Skip the Taskbar!

Not a fan of using the taskbar? Skip it with an application called miniMIZE, you can minimize windows to thumbnails that stick to your desktop instead. miniMIZE, a clone of a discontinued app called MINt, has a lot of features, making it a more flexible choice than similar programs, like ThumbWin(it's in English, too - a big plus for me!) With miniMIZE, you can use its auto-placing feature to select where on your screen your thumbnails will appear; this setting is retained so the next time you minimize a window, the app will remember where you want your thumbnails placed. Of course, you can drag the thumbnails around the screen, too. There are hot keys for cycling through thumbnails, minimizing windows, and showing/hiding thumbnails. The thumbnails are all the same size and can be pinned to three different levels - Desktop, Normal, and Top. Another handy feature is the icon that displays on each thumbnail to show you the program the thumbnail is from. You can see this in this screenshot here. miniMIZE is a free download, but you can make donations to the developers here if you find it useful. (via appaholic)