Taskbar customization

I'd like to know if anyone has found, seen, or even heard of an app that would let you show running apps, such as firefox for an example to display on the notification area (without having to minimize it) so that frequently used things aren't hogging the taskbar space with the large rectangle.

The main things I've turned up are only minimize to tray, rather than always display on the tray. Personally I end up with quite a few things hogging the taskbar and having to scroll down using the arrows to find the window I'm looking for just gets irritating and it's awful for productivity when doing serious multitasking. Grouping similar windows is fine but when you have 50 different windows open and they don't group it does no justice at all.

Could someone please help me out with this?​

 

I'm using Vista but would like something that would run on xp & vista.

Making the taskbar wider would work but it would hog space from my windows so I'm trying to avoid that.

You wouldn't happen to know the name of an app right off hand would you? It would be a big help to me.

 

I've tried tray it, the problem is you have to have the app minimized.

I'd like to have the app up so I can work but still have it in the tray at the same time; It's what makes finding this troublesome but thank you for trying. I may see about asking a programmer about this.