Windows 7: Free utility Taskbar Items Pinner adds pre-defined or user-defined folders, files, and even web pages to the Windows 7 taskbar.

Adding one of the pre-defined folders (like, say, your Recycle Bin) is easy enough: Just run the app and tick the checkbox next to the folder. Adding other folders, files, or webapps requires a little more work, but is still pretty simple. Browse to the path of the item you want to pin, add an app icon (as FreewareGenius points out, you actually have to choose your icon for everything you pin, which is a little annoying), and click the big Add Item button.

We’ve detailed a software-free method to pin any item to the Windows taskbar that requires a little more work, but this is a nice alternative.

Taskbar Items Pinner is a free download for Windows 7 only.

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If you’d like to have empty space in between some of the icon sets on your Windows 7 taskbar to keep things organized and separated, this simple hack will get the job done.

Lifehacker reader Virgilstar shared this excellent tip here. We tweaked it a little and made a custom icon for you those of you within the software to make icons yourself.

The magic behind the trick is assigning a transparent icon to a short cut and then pinning that shortcut to the taskbar as a spacer in between to sets of icons you want to keep separate. The steps below detail how to do so.

First, make a folder in an out of the way spot—you don’t want your files to accidentally get deleted or moved later—and in that folder right click and create a new text document. Rename that text document to spacer1.exe. You’re just using the empty text documents to create dummy executable files to trick Windows. Repeat this step for as many spacers as you need. We created two for this tutorial.

Once you have created the number spacers, right click on each dummy exe and create a new shortcut. You don’t need to rename the shortcut from the default spacer1.exe - Shortcut, the name won’t be visible.

After you have the number of dummy executable files and shortcuts in accordance with the number of spacers you want, it’s time to swap the icons. You don’t want to space icons out with little generic Windows executable icons after all, you want to space them out with nice transparent open space.

We’ve created a 256×256 transparent icon for you. You can download it by right clicking on this link and saving the .ICO file to your computer—saving it right into the folder where you’re stashing your dummy executables might not be a bad idea.

When you have the icon on your computer, right click on one of the shortcuts you created in the earlier step and select Properties. In the Properties menu click the “Change Icon…” button. Browse to the location you saved the transparent .ICO file and select that as the new icon.

Repeat this until you’ve replaced all the shortcuts’ icons with the transparent icon. When you’re done the folder you’re working in should look something like this:

Now all you have to do is drag and drop the new short cuts you created to the taskbar and position them where you want to divide the space up. In the screenshot at the top of this article we used two spacers to separate the start button and Windows Explorer icon from our two web browser icons and then again to separate the browsers from the other executables.

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Windows 7’s taskbar is undoubtedly a great addition to Windows, but if you’ve got more than one application window open, you’ve got to either click twice or patiently hover to navigate to an open window. Reader Richard details how he fixed this:

I’ve been frustrated as of late with the Windows 7 taskbar (which led me to try hot-dogging it on the left-hand side as detailed here—by the way GREAT and useful tips in the 331 comments!). The fundamental problem was that you needed two clicks to navigate to your document if you have two instances of a program running. Or you’re stuck with hovering for what feels like an eternity.

At Windows 7 Forums I finally found a nice step in the right direction. Full post is here, but summarized below. In short, this hack causes an applications last active window to activate when you click the taskbar icon, and the next window in the second click, etc. The hover preview still works if you hover to begin with, but if you want the preview after you’ve click on an app’s icon in the taskbar, you can Ctrl+Click to bring it back. The current default settings are the exact opposite (that is, Ctrl+Click cycles through the last active windows of an application).

Launch regedit.exe (Win+R, then paste regedit.exe)
Navigate in the left tree control to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Go to Edit->New->DWORD (32-bit) Value
Name the value LastActiveClick
Hit enter to assign the value and change it to 1
Restart Explorer and you’re good to go.

To restart Explorer without rebooting, open the Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc) and end the Explorer.exe process. Then create a new task (under “File”) and paste “explorer.exe”.

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Windows 7 only: If you’re not into Windows desktop gadgets, there is another way to easily monitor your computer’s CPU and RAM: Taskbar Meters puts simple, attractive resource monitors right on your Windows 7 Taskbar.

Taskbar Meters contains two programs that you can pin to your taskbar—one that monitors CPU, one that monitors RAM. Each has a colored bar that shows how much of that resource you are using, complete with color coding. In the program’s preferences, you can decide how often to update the meter and what percentage of usage constitutes “yellow” and “red” colors on the taskbar. Each icon also has a jumplist that lets you easily open up Task Manager or Resource Monitor to get a more detailed report.

Taskbar Meters is a free download, Windows 7 only.

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