miniWE (sorry to post this here, can't post in sandbox )

I wouldn't say it's pointless, but something the new taskbar lacks is a way to add pop-up menus to it.

You used to be able to put a folder on a taskbar-toolbar to create a pop-up menu off the taskbar, which is useful for (categorised) lists of apps you use regularly sometimes but not often enough to want pinned to the taskbar directly.

You can still do that, but taskbar-toolbars haven't been updated to fit the new taskbar height. They can either be tiny and very ugly (when small they are top-aligned and look very out of place next to the other taskbar elements) or they can be set to large in which case break Fitt's Law for the main window buttons on the taskbar (since when large they have more padding than the main window buttons, pushing the whole taskbar to be taller; the main window buttons are top-aligned and leave unclickable blank space below them in that case).

So anyone who wants such a menu-of-apps (or documents or whatever) again has to write a program to create that menu. :-\ (Umless they can put up with the drawbacks of using the old taskbar toolbars.)

(Being able to search the Start Menu is great, but only for things you don't use often. When I'm debugging programs there are about 5 tools that I start and stop frequently over, say, an hour. Or when I'm doing graphics/web work there's another set of programs. I don't use them often enough outside of those times to want each of those tools on the taskbar directly but having to search the start menu for each one is a pain.)