One thing that really annoys me is the way Windows handles taskbar buttons and the tray icons. By default when you open a program the programs taskbar button pops up on the far left side of the taskbar near the start button. When you open a second program it adds a button to the right of the previously opened program.

If you are like me you like to have several programs in a certain place on the taskbar. For me Outlook must be the first taskbar item, just right of the start button. If I have Outlook and notepad open and have to restart Outlook for some reason my program buttons are now out of order. Notepad would be directly to the right of start and Outlook would be the second item on the taskbar. To get it back to the first position I must close Notepad and reopen it. Now just imagine if I have ten windows open. It’s not very feasible to close ten windows just to get Outlook back to spot one.

I figured there must be an application that would allow me to reorder my taskbar items so I did some searching and came up with “Taskbar Shuffle” by Jay Elaraj (Follow him on twitter @nerdcave). It is a completely free application that comes in 32 and 64-bit flavors. It gives you the following features (from author’s site):

• Full 32-bit and 64-bit support
• Reorder your taskbar buttons by dragging and dropping them
• Reorder your tray icons in the same way
• Reorder tasks in a grouped button’s popup menu in the same way
• Middle-click to close programs on your taskbar
• Works with UltraMon (version 3+ only) taskbars
• Tweak taskbar button grouping

One feature that is very important to me is the compatibility with UltraMon. I have two monitors both at work and home and couldn’t imagine a dual-monitor setup without it.

So if you are interested in giving Taskbar Shuffle a try you can download it at the authors website here.