Ever since Microsoft redesigned the taskbar in Windows 7 and simply declared it as a superior one, long-time users of Windows have been frustrated at being unable to use it the way they were accustomed to in classic versions of Windows. Not only did the reimagined taskbar change the design of many features without giving any choice but it also eliminated some features of the classic Taskbar. Let us see how we can make the new Taskbar work exactly like the good, old classic Taskbar. You will need to install a free third party program.
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Not all features of the Windows 7 and Windows 8 taskbar are bad. It does have some genuine improvements such as larger icons, the ability to rearrange icons of running apps, jump lists, and a system tray where you can easily drag and drop icons in and out of the overflow area for notifications. There are also some subtle improvements such as the date being always visible, progress bars on taskbar buttons, icon overlays to indicate status and Thumbnail Toolbars.
The new concept of pinning takes over the responsibilities of the Quick Launch toolbar but doesn't quite let you pin everything. There are definitely some improvements, but there is no reason why users should put up with the loss of many classic Taskbar features such as not being able to: ● Separate running apps from the non-running/pinned apps ● Access the right click (context menu) using only the mouse ● Ungroup multiple windows of the same app ● Reduce the extra spacing between taskbar icons and notification area icons ● See extra details in the tooltips of pinned apps ● Have multiple columns of icons for running apps when the Taskbar is vertical ● Select taskbar buttons and perform group actions on them such as group minimize, snap, close or cascade ● Turn off the Always on top behavior .....and several other limitations
Feb 02, 2012 yes, it does, the texture is a big of an eyesore / distraction. But I wish I knew what was up with this I haven't seen that alpha texture since vista. Never had it in windows 7 in aero with.
The good news is that even though Microsoft does not consider giving users flexibility in customizing the Taskbar, a third party developer, RaMMicHaeL has taken it upon himself to fix all these issues and allow us to tweak the taskbar to our liking. His free app, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, lets you configure the taskbar exactly the way you want and it does so using its own code, not by tweaking registry values. Let us see some of the features and options it offers to make the new taskbar behave like the classic one.
Oct 30, 2009 This is very useful software, but i really missed Windows 7 default taskbar texture! Can you please add it too? Mar 20, 2010.
Oct 29, 2012 New Feature Request, The ability to adjust the hot spot zone dimensions of an auto hiding windows 7 Taskbar. In my case I like the task bar in vertical / right hand side mode. In my case I like the task bar in vertical / right hand side mode.
A walkthrough of basic options in 7+ Taskbar Tweaker:
Download 7+ Taskbar Tweaker. It is free to use. The installer comes with a Standard option as well as a Portable option. If you choose Standard, the settings are stored in the registry. The Portable version will store settings in INI files. I recommend you to do a Standard installation so you can easily delete the Registry values at any time to get back the default settings.
7+ Taskbar Tweaker Tray Icon
Once you open it, it shows its tray (notification area) icon. Click the icon to access its regular options and right click it to access more Advanced Options. Let's explore some of the basic options one by one.
The 'right click' option lets you change what right clicking on the Taskbar buttons does. I recommend you set it to Standard window menu instead of the default Jump List. You can still access jumplists in 3 different ways even if you set regular right click to show the context menu. You can Shift+right click with the mouse to show the jumplist. You can drag any taskbar button towards the center of the screen to show the jumplist. Finally, you can use the keyboard combination hotkeys, Win+Alt+Number # to access an app's jumplist.
The next option lets you configure what middle click does. The classic taskbar had no use for middle click so you can set this one to anything you want. I set it to Close.
The next option deals with what dropping something over to the taskbar button does. By default, when you drag a file from Explorer or the Desktop to an icon on the taskbar, it gets pinned to the icon's jumplist. You can change this so dragging a file opens it with the program you dragged it to. In the classic taskbar, you could drag a file to an icon inside Quick Launch to open it. You could also drag a file over to a running app's icon, wait for the window to get focused, or Alt-Tab to it, and then drop it inside the window. I personally leave the default option to 'Pin to' because I can hold down Shift while dragging to do an Open With.
