wsTaskborg Taskbar Organizer

This week I’ve mostly been trying to figure out how the taskbar works in Windows XP. As a result, I created wsTaskborg – a freeware utility that lets you organize your taskbar buttons by dragging them around and grouping/ungrouping them as you wish. You can read more about it and download it at http://w-shadow.com/wstaskborg/.

I will also shortly post an extended description of how the taskbar works and how you could manipulate it. Note that I still don’t know everything about it, but the available information is enough to implement something like wsTaskborg. See you soon 😉

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2 Responses to “wsTaskborg Taskbar Organizer”

  1. Maarten says:

    Hi,

    I’m experimenting with the organization of my desktop/taskbar.
    My goal is to simultaneously have different environments that do not clutter each other, for example: one for programming, one for personal emailing and one for working on a paper.
    If this should interest you, I would like to make some suggestions on how this could be achieved using (an extended version of) wsTaskBorg plus additional tools.

    1. I’ll use the Virtual DeskTop windows power toy to have a desktop for each environment (max 4, which should be enough)

    2. On my ProgrammingDesktop, I’ll open the compiler window, the CVS tool, etc. I’ll place the corresponding taskbar buttons in a single ProgrammingGroup.

    3. On my PaperDesktop, I’ll open the latex editor, pdf viewer, etc. I’ll place the corresponding taskbar buttons in a single PaperGroup.

    4. When I switch to the ProgrammingDesktop, one of the windows in the ProgrammingGroup becomes active. It should preferably be easy to change to one of the other windows in the ProgrammingGroup. Using ALT+TAB is not good enough, as you need to cycle through all the windows in the entire taskbar. For me, it would be great if wsTaskborg would allow you to do this, for instance by offering a quick-key that puts the focus in ProgrammingGroup.

    If there is some trick to accomplish the same effect, I would love to hear about it.

    Thanks for reading, best wishes
    Maarten

  2. White Shadow says:

    First of all, I hadn’t seen the Virtual Desktop Manager before so I downloaded and installed it. Looks interesting.

    However, the unfortunate truth is that at this time I’m too busy with other projects to start improving wsTaskborg (I sincerely hope I’ll be able to do it some time in the future, I have some ideas for new features, too).

    Have you seen Virtual Dimension? Located at http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/, it’s another “virtual desktop” software (opensource). It allows you to have a different set of buttons on every desktop. The problem is it messes up the button order when you switch desktops :/

    You could also check out the various applications listed at
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_desktop#Windows – I’m nearly sure one of those has the features you need.

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