Make Your Windows 7 Taskbar Look Like XP/Vista.

January 13, 2012

Welcome blog reader to my first blog. For my first topic, I would like to write about something I am very passionate about: computers. More specifically, I want to talk about how I dislike the taskbar in Windows 7. Remember the good ol’ days when there was text on the taskbar to indicate what program was open? And if you have several Word documents open, for example, it combined them, forcing the user to hover over the icon. Then, the user could carefully maneuver the mouse to the window they wish to view. Fortunately, there is a fix. When I got my new computer back in November, this fix was the first thing I did. Through a few simple steps, which I detail below, you can make your taskbar look more like the taskbar from previous iterations of Windows. It’s not exactly the same, but this is the best solution I’ve found.

1. Right click in the blank area of the taskbar, and from the pop-up menu, select properties. A new window will appear, with the tab "Taskbar" selected at the top.
2. Under "Taskbar appearance," you will see three boxes you can check. Click the box next to "Use small icons," but leave the others alone.
3. Next to "Taskbar buttons:" there is a dropdown box. It should currently read "Always combine, hide labels." Click on the dropdown box, and choose the bottom option, "Never combine."
4. At the bottom, click "OK."

Your taskbar should now look closer to what it did in previous versions of Windows! No more hovering over the picture to select a specific window. Oh, and did you know you can rearrange the various open applications on the taskbar to whatever order you please? Try it out!

Matthew W.
Oak Grove Branch