I've found through searching this area of the forums, and from the text in the downloads section, that Tasks.dll is supposed to support flashing, like AIM updates.

Anyway, from usage, and reading the readme of the latest download that I can find, this is not the case. The main reason I'm not using Taskbar3, is that I'm working on a vertical/sidebar theme, and it's just won't (with some, but maybe somewhat incomplete testing) work vertically.

Any help is appreciated.

To get taskbar3 to work in a vertical orientation you have to use scripting (mzscript). Have the OnAdd event increment a variable and the OnDel event decrement a variable; so this integer variable is your taskCount. Also on each of those events you call
!TaskbarLines taskCount
and resize the taskbar appropriately as a function of buttonHeight*taskCount+padding.

If you're using VWMHideTaskOnSwitch and/or want quick changes to the number of tasks to update faster, you could delay the resizing (a few milliseconds) using the module called timer.

Thanks tnl. I had tried something less sophisticated then that with little success, and I was hoping to do it without adding scripts to the theme. I imagine I can figure it out. My only problem will be variables in mzscript. Haven't gotten that good with scripting yet. I'm sure with some study I'll get it though. Thanks!

By the way, on the first part of the question, does tasks.dll just not support flashing it like it claims to?

xtaskbar supports vertical orientation.

also if you still plan to use tasks check if
you have TasksHighlightSelected and TasksUseSystemHook set to true as it is indicated in the documentation.