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Submission details

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Allow users to un-group grouped taskbar icons

Submitted by pmbAustin on March 4, 2009 to Usability

Ever since Windows incorporated the taskbar and "automatic grouping", I've found it rather frustrating that there is no way to 'ungroup' a grouped taskbar button.

Example scenario: The taskbar is relatively full, and a new application is opened. This causes several instances of (say) IE to collapse into one button. This is automatic grouping. However, when that one new application is closed, the button does not automatically ungroup... even though there is obviously room to do so (since it was ungroups prior to the one application being opened and then closed).

In general, you have to close a lot more applications before the buttons will automatically ungroup.

Since there's a right-click menu on buttons, give some users some control. Add a "group" option to the right-click menu when there are multiple instances of an app open, and add an "un-group" option to all grouped taskbar buttons.

When "ungroup" is selected, if there is room, the buttons would simply be ungrouped. If there is not room, then either some other set of buttons would become grouped to make room, or if that wasn't possible (no other ungrouped multi-instances) then the task bar could go into its scrolling mode. If the user didn't like the result of the ungroup action, they could always right-click and group again.

Medium

Medium

Not fixed

Discussion (9 comments)

.Chris wrote on March 4, 2009, 1:22am

Demoted

feature is already there.

"Group when taskbar is full"

"never group"

This can be found in the taskbar setttings

pmbAustin wrote on March 4, 2009, 1:26am

No, that's not what I'm talking about. This feature is emphatically NOT there.

I want grouping, and I want group when taskbar is full... but I want to have the ability MANUALLY select to undo the autmoatic grouping on a PER-APPLICATION BASIS.

This is completely different from "never group". I like grouping. But every once in a while, after it groups, it takes forever to ungroup again, even as applications are closed. I want to be able to say "okay, ungroup this now, I'm going to be back to working with these windows".

Give the user the control, rather than making it an opaque and unfathomal and unguessable algorithm for what gets grouped and ungrouped when.

hoopla_punta wrote on March 4, 2009, 10:49am

in simple words, allow the user to specifically choose which application group(s) to group or ungroup when they want to.

xombie wrote on March 4, 2009, 1:19pm

Yes, +1

Jereck wrote on March 4, 2009, 5:50pm

I've never used grouping until now because of the lack of control

+1

Dubya wrote on March 4, 2009, 10:37pm

Isn't this why W7 now sports dynamic thumbnail previews? -1

pmbAustin wrote on March 5, 2009, 1:50am

That helps, but no, that's not the same thing.

Use case: you're working on three sets of things, one at a time. The task bar can't hold all of them at the same time. If I'm working on set one, I don't care if sets two or sets three are collapsed. I can easily switch back and forth among the first set. Now I move to working with the second set. I'd like to be able to switch between them the same way, but if they're grouped I can't... I have to hover, wait, then move the mouse a much farther distance to select what I want.

For consistency, it'd be nice to be able to manually gorup the first set, and ungroup the second set, so I can continue to work with it, exactly as I did the first set. And then same thing when I move to set three.

I work in Windows a lot, and rarely have fewer than 20 application windows open at once, and I frequently have to switch tasks throughout the day, working on one thing and then another.

Being able to manually control what applications to group and ungroup when would be a huge benefit to me.

nicholasname wrote on April 29, 2010, 11:04pm

I want control over what is grouped together and it is generally *not* all windows within an application. It is the collection of windows that I am using while working on a particular task (for example a word doc, excel spreadsheet, a couple of chat windows, etc.)

jayjaygross wrote on January 28, 2011, 12:15am

Let me give an example to illistrate why I need single group and ungroup feature.
I always have tons of crap open but excel is my bread and butter. I generally keep my task bar 2 or 3 deep so I can see the names of all the files and click on them quickly. Right now I have 4 pdfs 3 word docs 2 web and 15 excel docs. I don't need the descriptions on anything but excel, and when I want to close I have to close one at a time. I wast about 5-10 minutes a day because of this. If I group everything then I need to click on excel just to see what I want to switch to.

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