Drag-and-Drop Taskbar Buttons with Taskbar Shuffle

I just wanted to highlight a simple but handy little utility I've been using for a while now, Taskbar Shuffle.

Taskbar Shuffle allows you to rearrange buttons on your Windows taskbar through drag-and-drop, just like you do with tabs in your favorite web browser (Firefox, IE7, etc.).

Let's say you're working on your SQL Server database (among other things), and you receive an email from your project manager listing some columns that need to be added.

Here's what your taskbar currently looks like:

You're likely going to be popping back and forth between SQL Server Management Studio and that email quite a bit.  Wouldn't it be nice if those two were right next to each other on your taskbar?

If you have Taskbar Shuffle, you can simply drag the Outlook taskbar button and drop it next to SQL Server Management Studio.

Now your taskbar looks like this:

Much better!  Now when you want to refer back that email, you don't have to scan the whole taskbar looking for it.

You'll appreciate this capability much more if you're like me and commonly find yourself with tons of different programs running at once.

Here's another handy feature of Taskbar Shuffle that you should recognize from your favorite tabbed web browser: middle-click to close.

This is especially handy when you want to close a bunch of those programs you're not using in one quick sweep.  Rather than having to right-click each taskbar button and select "Close", you just middle-click them.  Much faster!

Here's a screenshot of the settings dialog.  I'd be sure that "Start with Windows" and "Allow middle-click to close task button/group" are checked.

Taskbar Shuffle is free, and you can download it here.  What are you waiting for?