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Windows toolbars may be more powerful than you imagined. Most people have noticed that several toolbars exist at the bottom of the screen. The main gray bar is called the Task bar (with the Start button on the left hand side). Other toolbars may also appear. Most people have the Quick Launch toolbar displayed (if it's not, right click the Task bar, choose Toolbars, and click Quick Launch). This toolbar has tiny icons for Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and View Channels. It may have other icons in there as well. For example, when I loaded Netscape Navigator, it placed a little Netscape icon in there right next to Internet Explorer (they want equal time I suppose).
So I got to thinking...if Netscape can put an icon in there, why can't I? It turns out that all the Quick Launch shortcuts are stored in C:\WINDOWS\Application Data\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch. You can use Windows Explorer to navigate to that folder and see them. And like any other folder on your hard disk, you can add or delete shortcuts in that folder. I don't use Outlook Express for my e-mail program, so that icon doesn't do me any good. So, I clicked the Outlook Express shortcut in the Quick Launch folder, pressed the delete key and it disappeared from the toolbar. I don't use Channels, so I ditched that one too. (Oh the power!)
So, I went to my desktop and clicked the shortcut for my e-mail program, pressed Ctrl+C to copy it, and went back to the Quick Launch folder in Windows Explorer. I pressed Ctrl+V to paste the shortcut and the icon appeared on the toolbar. Cool!
For some serious customization, you can create your own toolbars as well. All you have to do is create a folder on your hard disk with shortcuts in it. For example, you might create a folder called MyStuff. Now copy the shortcuts you use the most into that folder. Then right click the Task bar, choose Toolbars and click New Toolbar. Navigate to your new MyStuff folder on your hard disk select it and click OK. It appears on your Taskbar stocked with whatever shortcuts you put into it. If you want to move your toolbars around, just click the small vertical line near the left edge of the toolbar and drag it to a new place on your desktop. You can remove the title, text, and change other options by right-clicking on the toolbar.
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