The next option lets you turn off those thumbnail previews, so that only a tooltip shows like the classic Taskbar did, or turn the thumbnail previews into a list. Thumbnail previews are useless and annoying for me because they popup at the most inopportune times and show nothing useful because they are so small. Moreover, if there is more than one window of an app open, the thumbnails looks very similar and it's difficult to distinguish between the two without hovering over the thumbnails to preview the actual window. So I recommend you change this option to List.
Thumbnails vs List
Bonus Tip: Windows includes a hidden secret registry value to customize this particular behavior. You can set the following registry value so for a single app, a thumbnail shows but if there are more than 1 windows of the app open, it automatically shows a list. This is actually better than 7+ Taskbar Tweaker's option so if you set the registry value instead, set the 7+TT option to 'Show thumbnail preview (default)'. Note that after setting the registry value, you must restart Explorer.exe.
The next option controls thumbnail behavior. Checking 'Drag to reorder' allows thumbnails to be rearranged just like taskbar buttons. If you changed thumbnails to a list, you can drag list items up and down too. I also recommend checking 'Left click on the active thumbnail minimizes the window' as this was the classic Taskbar behavior. This is useful if you taskbar buttons are combined.
Check 'Remove extra gap between items' so icons are placed less far apart. We covered this option in detail.
The Grouping and Combining section is the most important. The classic Taskbar allowed you to turn off grouping whereas the new one doesn't let you change this unless you use 7+TT. Set this to 'Don't group'. Also check 'Don't group pinned items', so you can cleanly separate running apps from non-running apps. This option is important to reduce the distance the mouse needs to travel to switch between running apps.
The next option lets you always combined grouped buttons or never combine them. Personally, feel any form of combining is not intuitive because it requires more clicks to switch between apps. Also, grouping eliminates the ability to freely drag individual app window buttons. So set this to 'Don't combine grouped buttons'. There are also options to combine items but decombine them when the mouse hovers over them. Such level of customization is outstanding. Kudos to RaMMicHaeL for giving what Microsoft didn't.
The section 'Left click on combined item' will be of interest to those who prefer combined buttons but would have Windows open last window if inactive, otherwise open thumbnail preview.
The next couple of options in the last column let you customize the taskbar behavior with mouse wheel. If you use a mobile device such as a laptop which has a touchpad or a touch screen tablet, these options aren't important.
The 'Double click on empty space' option is another useful one. It can do various functions - Show Desktop, show a sticky Alt-Tab (same as Ctrl+Alt+Tab), open Task Manager, show a Taskbar Inspector, toggle mute the system volume, toggle the Taskbar's auto-hide behavior, invoke Flip 3D or toggle between the Start Menu and Start screen (on Windows 8). Again, the abundant level of customization is simply superb. I set it to Taskbar Inspector since all other features have direct keyboard shortcut hotkeys in Windows. The Taskbar Inspector is a rather amazing feature of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker.
What is the Taskbar Inspector:
The Taskbar Inspector lets you view AppIDs of desktop apps (since only desktop apps get a taskbar icon as of Windows 8.1). I have written in the past about AppUserModelIDs which let you directly launch their respective target applications. AppIDs are stored in the registry (for Modern apps) and can also be stored inside shortcuts. Shortcuts with the AppUserModelID property are used by some desktop programs and all Windows 8 Modern apps for launching.
The Taskbar Inspector uses AppIDs to let you further control the grouping of taskbar icons per app! You can right click an AppID to control if that app always shows labels, or is always or never combined/grouped. You can also select multiple running apps/tasks in the Taskbar Inspector and right click them to group close, minimize or snap them (Tile horizontally and vertically). Once you open Taskbar Inspector, you can operate it using the keyboard too. Ctrl+A selects all items, and Ctrl/Shift keys let you select tasks, just as you would select files in Explorer.
Well, that's it for now. You can see that 7+ Taskbar Tweaker is an extraordinary app. The Advanced Options of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker are covered in another article.
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Classic Shell includes one of the most popular Start menu replacements for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10 along with a bunch of unique customization options for Explorer and Taskbar. When we cover various tips and tricks related to Classic Shell, our readers often ask us about good looking Start menu skins. Today, I would like to share a collection of excellent skins for Classic Shell to style your Start menu.
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To install a skin, copy the .skin or .skin7 file to C:Program FilesClassic ShellSkins. Then open Classic Start Menu Settings and go to the 'Start Menu Style' tab. Switch to the appropriate style (Windows 7 style for *.skin7 or Classic with two columns/Classic for *.skin). After picking the style, click the 'Select skin...' blue link which will take you to the Skin tab. Pick the skin you just copied from the dropdown and adjust the skin options as required.
Here are the skins we liked. Windows Longhorn Hillel Demo The first skin is Windows Longhorn Hillel Demo Start Menu:
This is a retrophase skin which repeats the appearance of pre-release versions of Windows Longhorn. This operating system was never released and superseded by Windows Vista. However, its unique appearance and wonderful look still impress many people. You can grab this skin here: [Skin7] Windows Longhorn Hillel Demo Start Menu
Plex Replay Like the previous skin, Plex Replay uses ideas from Windows Longhorn. Plex was the default skin of Longhorn for many builds. The skin makes the Start menu look exactly it was in Longhorn.
This skins exists in boths variants. Plex Replay for classic/classic two columns menu:
Plex Replay for the Windows 7 style menu:
Visit the link here to get the taskbar texture. Your desktop can look like this:
Windows Vista Taskbar Texture
Royale Our next skin is a set of excellently reproduced Windows XP Start menus. Windows XP users might be familiar with the popular Royale skins and its Noir, Zune and Embedded variants. The 'Royale' skin pack brings them back to modern Windows versions where Classic Shell runs:
You can get it here: Windows XP Royale Skin.
Start8 Skin
The next skin is specially designed to fit the flat appearance of modern Windows versions like Windows 8 and Windows 10. It is simple and beautiful. It was inspired by Start8's look:
Get it here: Start8 Skin V2.5
Gray Classic The skin Gray Classic is designed for the Windows 7 menu style of Classic Shell. It provides a dark skin which Windows 10 users with dark mode or high contrast mode will like. Definitely good work:
Windows 7 Taskbar Texture Download
Get it here: Gray Classic
WIN7LIKE The skin WIN7LIKE is designed to be used with Windows 7 menu style of Classis Shell. It will look best on Windows versions which have glass, that is, Windows 7 and Windows 10. For Windows 10, it will look better if transparency for the taskbar and Start menu is turned on from the Settings app. This skin reproduces the exact look of Windows 7 Aero Glass Start menu. It is recommended to all Windows 7 fans who switched to Windows 10 but miss the classic menu's appearance:
Get it here: WIN7LIKE
clrSharp1 2 3
Windows 7 Taskbar Download For Vista
This skin can be used with Classic and Windows 7 menu styles of Classic Shell. It looks clean and nice. Initially created for the Clearscreen Sharp visual style/theme on Windows 7, it can be used in any Windows version without the mentioned theme.
If you like it, read in detail about this skin here: clrSharp1 2 3
Vista Start menu This is an excellent replica of the genuine Windows Vista Start menu. Get it here: Vista Start menu
Tenified This flat and modern skin in dark colors will fit the appearance of Windows 10. The author recommends adjusting Classic Shell settings as follows:
Enable menu glass: On
Override glass color: On
Menu glass color: 0A0A0A, although 000000 works nicely as well
Glass opacity: 40
You can get it here: Tenified
Two Tone Yet another flat skin designed for Windows 10. It reminds me of the resizable Start menu we saw in early builds of Windows 10 which was replaced with the Modern/Universal Start menu which shipped eventually. Looks great:
You can get it here: Two Tone
Windows 7 Basic Taskbar Texture
This is our first look at some of the best looking skins for Classic Shell. If you like them, we will follow up with more skins. What is your favorite skin? Tell us in the comments.
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