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IDEA: Second Taskbar On Single Monitor

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letmein:
I would love to have a program that allows you to have a second taskbar on a single monitor (not like Ultramon which is for a two or more monitors only).

Right now I've actually sort of created my own second taskbar that looks good but is lacking the Windows taskbar functionality that I want. I also want to put the notification area onto my second taskbar and solely have pinned and running applications on the Original Windows Taskbar.

With a combination of DesktopCoral, Rainmeter, and RocketDock I've gotten as close as I can get. I've attached a screenshot of what I currently have.

MilesAhead:
It would be nice if Windows let you detach the notification area as a floating panel.  Then you could just turn Taskbar off and use RocketDock.  You probably already looked at it but there was some stuff on RocketDock site about replacing the Taskbar and just using RocketDock.  The quirky bit seems to be the notification area.  Plus I don't think it allows 2 instances.

I notice in W7 I'd like to be able to restrict running programs to an area so that when you hover the mouse and get that big preview, it doesn't cover RocketDock.  At this point I changed the hover time so the preview isn't triggered.  It just shows the text in a caption. Moving RocketDock along a vertical edge of the screen has the side effect that the icons you want to click most you have to reach way up to the top of the screen.

I wish one of these launch panels would come up with an Icon Order Flipper so you can reverse the order of icons by a check box.  Then moving from horizontal to vertical and back would be practical.

Out of curiosity, why 2 taskbars?

letmein:
Out of curiosity, why 2 taskbars?
-MilesAhead (November 20, 2009, 01:56 PM)
--- End quote ---
I am guessing you have never used Ubuntu (or a similar distro) before. Ubuntu comes standard with two taskbars (one on the top, one on the bottom of the screen), once you get use to it, it's really productive. I'm a huge Linux fan and I've always found being able to have as many taskbars as you want to be a very useful feature.

Windows 7 has drawn me back to Windows. For over a decade I have wanted to add a second taskbar in Windows. I like to organize things in a way that is convenient to me, and that's particularly true when it comes to computing. As for having two taskbars, if you look at it logically, it makes sense.

My screen is 16:9 (1366x768) - obviously I want to maximize vertical viewing space for websites (and etc). So having the taskbar on the side of the screen is a given. I often run a lot of applications at once - I want them all to fit on my taskbar. Resizing the taskbar while it's on the side of the screen does NOT add another row ((technically) column). Resized: http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/9504/donationcoder.png

Small icons look bad (shadows are crooked). While the taskbar is on the side of the screen, using small icons does not make the taskbar any smaller. Small icons make the taskbar look bulky (for lack of a better word to describe it), not to mention they're kind of small for viewing on my 15' laptop screen. Basically I just want to maximize the room for running and pinned applications while still having quicklaunch icons and everything else. I actually got rid of the start menu button since it's useless to me as I always open the start menu with the windows key.

Those are the reasons off the top of my head, I'm sure I could think of more if I tried.

MilesAhead:
Thanks for the reply.  The heaviest I got into Linux was Slackware 3.0. I played around a bit with Redhat and Mandrake but that Slackware made you find out what scripts you needed to work in /etc and subdirectories. :) Back then some of the mouse stuff drove me crazy and I tried to set it up as much like Windows as I could.  Now I find some of the things Linux users took for granted I'm using in Windows, such as drag the mouse to copy to clipboard.  I hate going through a bunch of drags, menus, and clicks just to copy a line from a web page to clipboard.  In Firefox I use AutoCopy but for reasons I'll never fathom Opera still doesn't have anything similar. I still can't bring myself to launch on single click.  Guess I'll never get the Dos/Windows/OS2 background out of my psyche. 



My main focus has been getting all the icons off the desktop.  Finally I have both my machines set up so that AutoArrange cannot victimize me!!  That's why I've been messing with RocketDock, FARR and some home made launcher stuff.

app103:
If you want a bar to hold more shortcuts, you can easily do that in windows by making a folder of shortcuts and then dragging it from explorer to the edge of the screen you want it on. (this has been possible since at least Win98)

Windows will allow you to have up to 3 of them (plus the taskbar), one on each edge. The only difference is that the extra ones won't have a start button, tray, or running application buttons.

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