Windows 7: Desktop Enhancements

[Bare Foot Kid]

Windows 7 Preview: Desktop Enhancements.

If there is a theme to the various UI-related enhancements Microsoft is making in Windows 7, it's "putting the user in control." In fact, that theme could be easily applied to many parts of Windows 7, including even User Account Control (UAC), which is being made more configurable and, if you'd like, less annoying. For now, however, let's focus on the UI specifically. Much of what's changing in Windows 7 is happening in the UI. And it's almost universally good news.

Enhanced Windows Taskbar

I've described Apple's Mac OS X Dock as a user interface disaster that messily combines shortcuts to running applications and other open windows with shortcuts to frequently-access programs that aren't necessarily running at the time. The Windows Start Menu and Taskbar, I felt, have always been far more logical.

Apparently, Microsoft agrees with Apple because the new version of the Windows Taskbar in Windows 7 dispenses with the separation of shortcuts for running and saved applications, and instead allows you to access either, willy-nilly, from the same place. That apparent mistake aside, the new Taskbar still has a number of important new features that separate it dramatically from previous Windows versions. It's really cool, and really, really useful.

From a visual standpoint, the new Taskbar is a bit taller by default than the one from Vista, and it's more glass-like than its predecessor with a clear sheen that lets the background seep through. As before, its broken down into a few logical areas, with a new Start Orb on the left, the shortcuts area in the middle, and the tray notification area to the right. To the right of the tray area is a small glass slab representing a new way to go directly to the desktop.

Read more at the source.


Later :shock: Ted

 

[AvatarOfTheShip]

It looks fantastic and better still I have a friend at Microsoft who's getting me the latest build next week! Tee hee!

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Hello Avatar....

Be sure to keep us informed!












Later Ted

 

[AvatarOfTheShip]

Will Do!!

 

[AvatarOfTheShip]

Well, I've got Build 6801, but so far I've only run it under Virtual PC (which I've never really liked) and VMWare Workstation. Of course, using the virtual graphics systems doesn't allow for Aero, but at first blush, I quite like it but I'm not knocked out. That's not fair because it's pre-beta, but... Hmm. I remember pontificating on XP at release time and writing that 'it's not so much Windows 2001 as Windows 2000.1' Well, that turned out to be not quite true as XP was eventually quite a step up from 2000 (once I'd bought WindowBlinds and deep-sixed the GUI, widely and quite rightly, I thought, derided as 'Fischer-Price') Since W7 has, a little disappointingly, the version number 6.1, you don't expect a great leap forward and that's just what you get. I think it is quite fair to say it is, in a way, what Vista was supposed to be. There are several things I have seen in the press which just seem like tinkering with something that already works well, like the preview windows when you mouse over Taskbar icons being replaced with a strip of previews most of which won't interest you... Anyway, I just took delivery of a new 750GB drive that I won't be using in anger for a couple of weeks, so I'll install it natively and see how that goes...