Taskbar

The taskbar is a user interface element used in Microsoft Windows and other operating systems that allows users to quickly switch between different tasks and windows, as well as allows easy access to core system functionality. In Windows, the taskbar also includes the Start button for accessing the Start menu and the notification area with a clock, which can be used by applications to report their status.

History
Prior to the introduction of the taskbar in Windows 95, minimized windows were represented by icons on the desktop. In Windows 1.0, all windows were visible at all times. Unless a single window was maximized (zoomed), all open windows tiled the screen, while minimized (iconified) windows were shown as icons in the lower part of the screen. The introduction of overlapping windows in Windows 2.0 meant that windows, including minimized window icons could now be covered by any other window, which was later found to result in many users ending up losing track of their open applications.

At first, the Cairo project tried to fix this problem by adjusting the appearance of minimized windows, as the developers believed that users had trouble distinguishing minimized window icons from other kinds of icons. The team came up with wide plates with the window icon and title. The new user interface proposed by the project also included a so-called system tray, which could be either docked to any side of the screen or floating as a window. The tray included three buttons named System, Find and Help on one side, which provided simple access to basic system features, and a clock on the other side. The main part between the clock and the system buttons was occupied by a folder view, which functioned as a clipboard.

The Cairo user interface was later adopted as the starting point for a similar effort in the Chicago project. The team was also working parallelly on another effort called ClearView to create an alternate shell for beginner users, which used a tabbed interface for switching between windows, with a tab bar on top which ultimately became the modern taskbar, with a Start button and buttons representing each window tab. The ClearView concept was eventually morphed with other components of the Cairo interface.