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Journal SlashChick's Journal: Does this f***in' annoy anyone else?! 44

Journal by SlashChick

Where's that "Winders" topic icon... ah, yes, there it is...

Does it f'in annoy anyone else that you can't rearrange the icons on the taskbar in Windows?

Speaking of compulsive behaviors, I must have Outlook first in my taskbar. I always open it first when I start my computer.

Invariably, Outlook crashes (IMAP has issues with Outlook) and I have to close it and open it again. But now it's at the end of my taskbar... after 15 other programs, all with unsaved work or multiple things open or... whatever. I don't want to close 15 programs just to get Outlook first again. Guh!

Hey Microsoft! *thwack* Give me a little drag-and-drop thing so I can put my precious Outlook first again! Yes, I am compulsive... but I know there are many of you out there whom this affects. Speak out now and unleash your wrath! :)

Oh, and I got shot down in the election today. I voted NO on the recall. But hey, that's okay. I am okay with Arnold. I believe he'll come around to his true Democratic traits soon... and then I'll be able to laugh at all those damned conservatives who voted for him over the true right-winger, Mr. Tom "I Have Extremely Creepy Eyes" McClintock.

Not that I'm vindictive. Not at all. :D

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Does this f***in' annoy anyone else?! More

Does this f***in' annoy anyone else?!

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  • i sure hope you're right about arnold. i hope his jubilant wife is happy in part because now he can show his true colors. i can't imagine her being all that happy if he's just going to be a front for conservative puppetmasters.
    • i sure hope you're right about arnold. i hope his jubilant wife is happy in part because now he can show his true colors. i can't imagine her being all that happy if he's just going to be a front for conservative puppetmasters.

      I very much hope he doesn't lurch to the left; right now, his policies look very good (and far from left-wing). Since he moved to America to escape the crushing burden of European socialist governments, why on earth would you expect him to want to be a front for left-wing puppetmas

      • We've got some miscommunication going on here. conservatives are generally Republican. In the USA that means right-wing, not left-wing.

        I fear he'll be a front for conservative Republicans who helped him get into office.

        While he might be fiscally a Republican, on social issues he could be more like a Democrat. I hope his wife is so happy in part because now he doesn't have to campaign according to the Republican party line.

        I voted against the recall and for Camejo. I don't like Davis, but he was bette
        • Correction: I voted for Bustamante. I'm tired and Camejo was the first Latino-sounding name I remembered.
        • We've got some miscommunication going on here. conservatives are generally Republican. In the USA that means right-wing, not left-wing.

          I know. No miscommunication, I meant precisely what I said: he's a Republican, and has never suggested otherwise AFAICS.

          I fear he'll be a front for conservative Republicans who helped him get into office.

          Unlikely; he's a Republican because that's where a large part of his own agenda lies. He can't stand the insane overspending of the Democrats, and the difference betw

          • I wouldn't expect him to want to be a front for left-wing puppetmasters - after years of campaigning for the Republican Party and being an outspoken critic of big government. I do worry that because of his political inexperience and possible ignorance on many issues, he'll become a front for right-wing puppetmasters. Yes I see you think he's more libertarian.
            • I do worry that because of his political inexperience and possible ignorance on many issues, he'll become a front for right-wing puppetmasters.

              I doubt that's likely - he's hardly new to politics, or the Republican party. Besides, two major factors in his favor:

              First, given the situation in CA, he'll have to be focussed almost exclusively on the fiscal side - where his own instincts and policies are exactly what I, any 'right-wing puppetmasters' and any Libertarian would want anyway. The only danger ther

  • I wouldn't say it annoys me but it would be a nice feature if you could move the things around on the task bar. It does make it faster if my most used programs are the first few items on the bar.

    Dan
  • KPCC (our local NPR station in Pasadena) had a Democratic State Senator who had a good point. In a nutshell, she said that the problem with 'know nothing' officials is that because they enter office without strong, detailed positions, they tend to be easily manipulated by their (unelected) advisors, often towards the extremes of the political spectrum. As a case in point, she highlighted how George W's administration has become substantially more conservative than the positions the president ran on during
    • Arnold's unwillingness to debate his opponents, his unwillingness to comment directly on positions for the record (and, no, stuff he puts on his website doesn't count), and his proud declaration of his outsider status suggests similar weakness to me.

      1) Arnold did debate his opponents. It was broadcast nationally. Now you can argue it wasn't enough, or it wasn't in a format you liked, but clearly he was willing as he did.

