How do I create a toolbar for the Taskbar on Windows?
You'll notice that Media Player on Win7 doesn't have a desk band. Instead it has tiny play/pause buttons in the thumbnail preview that appears when you mouse over the taskbar icon. You can do the same thing for your application. If you use Code Pack (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/WindowsAPICodePack) there is a sample under Samples\Shell\ThumbnailToolbarDemo. Windows 7 only, but way less annoying than taking up an inch or two of taskbar, and just as handy when you want to insta-pause.
Check this out:
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/csharplanguage/thread/e180c4d5-8cd7-47e3-b45a-d643c02bab36
(source: microsoft.com)
It's called as "Desk Band"
See MSDN desription about this http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/shellcc/platform/shell/programmersguide/shell_adv/bands.asp and sample over there http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/dotnetbandobjects.asp
By the way, thanks for asking this question. Back in the days I also wanted to do this. However, yesterday I said bye bye to Windows and Hi to Mac. If you asked this yesterday I would upvote it trice if I could ;-)