Classic Shell: Forum

I use the taskbar down the left side, set wide and with auto-hide enabled.
This works great except for cases with "attention grabber" programs like IM or Lync. As soon as a new IM message is received, the taskbar unhides, highlights the entry for that IM window and won't rehide until you select the item (and thereby switch windows).

For an actual active IM conversation, this is fine. But when it's an IM component composed as part of a meeting window, and some attendees like to rush to add endless "+1" or "LOL" fluff, it gets annoying very quickly for those meetings where you're more listening to them in the background.
So, to handle these cases, how about an option that will let one suppress the taskbar "unhide" for focus messages from selected taskbar items (i.e., top-level windows)? Lighting up the item in question is fine, just keep the taskbar hidden. Or if ambitious, unhide the taskbar by just 2 or 3 pixels if there's anything focused (i.e., lit up) -- enough to let you know but not to interrupt.

Rather than a lot of complex options for matching window titles to be included in this behavior, how about a right-click on the item in the taskbar? e.g., right where "Pin this item to taskbar" is now. Something like "Don't unhide taskbar for this item". This way, it's always an explicit action on an existing window.

Thx.
Shawn.

Classic Shell does very little with the taskbar. If what you are saying is possible, I think you'll get better results asking for this feature in the 7+ Taskbar Tweaker software.