the Use Peek To check box to show a Desktop thumbnail on the Show Desktop button.
• Click the Apply button to enforce the settings you select but continue working in the dialog box.
• Click the OK button to enforce the settings you select and close the dialog box.
Experiment with these options to find the ones you like.
When you hover your cursor over a taskbar
icon, it will display thumbnails of windows that you can switch to or
close (click the X) . When you right-click a taskbar icon, the context menu offers you several options, including a jump list of Frequent items .
Three Windows Explorer windows in thumbnail view
The jump menu for Frequent items
Tip
To create a new instance of a program or window, hold the Shift key and click its taskbar icon.
