If you are like me, you probably have dozens of windows open at any given point, so if you want to tile just a couple of windows you have to minimize everything and then show two of the windows, and then tile them… so how do we just quickly select two taskbar buttons together?

There’s a simple trick that’s been built into Windows forever… hold down the Ctrl key while selecting taskbar buttons and you can select more than one at a time. The benefit is that you don’t have to minimize any other windows in order to tile them (or close them)

Hold down the Ctrl key while clicking on a taskbar button, and then while still holding down the Ctrl key, click on another taskbar button. You’ll notice that they are both selected. (Note that you can click on a button again to deselect it.)

Now that they are both selected, you can right-click on one of the buttons and choose to cascade, stack or show the windows side by side.

I don’t find cascading or stacking very useful, but side-by-side is something I use quite often.

This can be extremely useful when you are trying to look at two windows at once, especially when you’ve got a ton of windows open but only want to tile two of them.

Note: This should work fine in Windows XP even though the screenshots are from Vista.