A popular feature in previous versions of Windows was the ability to dock a toolbar to the side of the desktop. Most people used this for an auto-hiding quick launch or address toolbar, or both.

To do this in Windows Vista, you'll first need to create a folder somewhere like your user directory.

Now drag this folder all the way to either the side or the top of the screen, and it will magically dock to the side. Make sure you drag the mouse as far to the side as you can or else it'll just move the folder to the desktop.

Now right-click on the folder and choose Toolbars, where you can select any toolbar registered with the system. In this example we'll choose the Quick Launch toolbar.

And there we are… the quick launch toolbar is docked to the side, although you will probably want to tweak it.

First, you can remove the folder that we created by right-clicking, choosing Toolbars and then removing the selection for the folder name (in this case it was called Toolbar)

To make the icons smaller, right-click and choose View and then Small Icons. You could also choose to Auto Hide it if you want.

The address toolbar works much better if you dock the toolbar to the top of the screen.

You can use this for the Google toolbar, iTunes, Windows Media Player, or anything else that has a toolbar.