I’m catching flak at work because my Eudora crashed. Oh, no one cared that the program crashed. They thought it was hilarious that I had to shut down other programs so when I restarted Eudora it would be in the proper order on my taskbar. The Eudora tab is second. It has to be second. The Straight Dope browser tab is fourth.
Nothing else is acceptable!
But, apparently, I’m the only person in the world to whom this matters.
I’ll be alone in my jackbooted taskbar thuggery if I have to, but I’d like to have a friend to goosestep around with. Anyone?
You’re not the only one. I launch my standard programs in the same order every morning so that they’ll always be in the same order on my taskbar.
I, too, will close & relaunch other programs if one crashes or I accidentally close it.
I also use a vertical taskbar because I can stack up more programs and have them be visible and I hate it when the horizontal taskbar resizes my icons. When using a vertical taskbar they’re always the same size.
I assumed this was some sort of librarian-related OCD.
What’s your excuse?
Nope, my taskbar is always in a state of chaos/flux. If something dies I just relaunch it and find it wherever it lands on the TB. Just don’t move my coffee cup.
You’re definitely not alone. I launch my programs in the following order:
Lotus Notes
MS Access 97
MS Excel
MS Access 2000 (don’t ask why I need both versions)
Those 4 programs are the ones I use constantly all day long, so it’s imperative to me that they’re in the right place on the toolbar. If any of them crash, I totally shut things down and re-open them so they’re in the right place. All other extraneous programs can be opened after, but those core programs must be correctly ordered for me to function, or I’ll spend all day alt-tabbing the wrong number of times or clicking automatically on what I think is the program I want and coming up with the wrong one.
I’m the same way: Outlook has to be the first item, Blackboard the second. This is because I constantly use them, and it’s a lot easier to keep going to the same spot than to search for them at different locations each time.
I really like the Windows Media tasbar, since it has the buttons on it when it’s minimized and how it always resides in the same place. That way it stays out of my way. However, before they added that feature, it was third.
There are tools which let you move the icons in the taskbar. Taskbar Commander is one. There’s another one which lets you drag the icons around in the taskbar. I can’t remember what it is at the moment. I’ll post it if I can remember.
Windows Explorer first, then Outlook, then Illustrator, then browser. After that, it fragments. I want to click on what I want without having to look. That involves more work.
Microsoft Outlook has to be first…and always open. If it’s not working for whatever reason it really annoys me. Next is IE. Other than that, I like to have as few open as possible so I’m opening and closing files all day. I have to go in a million different programs throughout the day, anyway.
Hmm…nearly all the Outlook users open it first, like I do. But I have to because I’ve learned that if I don’t open if first, for whatever reason the computer god becomes angry and will cause it to crash. So:
