Building a Custom Task Bar Interface for a FileMaker Windows deployment

Questions
1

We are working on a FileMaker system that is replacing a solution (“the old system") that has a Windows task bar user interface element that the customer likes.

The old system shows approximately 6 icons in the task bar that represent the 6 modules/areas that the old system is comprised of. When the use clicks on an icon they are taken to that area.

We are thinking about the best way to match or improve on the the old system task bar user interface by extending what the FileMaker platform offers out of the box.

The solution we are building spans the enterprise from CRM to shipping and all the parts in between.
The FileMaker system is multi-file with more than 10 files.

When FileMaker is open it show one icon in the task bar.
If more than one window is open, the task bar shows a list of FileMaker Windows when you click or hover over the FileMaker icon. Too many choice shown!

We want to build a custom task bar user interface with custom icons...that when you click on them do different things including:
[1] take you back to where you were last in FileMaker // switch to the FileMaker process
[2] take you to the MainMenu file // switch to the FileMaker process and go to the MainMenu file
[3] a collection of icons that take you directly to a finite number of popular areas // Customer, Item, Shipping, etc. // switch to the FileMaker process and go to a File > Layout

If we were doing this on macOS, for case [1] we would likely use a mini AppleScript App that opens/activates FileMaker.
For Case [2 and 3] we would use a mini AppleScript App that calls an FMP URL

Not sure what the best approach to building a custom task bar interface on Windows would be to meet the specifications above.

What are other people doing to enhance the task bar on Windows?

2

Someone may know a really good Win-specific technology but I'm not that person.

When I was delivering a job that had to go cross platform at the University of Sydney we offered HTML pages with a little bit of javaScript in them. That was very well received. It's simple and almost foolproof. Because HTML is so common, people made it work in ways that suited them best. Some people left the folder on the desktop. Some people stored the folder and then bookmarked all the links. It was surprisingly high utility, with minimal effort.

That was done before FileMaker provided Snapshot links. If you used snapshot links for Main Menu, Customers, Shipping, etc you could put the folder into the Task Bar and it would act like a spring menu ( I think ). That would give you the capacity to manage found sets and any other behaviour that snapshot links can manage. Also, it's a solution that would take only minutes to build and test, so nothing to lose.

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