The taskbar in Windows Vista has been greatly improved in apperance than any of the previous versions of Windows. You can choose between the Aero themed taskbar that has a glass like transparency effect, or you can choose to have aero switched off that will display a black taskbar by default with a glassy shine to it. You can also choose the classic grey-type taskbar that were usaed in Windows 95/98, Windows 2000/2003 and others. most of the functinality of the previous taskbars have been kept in the Windows Vista one; you casn still choose to have a quick launch bar, or if you want you can disable it. You can also still create your own toolbars as well as choose which pre existing ones are shown or not, such as the Windows Media Player toolbar. There is still a notification area to the right which has all your currently running docked applications which allow you to access various options or launch various applications depending on the program running.
The Windows Media Player toolbar can be selected to appear by right clicking on an empty part of the taskbar and choosing toolbars and then ticking or unticking the particular toolbar, in this case, the media player one. Once it is selected you will need to run Windows Media Player, you can then minimize media player which will show the media player toolbar. Other features seen on the tasbar above include the time in the right hand corner. If you hover your mouse over the time, you will be able to see the Date.
If you click on the time, you can see an additional analogue clock with a calendar and todays date shown. You can also access the date and time settings by clicking on Change date and time settings.. Another feature is the ability to search through the calendar which can be done easily and quickly by clicking on the right and left arrows depending on which date you wish to look up, Note: this will not affect your date settings.
When you click on Change date and time settings you will see the following window:
Above, you can change the date and time by clicking on the Change date and time button, you can Change the time zone by clicking on the Change time zone button and you can turn on or off the reminder that Windows is going to automatically change the time when daylight saving time begins. At the top of the window there are 2 other tabs; Additional clock and Internet time. Additional clocks allows you to have extra clocks that display times in other countries/time-zones. Internet Time allows your pc to keep the time in synchronization with an Internet time server. To create additional clocks click on the Additional clocks tab.
If you wish to enable this feature to start customizing the clocks, click on the tick next to Show this clock. If you wish to turn off the feature, you can always get back to this window and un-tick the box. Ticking the box reveals the settings:
You can choose the time zones from a drop down box, a maximum of 2 world clocks are available. You can also select a display name for the clocks to make it easier to identify the time they are displaying. If you just want to display one world time clock, make sure only the one you want is ticked. Once you have finished changing the settings, click on Apply and Ok to exit the date and time settings. You will be able to see the changes straight away by hoving your mouse pointer over the time:
You can then double click on the time and you will see a full version of your current time as well as the additional world clocks and the date.
Other features of the Vista taskbar can be accessed by right clicking on an empty space of the taskbar, such as the empy space in the screenshot above, seen at the bottom of the screenshot. Select properties after right clicking. You will see a settings window appear which will allow you to choose whether the taskbar is locked (can you move the taskbar or not). Choose whether the tasbar will auto-hide itself when your mouse is not over it. Keep the taskbar above other windows or not (set to yes by default). Group similar taskbar items - such as when you open many internet explorer or many explorer windows. Show quick launch - the icons at the left of the taskbar used for launching applications quickly. Also show window previews (humbnails) - the previews thumbnails that appear when you hover the mouse over the taskbar buttons.
The next tab is the Start Menu tab, it allows you to choose whether to have the current Vista-style start menu or whether you wish to revert back to the old style start menu. You can also select further settings for each type by clicking on Customize. You can also select whether your recently opened files and recently opened programs will be stored and siplayed as a list under the start menu.
The next tab is the Notification area that contains options for hiding inactive icons and and whether or not the clock, volume, network and power should be displayed in the notification aea.
The Toolbars tab can also be accessed by right clicking on the taskbar and going to the toolbars sub menu. This allows you to select whether the quick lanuch bar is displayed or not, whether the desktop toolbar is displayed - this will show all the icons that are currently on your desktop on the taskbar as well. The Tablet PC Input panel toolbar adds a button to allow you to easily run the input panel whenever you wish. The links toolbar displays links to sites that you add to the links section under internet explorer. The Windows media player toolbar allows you to see a small thumbnail of whats currently playing in media player as well as being able to access controls such as play, stop, pause, etc. The address toolbar allows you to enter a web address directly into the taskbar - you should consider increasing the taskbar to double the height when displaying the address bar. You can choose the size of the address bar - seen below:
