Create thumbnails of your minimized programs in Windows XP using miniMIZE

Posted on November 24, 2007 at 1:42 pm

miniMize is a nitfy little freeware application that can be used to remove minimized programs from the taskbar and instead create small thumbnail images on your desktop. For anyone who does not like their taskbar to be cluttered up, this program might be good for you. On the other hand, if you don’t want to have lots of icons on your desktop, it may not be!

miniMize is a good alternative to the Windows taskbar and allows for some interesting customization. I know many people who have downloaded another program called Visual Task Tips that let’s you hover over the programs in the taskbar and it gives a small preview window of each program. If you like this program or are using it, then you may also like miniMIZE.

miniMIZE is cool because it converts each minimized program into a little thumbnail window so that you can see exactly which window has what inside. Also, it shows a large icon at the bottom right of the windows, which helps you to easily figure out the program that is running.

The only problem that I saw with the default settings for this program is that once you maximize a window, you really can’t see any of the other minimized windows! So that’s pretty retarded and pointless. However, if you right-click on the little blue window looking icon in the task bar and go to Thumbnail Level and choose Pin To Top, then you can actually see all of the minimized programs while you’re working in another window.

Now that it’s pinned to the top, all of the thumbnails will show up even if you maximize another program. I’m surprised the author did not realize this as it makes the program quite annoying to use with the default settings because the minimized programs only show up on the desktop, not on the taskbar anymore! So if you wanted to get to another program, you’d have to first minimize the program you’re in to get to the other ones! Weird! But the pin to top option fixes that.

It also has a bunch of options if you right-click and go to Settings. You can customize when it starts up, whether or not you want to hide the taskbar buttons (they will show up on the desktop and one the taskbar), the size of the thumbnails if you want them larger or smaller, the position that the minimized windows appear on the screen, and any hotkeys you want to assign to be able to quickly hide/show the thumbnails or cycle through them kind of like ALT + Tab.

Overall, it’s a nice program for those people who like to customize their desktops, etc. If you don’t care where your minimized programs are, then this is not for you! Any other program you like for minimizing programs? Post a comment! Source via LifeHacker.