"Taskbar" is too easily confused with the Windows taskbar, especially since it's at the bottom of the browser window, where it's likely to be close to the Windows toolbar. I can't think of any great name for it, though. Maybe "Communicator toolbar" or "Mozilla applications toolbar"?

changing owner to ben, who owns the ui

how about "Empower Bar" ;)

Good point here. Originally we referred to it as task switcher. We need to have a unified term thats useable across the 'Tasks' menu as well as the 'Task' bar as the two where seen as two incarnation of the same idea. To switch now I think the term would have to be somewhat stronger then the ones suggested above ;-)

The menu, at least, should be titled "Window" on Windows, "Windows" on the Mac OS, and whichever on Linux. Those are the expected names for what's actually in that menu, and would certainly make the "open windows" menu button worse than redundant. I would not be in the least saddened to see the Mozilla "tasks" toolbar vanish altogether, although I'm sure AOL marketing would be somewhat upset.

Yes, it's often difficult to find non-sucky names for things which shouldn't really exist at all ...

reassigning to Verah - she can talk with German and make a suggestion of what we should call this thing. If we change the name, please tell me this week so we can change the Reviewer's Guide appropriately.

Sigh. Just when all the writers had agreed on "taskbar." I'll check with them again.

Okay, I give up. I can't think of anything that's better than "taskbar." As far as I can tell, the only place in the interface where that term appears is in the View menu and the Help file. In the View menu, if a user removes the checkbar next to "taskbar," he/she will immediately know what and where the taskbar is. In the Help file, it plainly states that the taskbar is at the bottom of the window. So, unless I hear strenuous objections, I'm closing this as "WON'T FIX."

Verified wontfix. (I can't think of a better name either.:-) Mozilla users, see also bug 43797.

Some possible names that didn't come up: "launch toolbar" "component bar" or "component toolbar" (bug 20306) If anyone thinks any of those names might be good, please reopen from wontfix..