Change the size (width) of taskbar buttons on Windows 7
Windows 7 by default uses only icons on the taskbar. You can change this easily whenever you wish, using a small and free utility called Taskbar Labels. But what can you do, if it is impossible to read information displayed by various programs on taskbar buttons, because the default Windows buttons, even when text is activated, are not large enough? For example, Deluge, an otherwise great application, displays its name before download and upload rates, making impossible for users to see on the taskbar real-time updates.
To make the Windows 7 taskbar buttons wider than their default size, you need to open regedit and navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics
Create there a new String Value with the name MinWidth. Double click on MinWidth and give it a value from 38 to 500. A value of 250-260 would give to your taskbar buttons enough space, in order for you to read useful information displayed by torrent clients, etc.
If you don’t feel comfortable with using the registry editor yourself, just download and run this simple registry file (2 KB).
* Use Taskbar Labels to return instantly to the Windows 7 default icon-only behavior, when you don’t need to see any text at all beside taskbar icons.
Select Windows Freeware
here’s an idea: live-expanding/contracting of the default taskbar item width. (to see more info in the taskbar labels – or less – dynamically as you need – instantly and intuitively!)
you could basically integrate this function into your ‘Taskbar Labels’ app – have ‘no label’ as the lowest point of contraction (which the user might need to go to if they’re doing a super session with gazillion programs and files open), and if the user wants to slowly start expanding it (because often the first letter of the taskbar window is enough to work out what word document no 5 of 7 was!), they just start doing Alt+Right and keep going with the right arrow or flexibly back again with the left arrow.
and of course, toggle between no label text and, say, call it ‘auto fit’ (which is the windows default, or specified with MinWidth) for jumping back and forth between nothing and normal amount of text quickly (like you can already with Taskbar Labels).
Now I just realised that there’s one UI problem: if you keep expanding the taskbar items with Alt+Right, depending on how many items you have open eventually, windows will start pushing items into a second (and third and so on) drop-down row, bringing the problem of two-click process to find the item you want and thus kind of defeating the purpose of all this!
…
Cheers
Mark