A way to make Title Bars smaller w/out shrinking the Task Bar.

As I started working with Windows 7, I decided I'd like to make the Title Bars on individual windows smaller, as Win7 has them pretty thick by default. This converts more space to usable desktop area. Unfortunately, as many have discovered, shrinking Title Bars -also- shrinks the Task Bar at the bottom of the Desktop. I ended up compromising on using larger Title Bars so that I could still read the (now) tiny text in the Task Bar.

Accidentally(!), I discovered a work around for this. It's manual and has to been after every reboot, but as I don't boot my setup often, it's feasible to use...

Basically, making a monitor position change in the 'Display' config panel jacks up the icon & text size in the Task Bar to fill the entire bar Here's how to do it:

* Open up the Display panel and go to the section where you change the appearance of your displays. If you don't know how to do this, left click on the Start menu and enter 'Change display settings'. Click on that entry when it shows up in the list.

* Once in the panel to change the appearance, you should see pics representing your specific monitor layout. In my case, I run a multi-monitor setup, so I have several pics shown in the layout format I use.

* What I did was slightly move one of my pics that was right next to another monitor pic so that there was a bit of separation between them, then click on 'Apply' at the bottom, and bingo, the Task Bar icons and text were now full size within the Task Bar.

* I then reposition the monitor pic I moved so it's back where it was originally, click on 'Apply' again, and I'm now in good shape. Monitors are unchanged, and the Task Bar is full sized and actually readable.

Using the above allowed me to shrink my Title Bars some more but keep the Task Bare Menu readable

If you only have one monitor, you might try defining another, positioning them together and trying the move procedure above. I don't know if this will work and I don't have any way of testing this.

Just passing along a work around...

If someone knows of a way to permanently set this stuff, please chime in and pass it along.



**** Update: Turns out I -did- have a way of trying this on a single monitor setup. Forgot that I had a spare Win7 laptop lying around. So, I went into the Display panel and changed the resolution, clicked on 'Apply' and bang, the Task Bar was now very readable. I changed the res back to normal, clicked on 'Apply' and it held. So, evidently, there's more than one type of change in this panel that will produce the desired effect. If anyone else tries this, please post your results...

 

Requesting before and after screenshots because I don't understand what title bar problem you're talking about.

 

What he's saying is that if he were to make a change to the display configurations under "Windows Color and Appearance" that the changes that would make a small title bar for windows are the same that shrink taskbar icons as well. So, one can't make the setting small, say 10mm, w/o making microscopic taskbar icons too.

I've got mine set to 19mm, or 17mm (i forget).

 

^^ Yes, you are correct. MSFT, in it's infinite wisdom(?) shrinks/expands the system tray icons whenever you change the Title Bar size for application windows...not so good if you want skinny Title Bars but readable tray icons.

Would be nice if sizing the two were separate processes, but they're not.

This isn't the greatest work around or niftiest thing since sliced bread, but is one more little annoyance from MSFT that's somewhat avoidable...

And, once again, if someone knows a process or maybe a Registry setting or sumpin' else in the way of a 'setting' that'll accomplish, pls pass it along...

 

On a new install, I always change the Title bar from default 21 to 18, the task bar doesn't start to shrink until you reach 17.
But I can't go under 17 anyway, so I don't see the point.

Also, I drop the Border padding to 0, I just don't see the point of having it at all, unless you have a touch display.