How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

640k — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 08:36:44 GMT

@Programmerman: Read above. The preview is of low quality (bilinear filtering) and in many cases the preview cannot distinguish instances uniquely.

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

Programmerman — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:43:26 GMT

Great, so the thumbnails are nearly useless. Hover over one for a moment and that window is brought to the front and all other windows are made fully transparent. Look at the content to see if it's what you want.

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

WndSks — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 17:12:19 GMT

@jas88: AppUserModelIDs are Win7+ but they are much better than the registry key since you have grouping control over other things, not just the exe name. Besides, maybe someone else has the same .exe name as you...

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

jas88 — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 16:32:50 GMT

From the fact this works with four separate instances of scratch, I take it this would work with, say, scratch32 and scratch64, without resorting to the undocumented registry key WndSks mentioned? (If I remember, I'll try it once I'm at a Windows machine.)

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

Rick C — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:52:10 GMT

@JamesJohnston, that is sometimes a problem. Sometimes you can tell from the shape what the right document is, though. It's probably easier if you're looking at code instead of text.

Web browsers are where the thumbnails are great, as long as you don't have a bunch of tabs open to the same page, or to similar pages on the same site.

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

JamesJohnston — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 14:36:59 GMT

In my experience, the preview thumbnails are practically useless. Three Notepad windows always look identical from the thumbnail. For that matter, I generally have the same problem with multiple windows from the same app.

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

Rick C — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:47:23 GMT

@WndSks: That's what the preview thumbnails are for. Sure, you can say you don't like them, and that's a legitimate point of view. Over time, however, I've found for me that they're usually better than what you get from full-size taskbar buttons, for most windows, and grouped taskbar icons eliminate the problem of shrinking taskbar buttons.

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

WndSks — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 10:11:33 GMT

My point is that you cannot get a Win95-Win2000 style taskbar without 3rd party apps in Win7+, at least in XP and Vista you have a choice.

Combining/Grouping makes no sense to me, I might have two Notepad windows open at the same time but that does not mean that they are related in any way.

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

xpclient — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 07:42:22 GMT

@Avi, @Draks, MS is to blame here. They changed the meaning of "group" and "combine". In XP, there was "grouping" with actually the buttons were combined. In Windows 7, what was "grouping" behavior in XP is now "combining" and only combining can be disabled. Grouping of multiple windows of same app can't be disabled unless you change the AppIDs (not an end user thing)-7TT does it. Taking away options was Julie Larson Green's idea who was in charge of Windows 7 taskbar UX.

re: How do I customize how my application windows are grouped in the Taskbar?

Drak — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 05:22:00 GMT

@WndSks: Combine means something different than 'group'. Combine means they become ONE icon/entry. Which it is not doing. Don't see the problem, really.