by softwer enginier mayur khokhar
Task Bar Settings
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You can change the settings on the Windows
XP Taskbar (that thin strip running across the bottom of your screen - from the
Start button to the clock). Play around with these settings as we go along!
To get at the settings for the Taskbar,
click Start and then Control Panel. From the Control Panel,
double
click Taskbar and Start Menu. This will bring up a dialogue box. You can
also bring this dialogue box up by clicking the Taskbar with your Right mouse
button. From the menu, select Properties. You should see the following:
Lock the Taskbar
Some people like to have the Taskbar at the
top of the screen, or at the sides. To move the Taskbar, you click on it with
the left mouse button. Keep the mouse button held down and drag to the very
edges of your screen, or to the very top. Let go of the left mouse button and
your Taskbar will be relocated. To stop this from happening, put a tick in this
box Lock the taskbar.
Auto-hide the Taskbar
If you want you're your Taskbar to disappear
when you move your mouse over it, place a tick in the box Auto-hide the Taskbar.
If you've accidentally enabled this, and are getting tired of your Taskbar
hiding every time your mouse is at the bottom of the screen, then take the tick
out.
Keep the Taskbar on top of other windows
If you have this box
un-ticked then the Taskbar will disappear altogether when you have a program
maximized on your screen. It means, for example, that you won't see the clock or
the Start button if you're typing away in Microsoft Word.
Group similar Taskbar buttons
By similar, Microsoft mean similar
programmed. It's when you have say Internet Explorer windows staked one on top
of the other. Put a tick in the box and you may see the preview window at the
top of the Taskbar properties page change to this:
The number 2 means two Internet Explorer
windows are open. To see which pages you have open, click on the white arrow.
Show quick launch
Arguably the most useful item on the
Taskbar! When you put a tick in this box, you'll see some shortcuts appear, just
the right of the green Start button. This allows you to click the shortcut and
quickly launch the programmed. If you've ever had a version of Windows before XP
then you would have seen this all the time. But if you upgrade to XP then it's
hidden by default. To get it back, put a tick in the box Show quick launch.
You'll then see something like the following appear:
The three new icons are, from left to right,
shortcuts to Internet Explorer, a shortcut to quickly minimize or maximize all
open programs, and a shortcut to the Windows Media Player.
You can delete these and add your own. Right
click an icon, and then select delete from the menu that appears. To add a quick
launch shortcut to a favourite programme, you can drag and drop into this area.
The image below shows the process in action. We want to drag the Firefox icon to
the Quick Launch area.
Click on an Icon with your Left mouse
button:
Hold down the left mouse button and drag to
the quick launch area:
Let go of the left mouse button when the
cursor changes to a black line:
When you let go of your left mouse button,
the new icon should appear on the Quick Launch bar. Click it once to start the
program:
Hide Inactive icons
The inactive icons are the ones near the
clock. If you have too many icons there, then they can occupy a lot of the
Taskbar area. Much more than you'd like. To hide the ones you don't use often,
put a tick in the box Hide Inactive Icons. Your taskbar will then change to
this:
The white arrows indicates hidden icons.
Move your mouse over the arrows to reveal the hidden icons in the Taskbar.
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