2 Windws 7 niggles that aren't going away as I use it

I've been using Windows 7 exclusively for a few months now both at home and work, and while I love most of the new stuff, there's a couple of things that are still really bugging me about it, and I wondered if any of you know how to stop it?

Firstly I've re-added the quicklaunch and am not using the new style shortcuts as I use multiple instances of most of my programs at any one time, which the super bar doesn't seem suited to. Plus having shortcuts and running apps mixed in together drives me crazy.

Having quicklaunch back and setting it to always expand running apps solves this, but I lose the ability to use win + num on the keyboard to open the first 10 items. This was a feature I used a LOT in Vista and not having it really annoys me.

My question is, can I either move that keyboard shortcut back to the quicklaunch OR seperate running apps and shortcuts from each other on the superbar, so the shortcut stays where it is. This would essentially turn it back into quicklaunch.

My second issue is the right click menu for programs on the superbar. The new context menu has yet to prove useful to me, I don't keep recent documents lists and most apps don't support it anyway. The menu appears above the item rather than where you click on it so the close button is much higher, which means I always miss it, and continue to even after months of using it. As this is how I usually close apps, it's getting very frustrating. On top of both of these issues, the "close" item doesn't seem to do any checks on whether or not a program is responding, the old close item on Vista / XP was much more useful on a non-responding app.



Is there any way I can disable it and re-enable the old-style menu? I know shift+click brings up the old menu, but a way of making this the default would be fantastic.

Hello Moredhel, and welcome to Seven Forums.

First Issue:
Only the pinned programs on the taskbar will use the Windows key + #(1to0) to open them with. You can add a Ctrl+Alt+letter keyboard shortcut for the Quick Launch items though. The pinned icons that have a open window for it will be highlighted to help tell the difference between them.


Second Issue:
You can press Shift then right click on the pinned icon to see the context menu for it instead of the jump list one.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Hi Moredhel, Welcome

Sure you researched this already, but in case you didn't know, "Shift + L-Click Pinned Icon" opens a new instance of the app. Same with using the pinned 1-0 shortcut keys... if you want to open a new instance of say your second pinned icon, you would "Shift" + "Windows Key" + "2".

And as Brink pointed out, shift then right click opens old right click context menu.

I would consider the "Shift" key to be your new best friend as it seems to do a lot with the new task bar that you want to do, ie- open new instances of the pinned apps, by clicking on them or with the windows key & 1-0. And the shift key opening the older right click context menu.

As far as your preferences in changing the 1-0 hot keys to work the QL, if there was a way, the man above would have advised as he's well versed in tweaking. Keep at it, ...trying new ways with functions that are available, I think you'll find a setup to your liking. Learn to love the "Shift" key, maybe you can just tape it down. lol ...j/k

Good Luck and again, Welcome to the forum.

Get used to it?

There really aren't any solutions to you not liking the new intentional behaviors or W7.

if you wait for the window preview to come up (if you didn't disable that) and right click on it, it seems to bring up the old style menu right away as well.

I also had misgivings originally, but the new setup works quite well. I get a new app instance using the middle mouse button by default, which works great. I also ended up using a mix of quick launch and pinned taskbar. You can get very flexible configs of several quick launch sets.

I also tried some freeware docking / launching utils. But in the end I ended up buying True Launch Bar, which is awesome, has great plug-ins and is 64-bit native. Here's what my task bar looks like with CPU core, harddrive and moon plugins.

DJ