One way to make a custom toolbar in XP or Vista is to use the New Toolbar selection when you right click the taskbar. Then you can browse to a folder and turn it into a toolbar. However, if you have multiple monitors, you may in some cases have trouble docking these new toolbars on your secondary monitors. Here’s another way that will overcome that problem.
- Right click the desktop, select New and then Folder.
- Name the new folder whatever you want your new toolbar to be.
- Now drag shortcuts for the applications or files you want to access with the toolbar into the new folder.
- Drag the folder onto the monitor where you want to dock the new toolbar, if it isn’t there already.
- Now just drag the folder to any side of the screen (except the one that drags it off screen to another monitor). This will create a toolbar there with the contents of the folder.
- Right click an empty spot on the new toolbar to change the size of the icons, configure whether or not to include text with the icons, etc.
You can put any kind of file or program on these toolbars. For example, I created a toolbar that holds shortcuts to each computer on my network. You can see it going down the right side of my screen below (that’s a shot of my right-hand monitor in a three-monitor array). That’s another custom toolbar (with commonly used applications) across the bottom.
If you look closely at the network shortcuts toolbar on the right, you’ll see that it’s just a bunch of identical computer icons. That’s because I temporarily removed the text display for this screenshot, so as not to expose the names of all internal computers and servers on our network. Normally, each icon has the name of the corresponding computer under it. There’s no need for names on the little Quick Launch bar across the bottom, since the application icons identify the programs.
By the way, my wallpaper is a photo of Cindy the red-tailed hawk. I got to meet her at Rogers’ Wildlife Rehabilitation Center a few months back.
deb@shinder.net
