Windows 7 - Display open program windows in list view NOT thumbnail

Hello,

I am looking for a way, either in Windows directly, or with an add-on application like Window Blinds, to change the appearance of my Taskbar. Currently, the Taskbar has icons on it for each open application, and when I hover over the application icon, the windows that are open in that application appear below my task bar as thumbnails (since I keep my taskbar on the top of the screen). However, sometimes, when Internet Explorer has too many windows open, and thus too many thumbnails to fit on the screen (horizontally), it will display a vertical list of open windows in that app. Alongside of each open window listing is the standard RED X for closing that window as well.

I would like it to display all of my program's open windows like this all of the time, regardless of how many are open. (No more thumbnails.)

This is the only thing I want to change. If someone knows how to do this in Windows or otherwise, can you please let me know?

Thanks for your help!

~Antonio

Hello Antonio,

This can help show you how to disable the taskbar thumbnail previews.

Taskbar Thumbnail Previews - Enable or Disable

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Shawn,

Thanks for trying, but I did the task bar tweaker and disabled my thumbnails, and it did not keep the LIST of open windows. I saw that there are other options, such as choosing a high contrast view, but I do not want to do that. I want everything as is, except the thumbnails, I want as a list. It seems that, if the high contrast theme can keep the list, but not the thumbnails, then there should be a way, like with Window Blinds, to do that and keep the normal settings.

Does anyone know how to do this?

Thanks for any advice,

~Antonio

Did you use a Basic theme instead of high contrast to see if you like that instead?

Brink,

Thanks for trying, but I am really happy with the "Aero" Theme I have created. I just want it to list the open windows instead of showing thumbnails. There's gotta be a way...

Take good care,

~Antonio

FWIW, I have emailed Stardock (maker of Window Blinds). I'll let you know what they tell me... Unless anyone comes up with something in the meantime...?

~Antonio

Hopefully they or another 3rd party program will come out with a way that will retain the list of opened windows for the taskbar item, and still have a Aero theme.

Hello everyone,

I finally found a way to disable the Taskbar thumbnail preview in Windows 7, such that it now shows a list if more than one program window is open. The instructions include a registry change, so remember to backup your registry, using the export registry command, just in case something untoward happens.

This is provided by Ronnie Vernon, Microsoft MVP, on one of Microsoft's "Social" sites/forums. Unfortunately, I could not attach the original posting document since I have it saved as an XPS, which, by the way, should be a supported file format for a Windows 7 website... So, I have pasted it below. Again, the credit for this goes to Ronnie Vernon, Microsoft MVP. Sorry about the formatting, that is the way it copied, and this forum's system would not let me reformat the text to make it larger.

You can change this setting using a registry edit. Warning: Before making any changes to the registry make sure you backup any keys that you will be changing.

1. Go to Start and type regedit in the Search Box and press Enter. This will open the registry editor.
2. Navigate to the following Key. HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband.
3. With the Taskband Key selected, right click in the right side pane and select New/DWORD (32-bit) Value.
4. Name the new Value  NumThumbnails (Case Sensitive).Â
5. Double click the new NumThumbnails value and enter the number of thumbnails you would prefer to see before the List View is implemented. (For your request, you can enter the number 1) Select OK. Exit the registry editor. You must refresh the UI to see the changes. 1. Click Start. Hold down CTRL+SHIFT and Right Click an empty area on the right side of the Start Menu. Select the Exit Explorer item. 2. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC to start the Task Manager. In the Task Manager select File/New Task (Run...). Type Explorer.exe in the Run box and click OK. Check the new functionality. Hope this helps.
Thank You for using Windows 7


Best regards,

~Antonio

That's great news Antonio. Thank you for posting back with your results. I will have to have a play with this.

Thanks juanantoniod. I like that. Moving the curser over any one of them still brings that window up for a quick view. If there is only one window, then it still shows the thumbnail, but 2+ and it is a list. Tried putting 0 in the key, but that didn't seem to have any effect.

+Rep