ViGlance

ViGlance is a lightweight application that is designed to bring new functions to your Windows taskbar. The program is aimed at Windows XP and Vista users that can take advantage of some features currently available in Windows 7.

The first feature that stands out right after you install the program is the transparency effect that is added to the taskbar.

A productivity booster is the possibility to view the thumbnails of the opened windows of a certain application by hovering the mouse over taskbar icon. If you are working with multiple documents it is much easier to select one of them by quickly looking at the content preview instead of reading its title. The thumbnails generated by the program also display the title of the window, which comes in handy since the thumbnails are not always visible.

Pinning application shortcuts to the taskbar is another feature in Windows 7 that ViGlance can bring to XP or Vista, through the context menu. The same menu enables you to minimize, to restore or to close all the windows from the group with just one click. The program also allows you to unpin a certain program or to clear all the pinned items from the Options window.

Finally, you can change the aspect of the Start button with a replica of the Windows 7 Start button. This does not change the Start menu or the functions of the button and is only meant to replace the classic green button with a more modern one. Although it looks better you should know that it disables the context menu that lets you access the properties of the taskbar and of the Start menu.

The program's installer attempts to download other toolbars and applications that do not improve its functionality in any way. If you do not need these programs you can decline their installation when you setup ViGlance.

ViGlance is compact and does not have any impact on the computer performance since both the memory and the processor load are insignificant. However, it is useful mainly for Windows XP computers since the later versions already include some of the features.