If I'd been smoking less crack I'd've remembered to prepend that with:

Eli: Icons? In that Microsoft's bar shrinks when viewed so, or that they should be ordered left-to-right? No matter where you put a taskbar, you get tradeoffs- right-hand is the most ergonomic screen side for right-handers to smash with the mouse, though it means they can't take the same advantage with scrollbars; left hand may be the fastest for left-handers, and trees do expand more understandably left-to-right; top and bottom force a (more) horizontal golden-rectangle. Of course, there's a question of whether you want the bar *in* your viewer's face or out of it, if you assume it's more noticeable on one side of the screen.

Figure you're aware of all that, so I'm just curious which you were giving preference/precedence to. In my experience, L-to-R ordering of icons hasn't made using docks or apps the original Windows toolbar widget any easier (nor have icons ever made much easier)- so I'm hoping and assuming you didn't mean that?