Some time ago, I came across a neat little program called Taskbar Shuffle. It does exactly what it sounds like it does: Taskbar Shuffle gives you the power to rearrange the buttons on your taskbar. According to the website:
Taskbar Shuffle is a simple, small, free utility that lets you drag and drop your Windows taskbar buttons to rearrange them. Here’s a full feature list:
Reorder your taskbar buttons by dragging and dropping them
Reorder your tray icons in the same way
Reorder tasks in a grouped button’s popup menu in the same way
Middle-click to close programs on your taskbar
Works with UltraMon taskbars
Tweak taskbar button grouping
During a normal day, I’m on the computer for more than eight hours. So as you can imagine, I’ve gotten used to having things certain ways; my taskbar not excluded.
I like to have my browsers first, Outlook next, then my productivity applications, and finally all of the random windows. This makes switching between applications much easier.
Before Taskbar Shuffle, if a program were to crash, or otherwise get closed, it would throw everything off when I relaunched it. But thanks to this little gem of an application, I don’t need to worry about that any more. If I have to restart Firefox, for example, I can just grab it and put it back next to my Quick Launch menu. One thing you should keep in mind, though, is that it keeps related buttons grouped together. For example, if you have multiple messenger windows open, if you try to drag one, it will bring the others with it. I’m not saying this is a fault with the program; on the contrary, I think this feature is smart.
Taskbar Shuffle is very good at what it does. I have it auto-start with Windows, and never have to think about it. Taskbar Shuffle is “just there” and leaves a small footprint in terms of resources. It’s free and works with Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT, XP, and Vista (32-bit versions only.)
I love tech, but don’t have as much time or money to spend on it as I’d like. I get what I need to sustain my Geek vicariously through other sources and pass it along to you.
