Set height of Windows Vista taskbar buttons

Question

I have the taskbar on the left side of the screen because my monitor is so wide, and the buttons are a bit too flat for my liking. How can I increase their height, so that they look more like Windows 7 buttons? Or, even better, display large symbols (32x32 px) in them instead of the usual small ones?

Answer 1

My first though was changing the registry but I doubt there's anything in there that specifies icons size. My second guess would then be a theme-ing software to completely change the view. You could make everything look like Vista, then get some kind of Win7 taskbar clone.

See if you can find something on http://www.wincustomize.com/

EDIT: I also found this: http://www.vista4beginners.com/Larger-Quick-Launch-icons which allows you to change the size of the quick launch icons (and, might I add, makes them look alot nicer).

For running programs, try this hack: Follow the instructions here http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/191509-taskbar-icons.html Instead of putting a value of -255 in the box, put 40 or 42 instead. This will not make the icon itself bigger, but will make the button have a larger height. From here you can remove the text from the running programs icons. This gives a sort of Windows 7 look:

Note: the screenshot above is also using a skin to get a different taskbar theme I think.