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Tweaking Windows 98

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Finding room for IE 4's new Desktop Toolbars

The Win 95 Task Bar is a fairly crowded place already, and adding extra toolbars soon fills it up. You can do a number of things to relieve the problem. The first is simply to resize the Task Bar (click-drag on its upper edge). This will give a 'double-decker' effect, with separate, full-width areas for application buttons and toolbars. You can also set the Task Bar to Auto Hide mode (right-click on the Task Bar, choose Properties, then check Auto Hide). This will make the Task Bar slide out of view, only reappearing when you move the mouse pointer near the bottom of the screen.

Alternatively, you can drag a toolbar off the Task Bar altogether, turning it into a floating desktop bar. It can easily become covered by applications here though, so a better alternative is to dock it to one of the screen's other edges.

Now the toolbar behaves like the Task Bar, occupying screen space and reducing the amount free for applications. To solve that problem, you can set your docked toolbar to Auto Hide mode, just like the Task bar (right-click on the toolbar title and choose Auto Hide from the pop-up menu). It will now slide out of view when not needed, and slide back when you move the mouse pointer to its edge of the screen.


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