      2) Positions stated on his website don't count? Whaaaa? Why? It's only valid if
      • He participated in a single debate when there were at least several more that took place only with McClintock, Huffington, Camejo, and Bustamante. The questions were provided ahead of time so he could practice his lines/sound bites.

        It just didn't seem to me like he was willing to debate on the issues.
        • It just didn't seem to me like he was willing to debate on the issues.

          This is standard practice. The front runner does not need to debate. Check out mayor Daley's debate record since he was elected (he is the democratic mayor of Chicago). He has never been to a debate since he was elected. It doesn't seem to hurt his standing.
  • ...I'd have to say that you've got other problems to worry about. :-)

    XP has the single-program-multiple-windows kludge, that works for stuff like IE, but I daresay that would just wind you up even more...

    MT.
  • I certainly wish there was a was to set the priority in a variety of the windows shortcuts. alt-Tab is one of my favorites but it only works in the order you opened the apps(as far as i know... please provide clues if I'm wrong) i think it would be so much nicer if you could set a property for each applications order of appearance in alt-tab switches for example. Would be cool if you could set it to icon mode or text mode versus text below icons.
    • alt-Tab is a most-recently-used list, based on the order in which the applications last had focus - the app that you were just using is first in the list (and the alt-tab comes up with the second icon highlighted).
    • For fun try the windows button-tab combo. It will let you "scroll" through the programs on your taskbar and then you simply hit enter to select one.

      Heck, after a single win-tab you can use the arrow keys in your section and then just tab alone to get to the other tool bars like quick laung and then arrow key around in them.
  • Let me see...
    • Linux... check
    • X11... check
    • fvwm2... check
    • Windows taskbar... hmmm. can't seem to find one

    So no, I guess I don't have that problem. Be honest, you knew some annoying pedant was going to bring it up, so I figured it might as well be me :-)

  • Yeah, the taskbar thing is a bitch. I am also annoyed that you can only display three icons on the quick launch bar in XP. When I used 98, I had all my frequently used programs right down there, a click away. This is a upgrade?

    Let me give you a hint, you can't have more than about 4 or 5 windows open at a time if you want the fine bit of programming from Redmond not crashing processes. That's a real limit, deal with it.

    Also, as for Ah-nold, I'm sorry, I apologize in advance, and I promise this is the

    • You can put as many things as you want in XP's quicklaunch, but to resize it, first you have to right click on the taskbar somewhere and unselect 'lock taskbar.'

      And I generally run my xp desktop with a hell of a lot more than 'four or five' apps open.

      • "You can put as many things as you want in XP's quicklaunch, but to resize it, first you have to right click on the taskbar somewhere and unselect 'lock taskbar.'"

        Try it. Reboot. Oops!

        "And I generally run my xp desktop with a hell of a lot more than 'four or five' apps open."

        I guess I just can't make this OS work. Must be my applications, or my hardware, or my Linux partitions
        • Try it. Reboot. Oops!

          Works fine for me, and always has. Maybe it's a problem with your system?

          That being said, whatever the reason it is Windows' fault, and it's pretty stupid.

          --Dan
        • "You can put as many things as you want in XP's quicklaunch, but to resize it, first you have to right click on the taskbar somewhere and unselect 'lock taskbar.'"

          Try it. Reboot. Oops!

          Works fine for me - I have about 10 icons in the quicklaunch area. NAP.

          "And I generally run my xp desktop with a hell of a lot more than 'four or five' apps open."

          I guess I just can't make this OS work. Must be my applications, or my hardware, or my Linux partitions

          I always have a minimum of 6 applications running on m
  • Oh, and I got shot down in the election today. I voted NO on the recall. But hey, that's okay. I am okay with Arnold. I believe he'll come around to his true Democratic traits soon... and then I'll be able to laugh at all those damned conservatives who voted for him over the true right-winger, Mr. Tom "I Have Extremely Creepy Eyes" McClintock.

    Just don't let Arnie get close enough to cop a feel.

    In all seriousness I don't see how having Arnold as Governor of CA increases Bush's chances of winning the state
  • No problems with Outlook Express here. No Outlook Express, no Internet Explorer, no Office. It's amazing how much more work you can get done with proper tools. ;-)
    • I use Outlook, not Outlook Express. :P

      I am typing this in Mozilla...

      I use whatever works well for me. For browsers, that's Mozilla... for email, that's Outlook. OS? Windows XP. Eh, works for me. :)

      • I use whatever works well for me.

