Windows 10: Taskbar button behavior

build 14393.231

On my desktop task bar I have pinned shortcuts to Word, excel and Firefox. When I click on the Firefox shortcut, a separate Firefox window button appears.

When I select the Word shortcut, it becomes to a Word document button.

I know Im bringing up ancient history by mentioning xp, but the toolbar and taskbar used to be separate.

Not only does it get messy because the taskbar the pinned items positions and the buttons positions get mixed up, but in the case with Word already being open, the only way to launch a fresh Word document is to go into the already opened document, go to settings >new > blank document > create.

Very inconvenient.

Another one of those head-scratching microsoft design things? Or can something be done?

I guess I could put a word shortcut on my desktop on pin one to the start menu, but it would be nice to have it work like it should, IMO

thanks

:)

 

Start menu, Search and Task View icons not responding.

Original Title:

I am using Windows10, on a desktop, with all the updates applied. Last night when I tried to switch off, the start button in the task bar refused to display anything, just changing color when the lefthand mouse button or the "enter" button is pressed as
well as the Search and Task View icons. Today in addition to that behavior my opened programs do not show in the Taskbar. How do I correct this behavior?

 

windows taskbar behavior

2018 minus 1995 equals 23. windows has been using a taskbar for twenty-three years now, and it still doesn't work right. maximized windows, including explorer, sometimes will be on top of the taskbar in auto-hide mode. the only way to fix it is to turn off
auto-hide, maybe resize the offending window, then turn auto-hide back on. i'm currently using win 10 64 on all my machines, but i've experienced this with every version of windows with a taskbar: 95, 98, 2k, xp, 7, 8, and 10. EVERY SINGLE ONE.

that's pathetic. how is it that a trillion-dollar company can't fix their stupid taskbar after more than twenty years? this question is more rhetorical than practical. and don't start asking me about drivers or a corrupt registry or my system configuration.
you're not listening: it has always done this, on every single windows machine i've ever used.

why do i even try? (also a rhetorical question)

 

You could use the XP-style Quick Launch bar in W7 (instead of pinning icons to the Taskbar).

In W10, it seems that the best you can hope for is to create a toolbar. *Sad

Have a look at this tutorial:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4...dows-10-a.html

 

It would be if that was the only way - but it isn't. Right-click on the word icon on the taskbar, select Microsoft Word.

The Right-click also brings up a list of your recently opened Word documents - at least it will if 'show recently opened items in Jump Lists on Start or taskbar' is turned on in Settings/Personalisation/Start. Click on one to open it.

 

Yes. IMO, that's the best care scenario for those of us with a ton of shortcuts. I don't know how I would have managed them without Quick launch toolbars, all the way back to XP, and still today. I don't think a lot of people are aware of them.

If you right click on the toolbar and deselect "Show Text" and Show Title", it actually kind of mimics the way things looked in XP, by displaying only the shortcut icons, until you run out of task bar room to the right and a drop down menu appears.

I was hoping to display as many of those most used icons as possible before the drop down menu, by taking a few of them and pinning them to the task bar, but the way the Win 10 task bar behaves, I'm better off leaving them where they are.

BTW, the only complaint I have with quick launch toolbar menus is that, when I first boot to the desktop, they have up to a 10 second delay until they load, where they first display a blank menu. The system actually freezes until they load. And sometimes they display the first portion of the menu under the task bar. Do you experience the same things?

Appreciate the suggestion.