Friday, 2 October 2009

Windows 7 Feature #2 – UI Refresh

Lets get the easy bits over and done with quick. Windows 7 UI refresh is the most obvious feature users will notice. the 

imageThe new Task Bar stacks applications windows, this together cleans things up a lot, especially for me, where I’m know for having over 30 windows open at once. Hovering your mouse over the application icons preview window which is really good for finding *that* Internet Explorer tab you have lost.

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Clean System Tray, I think every 2nd app in past 10 years had decided that putting itself in the system tray was a good idea. Printer/Wireless/Aircard status watches, IM client and even my Notepad program has tray icon. Which meant that the system tray usually was almost up to the start menu. Microsoft has cleaned the start menu, given *us* the user, control of the tray back… And it just works. :)

Start Menu, okay this came from Vista, but it doesn’t mean its bad. Searching for anything in the start menu is just awesome. Being able to press the Windows Key and type “Word” Enter. Is so much easier than trying to find Word in the in the XP Start menu.

imageThemes make customising Windows so easy. This basically brings all the UI customization features of XP/Vista into one nice screen while adding the ability to download or share themes with the social. One cool new feature of themes is the ability to have a slide show as your background, where Windows automatically cycles your background from a collection of images. The best part is that collection can be an RSS feed.

Aero Shake is a cool feature that I should mention, while dragging/moving a window Shake it from side to side to minimize all other windows. It doesn’t meant much until use it for the first time.

Other features in Windows 7 such as Aero Glass, Peek, Switch are nice additions, but they don't mean much to me as i don't really use them.

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