Windows 7 "Superbar" can function like the old Taskbar

A few people are concerned that the new Superbar in Windows 7 forces you to have giant icons and that it can't be configured to work like the classical Taskbar.

It can. Here's how the new Taskbar looks by default in 69xx builds:

Here's the new Taskbar running on 6801 with labels and large icons:

Notice the file copy operating progress is also displayed in the Taskbar.

And here's the new Taskbar running with small icons and labels, and the Quick Launch toolbar:

The little gap between Explorer and Internet Explorer is due to how jump lists work in this build (an arrow pops up when you hover over the gap), as far as I know these gaps and arrows are gone in later builds and you just right click to get a the jump lists.

You can change the settings by right-clicking on an empty area of the Taskbar, go to Properties. There's an options for using small icons, and the button grouping drop down list controls if the icons have text labels or not.

So panic not those who are being freaked out by the changes to the Taskbar. :)

Update: Apparently in later builds the Quick Launch toolbar has actually been removed.

5 comments

Comment from: Mark Sowul [Visitor]
Mark SowulIs the address bar still around? That's my biggest worry, since XP SP3 removed it.

e.g. http://www.theworldofoffice.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/vista-2dtip-2dtrick-2dpic1-small.jpg
4th November 2008 @ 00:37
Comment from: Paul Smith [Member]
Paul SmithIt is still in build 6801, both old and new Taskbars (and Windows Vista SP1/SP2 beta).
4th November 2008 @ 01:38
Comment from: C@ [Visitor]
C@On the folling website


http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC24/
at around 49:10 it was asked if there would still be the classic theme and the microsoft presntor not understanding what was meant went on to say there would be no way to get to the vist taskbar you will have to use the new one this conflict with what is wrote can you please help me understand what is correct.
4th November 2008 @ 15:02
Comment from: Paul Smith [Member]
Paul SmithThe small icons, and the options to group or ungroup he mentioned is what resulted in the above. It is still however the 'new' Tasbkar with jump lists and being able to pin icons directly to it and not use Quick Launch and has the extra visual effects.
4th November 2008 @ 15:20
Comment from: pbean [Visitor]
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pbeanThis is nice except the ordering of the bar is really weird and the buttons are really large. Before in Windows XP and Vista if you had a bar with a height of two buttons, all buttons were resized to all have an equal size. However now they all get their own size so it looks really, really messy if you have a lot of windows open. On top of that the buttons are about one and a half times bigger than before, so a task bar with a height of 2 or 3 buttons gets really large with insanely large buttons, which is totally unnecessary.
29th August 2009 @ 07:58