        Then why are you using a program that crashes so often?

        IMAP has issues with Outlook

        It's a Microsoft thing to blame the protocol when the program is at fault (probably so they can say "we need a more proprietary protocol, this one doesn't work" and claim their programs are "bug free"). Maybe you meant to say "Outlook has issues with IMAP." ;-)

  • I have to have Outlook on the far left. I haven't had any problems with it crashing, but I have accidentally closed it a few times and had to reopen it. I usually close everything else and reopen it so it's at the far left again. And yes, I would LOVE to be able to sort icons on the taskbar, and I should ALSO be able to DROP FILES on icons on the task bar. (If MS can pop up a window telling me that I can't drop files on the task bar, why don't they just write the code so I CAN drop them on the task bar.

  • XP (Score:2)

    by Konster ( 252488 )
    My only problem with XP is forgetting to unplug the line to the cable modem when doing a fresh install.

    I reloaded XP onto a new disk this weekend, and within 5 minutes I was slammed with such a great volume of pings that my system ground to a halt.

    After disabling the NIC that is connected to my cable modem and loading my trojan/virus scanner, I was not surprised to find I had MSblast and the worm designed to thwart it.

    It's nice having a fully infected fresh install of XP. Now I know better. I'm going to
  • I don't use windows XP myself (don't like the EULA), but I've seen similar criticisms raised about the gnome-panel taskbar.

    So, I don't think it's just you. It's a tricky thing to do right, however. Perhaps the best implementation is Apple's dock on MacOSX. Although it has a dynamically assigned order for ad-hoc apps that you run tacked onto the end of the dock, you can make as many static icons for frequently-used apps as you want and put them in the order that you want, and that order is preserved. It's n
    • So, I don't think it's just you. It's a tricky thing to do right, however.

      Opera 7 does it right. I especially like the option (introduced in the 7.20 betas?) of having new windows appear next to the window they were spawned from. The OS equivalent would be of having new app windows (new Word document, CTRL+ALT+N in Opera, etc.) open up next to the existing ones and not at the end of the taskbar stack.:)
      • Opera 7 does it right. I especially like the option (introduced in the 7.20 betas?) of having new windows appear next to the window they were spawned from. The OS equivalent would be of having new app windows (new Word document, CTRL+ALT+N in Opera, etc.) open up next to the existing ones and not at the end of the taskbar stack.:)

        Galeon also has had this feature for a long time.. It's one of the first things I enable.
  • for that reason i really like the Mac OS X Dock :) to me it serves two great purposes:
    • application launching
    • context switching
    Did you know OS X also lets you do Alt-TAB? it's actually "Apple-TAB" :). *And* pretty-much since it's inception, it's been compatible with just about any 2, 3-button and scrollwheel USB mice, including the microsoft mice :) but i'm digressing! good luck! :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This "free" utility might help you?

    http://www.onlinetoolsteam.com/TaskbarCommander/

  • YES (Score:2)

    by lommer ( 566164 )
    HELL YES!
    This has pissed me off for years - I must have winamp first. While winamp is actually fairly stable, it still ends up elsewhere for some reasons.

  • Bingo! (Score:2)

    by arb ( 452787 )
    You've hit one of my pet peeves! I need my taskbar to have Outlook Express, Windows Explorer, Visual Studio, SQl Enterprise Mangler, SQL Query Analyser, Firebird, IE, Netscape, then anything else I am using, in that order. If I have to shut down any of these, when I restart them (and I will) I want to be able to drag them into their rightful place.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Although moving stuff on the taskbar might be nice, here's something you can do until it's availabe: minimize Outlook to the system tray, and it won't clutter your taskbar.

    Here's how: linky [techtv.com]

    Personally, I think almost every program should have some sort of minimize to system tray option. This particular one requires a registry hack (which is bad), but it's there.
  • Don't bother with the icon, make a keyboard shortcut. You have to have an icon on the desktop, then open its properties, and assign your shortcut keys. Seems to only work with three-key shortcuts. I use Ctrl + Alt + {some-letter}. The thing I invoke the most gets Ctrl Alt x (because I can do it with only my left hand).
  • Hey Microsoft! *thwack* Give me a little drag-and-drop thing so I can put my precious Outlook first again!

    You're such an optimist, you still think Microsoft cares what you want.

    This is a feature I want too of course and some time I'll get around to either whining about it on the KDE wish list or coding it myself. I want this in Mozilla as well, xchat, and any program that has tabs - a way to put each tab where I want it.

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