Change behavior of Windows XP Taskbar icons

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Guest

Just upgraded to an XP box that belonged to a fellow/former laid-off
co-worker. One thing that's not too good about this box is the obnoxious way
task bar icons slide all over the place when programs are opened or closed.
On my short-term-prior use Windows 2000 Pro box, the icons used to simply and
discretely widen or shrink in size dependent on what was available. Despite
search attempts, I can't find a method to control/adjust for this.

Do any of you know something?

Thanks!

jl
 
Just upgraded to an XP box that belonged to a fellow/former laid-off
co-worker. One thing that's not too good about this box is the obnoxious way
task bar icons slide all over the place when programs are opened or closed.
On my short-term-prior use Windows 2000 Pro box, the icons used to simply and
discretely widen or shrink in size dependent on what was available. Despite
search attempts, I can't find a method to control/adjust for this.

Do any of you know something?

Thanks!

RIGHT-CLICK on an empty space on the Task Bar. Try locking the task bar, see
if that helps.
 
Dick, what you are seeing is not default XP behavior.
Are you using the settings from your former co-worker?
And can you go into more detail? I cannot picture what is happening, only
know that my XP behaves like your Win 2000 did with respect to taskbar
buttons.
 
T. Waters:

You actually responded to me (jl) and thanks. Dick mentioned locking the
taskbar and that has no effect. It is very possible that this behavior had
been set up by the prior user--I'm not really sure I can verify that as there
were a number of people who had to use the machine before I was actually able
to get my hands on it.

The task icons do this very aggressive and noticable slide to the left when
tasks are closed in front of them and they re-size their width just after
this left-slide-bias routine. The effect is rather annoying when I'm busy
with a number of apps as it catches the eye and takes focus away from the
task at hand.

Thanks to both of you for responding so quickly!

jl
 
Go to your system properties in control panel or winkey+pause/break. Now go
to the Advanced tab, click the Settings button in the Performance area. In
the Visual Effects tab, scroll down the list and uncheck "Slide taskbar
buttons". Hit Apply and OK. See if that takes care of the problem.
 
Dear Brian, this fixed a problem I had where I had changed the SIZE of my
scroll bars--but I also changed the default size of headings coming back on
web pages. For example, at the top of this page the heading "Reply to "Re:
Change behavior..." is really huge. I caused this problem myself--but can't
remember how. It seems that I adjusted a "size" parameter. I was working in
Excel at the time, but must have changed it system-wide. Very annoying.
Your advice worked partly, but not for these headings. Thanks in advance,
jojo
 
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