How to change the location of icons on Win 7 taskbar?

Hello,

This little thing has been annoying me since Win 7 came out and finally figured I'd ask if there is some hack to change it.

On my task bar I have the following icons...

Internet explorer | Windows Explorer | Windows Media Player | Google Chrome | Paintshop Pro x2

When none of these programs are in the open state everything is fine, however when I open up Internet Explorer, it changes the normal small icon into the full blown Internet Explorer taskbar icon right in it's place, which means my task bar will often look like a bunch of long I.E. taskbar open icons, then the small icons for Windows explorer, mediaplayer, chrome and psp, followed by a bunch of other program icons that are open programs.

This looks sloppy and non intuitive to me.

What I would like to do is to keep all the small icons (like they were in quickbar) on the left, and any open programs to open as new full size icons on the right of all the small icons. So that I don't have a bunch of larger open program icons, followed by all the closed small icons, followed by any other open program icons.

Is this somehow possible to do?

Yes, they are all seperated the way that I like them to be as I don't care much for having to hover over an icon to see what else of that program might be open.

I guess maybe what I need to do is simply go back to using quick launch bar and not pin any programs on my task bar to make it work maybe.

Go to Taskbar, right mouse click on Properties, it launches a window with Lock the Taskbar, Autohide Taskbar, Small Icons. I have all 3 checked as I feel having the Taskbar always up is numb and simply moving the mouse pointer into that region brings it up.

In Taskbar Buttons the following options appear, Always combine, hide labels, Combine when Taskbar is full, never combine, I personally use Always combine it stacks open windows when more than one of the program which allows me to choose which I want with the mouse. I also tick Use AERO Peek to preview the desktop. I do not have any of the issues you posted about.

I did change to your setting of never combine and it is how the browser handles tabs and I don't see any way to make is smaller.

Okay, I'll try it that way for a while and see if that feels comfortable to me, although I've changed the system so that quick launch bar is active again (because I like it) and unpinned my programs that used to be pinned and moved them to quick launch bar instead (again because I like quick launch bar) but making the icons stacked and as only the icon without the text is more pleasing on the eyes, so again, I'll try it like this and see if it remains intuitive to me.

Thanks for the information.

Thanks, I found a tutorial earlier on how to enable/disable the quick launch on the taskbar. On that other tutorial (don't know if it's included in the one on this forum too) there was information on how to keep quick launch enabled because logging off or shutting down the computer on my computer would always disable the quick launch that I had previously enabled. This was fixed by going into the registry and adding a dword to a couple (two) places in the registry and now I can logoff or shut down my computer and when i return, quick launch is still there waiting for me.

Unfortunately, it's been a problem for me on both my last Gateway computer, and my new home built computer, but adding the Dword to the registry fixed it (for me) so I'm pleased as pudding that I don't have to keep re-enabling quick launch everytime that I shut down my computer.

Obviously I have no idea why you don't experience the problem and yet I and others do.

Thanks for the post.