Ramen Software

Starting from today, I’m going to publish beta versions of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker along with the regular, stable releases.

There are several rationals for this decision:

• Avoiding bugs in stable releases. This is usually the main purpose of beta versions.
  Two of the tweaker’s most recent releases were followed by a hotfix the day after, just because I missed a minor thing or two. This is also quite relevant to the next point.

• Minimizing the frequency of update notifications. The tweaker automatically notifies when a new version is available. While this is a great feature, it can be annoying if the notification appears frequently, especially if it appears two days in a row.
  Silent updates were suggested as an alternative solution, but first, they have to be implemented. Second, I’m not sure that 7+ Taskbar Tweaker is the right tool for this feature. It’s a low-level system tool, and it can screw things up, so if something goes wrong you can see it was caused by an update. Silent updates are available (off by default) starting with v4.5.10.

• Providing fixes which affect a very limited amount of users. There are issues which affect only users with a particular setup, a unique combination of options, etc. In such cases, it’s important to provide them with a fix, but it’s not a good idea to push this update to most of the other users, especially if the latest version was just recently released (see previous point).

• (Added in 2018) Providing limited support for Windows 10 insider builds. See the following blog post: 7+ Taskbar Tweaker and Windows 10 insider builds.

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Version 0.2 of Unchecky was just released!

The main and most visible change is the new interface of the main Unchecky program.

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About two weeks ago I introduced the Unchecky program. In this period of time, Unchecky was translated to 8 languages, the Unchecky website was translated to 3 languages, Unchecky was reviewed by numerous well-known websites, and I’ve received lots of positive feedback.

But Unchecky has one important limitation, which was raised right after Unchecky was released – It can’t handle the web. While most programs present their offers in the installation process, some are showing a checkbox in the browser, before downloading. And obviously, this checkbox is checked by default.
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7+ Taskbar Tweaker v4.4 is out.

• New option: Hide the Start button.
  The option works for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
  To open the Start menu in Windows 7, you can click on the corner where the Start button was located.
  To open the Start screen in Windows 8.1, you can click the lower-left corner of the screen.

  Before
  

  After
  

• New option: Show Start menu/Start screen by double/middle clicking on the empty space.
  7+ Taskbar Tweaker allows you to assign an action to double middle clicking on the empty space of the taskbar.
  Now there’s one more option to choose from.

• Advanced Options Editor.
  Read More…

7+ Taskbar Tweaker v4.3 is out, which finally introduces support for Windows 8.1.
In addition, the new version contains some bug fixes and small improvements, so it’s a recommended update even for non-Windows 8.1 users.

Here is an experimental version of 7+ Taskbar Tweaker which mostly works on Windows 8.1 Preview:

Removed. 7+ Taskbar Tweaker now officially supports Windows 8.1.

Options that currently do not work:

• Thumbnails: Left click on the active thumbnail minimizes the window.
• Combining: Combine grouped buttons.
• Other: Don’t show jump list when dragging a taskbar item towards the desktop.

Technical information

So, why did the options above stop working? Not much was changed about the taskbar in Windows 8.1, after all.

Short answer
Because Microsoft uses better code optimization, it became more difficult to control the code functionality.

Long answer
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Did the above ever happen to you?

I sometimes encounter the issue, which is not critical, but may be very annoying at times.
I’ve also received a couple of bug reports about it, so I decided to take a closer look.
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7+ Taskbar Tweaker v4.2 is out.

• New option: Display seconds on the tray clock.

  

• New option: Don’t show jump list when dragging a taskbar item towards the desktop.

  By default, when you drag a taskbar item towards the desktop, the jump list appears. This option disables it.

• Simplified Chinese translation of the help file.

  Translated by horan. Thanks!

• Better injection method.

  I’ve got several reports about an issue where the tweaker showed the following message: 7+ Taskbar Tweaker: Could not load library.
  I don’t know what might cause this, and it seems to be quite random, e.g. a user told me he could solve it by installing the tweaker to a different path.

  In this version, I improved the injection method, so this issue may be solved.

  Another thing I did is adding an identifier to the error message, which will give me a clue about the cause of the error.
  If you encounter an error similar to the screenshot below, please contact me, providing the exact message. Thanks.

  

• Other small fixes.

7+ Taskbar Numberer (formerly known as 7 Taskbar Numberer), the program that numbers your taskbar items, now supports Windows 8.

In addition, it has the option to display the numbering only when the Windows key is down.

7+ Taskbar Tweaker v4.1 is out.

The most important change is the new help file, which explains the available tweaks. It should make it easier to get started with the tweaker.

Also, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker has a new bug/feature tracker.

Among other changes:

• Update notification: A checkbox for not notifying about a particular version.
• Latvian translation, thanks Aigars Jacmenkins!
• Windows volume control (SndVol.exe) runs in higher priority for better performance.
• Fixed right drag detach on vertical taskbar (“Drag within/between groups using right mouse button” option).
• Rebuilt the portable launcher to support older processors (versions 4.0.4 to 4.0.10 supported only processors with SSE2 instruction set).

Note
There is a bug in versions 4.0.10 and lower, which may lead to a crash when trying to update.
If you encounter such an issue, please download and update manually.
Sorry for the inconvenience.