The Taskbar
The Taskbar displays the programs that are open and running on the desktop. You can click the button of the program that you want to bring to the front to work in it. The Taskbar can be customized with different toolbars, and it can be resized or even moved to one of the four sides of your monitor screen.
The Taskbar in Vista is enhanced by the use of live thumbnails: images of the running windows in real time. For example, if one of your open windows is running a video, you will see that video running in real time in the thumbnail off the Taskbar.
Windows 7's Taskbar works much like that of Vista, but with further enhancements.
If you have multiple instances of the same program open, you will see multiple thumbnails when you mouse over the program in the Taskbar. In this example, I have two instances of My Computer open. Hovering the mouse over either the folder or the Computer item will show both thumbnails. You can then click one of those thumbnails to open the window on your desktop.
Adjusting the Taskbar Location and Size
The Taskbar can be moved or resized to meet your needs.
The first thing you will need to do is to unlock the Taskbar. This is done by right-clicking in an open area in the Taskbar, and unchecking Lock the Taskbar.
If you want to move the Taskbar to another edge of your screen, you can then left-click an open area of the Taskbar, and drag it to the desired location. When the Taskbar is where you want it, remember to lock it again.
You can adjust the height of the Taskbar. Unlock it, then place your cursor on the edge of the Taskbar until you see a double arrow, then drag the edge until the Taskbar reaches your desired height. When I was using XP, I'd do this so I could have the Quick Launch toolbar in one row, and my open programs in another.
Another thing you can do with your Taskbar is to hide it altogether. You do this by right-clicking the Taskbar and selecting Properties.
Check Auto-hide the taskbar, and the taskbar will disappear until you place the mouse cursor at the bottom of the screen. When the cursor is there, the Taskbar will appear. Move the cursor away, and the Taskbar hides again.
Another Windows 7 Taskbar Tweak
Another way to tweak the Taskbar in Windows 7 is to adjust the size of the icons for open programs.
Note above that three windows are open using Windows Explorer, and that there are three items on the Taskbar. If you want to save room on the taskbar when you have many windows open, right-click the Taskbar, and select Properties.
Under the Taskbar tab, select Always combine, hide labels, then Apply and OK.
Now note that the Tasbar icons are stacked, taking up much less room. If you want to open a specific window, you can simply mouse over the icons, wait for the thumbnails to come up, and select the thumbnail that corresponds to the window you want to open.
Jumplists
In Windows 7, if you right-click an icon in the Taskbar, you will get a jumplist. This is a list of actions that are available for that shortcut.
The image to the left shows the default jumplist for Outlook 2010. Note that you can immediately send a new e-mail or just go to the inbox from here.
This is also a way to close a program. You can close it normally, using the window controls in the upper right corner, or you can right-click the icon, and select Close Window.
You can also remove the icon from the Taskbar by clicking Unpin this program from the Taskbar.