What’s New in Windows 7: The Taskbar!
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As you know, I’ve been playing with Windows 7 on my HP TouchSmart. So far, I’m enjoying the experience. One complaint I’ve always had about Windows through the years is that the task bar never changed much. Well, that is about to change with Windows 7!
If you’re a power user, you’re going to love this. If you want one reason to upgrade from XP to Windows 7 – this is the one. The taskbar is double the height, with good reason. We have bigger screens now than we used to! Of course, if you’ve always set your taskbar to double height, you’ll already know what you have to gain.
Your time and date are now stacked on top of one another. The system tray icons look much cleaner and crisper. The most dramatic change, though, is that the icons can be moved around. They’re managed in a different fashion, as well.
Once I had opened a few windows, I was able to show you how no new icons were added to my task bar at the bottom of the screen. The icons were stacked on top of each other over top of the default icon for the application. If I click that icon, I get thumbnail previews of all of the windows. If I right-click the icon, it pulled in the history from the window (Internet Explorer at this time).
If I don’t like where the icon is, I can drag it elsewhere on my task bar. No matter how many windows I open, the taskbar doesn’t really grow. The nice thing is that again, I can click my window icon once to get previews of where I’m going. So if I have several Windows Explorer windows open, I can can even right-click to get options like seeing what the most frequently-visited folders are.
By the way, the Windows Explorer has been completely rebuilt. I hope to get the developer in here with me to discuss all of those changes whenever he’s cleared to do so.
All-in-all, the taskbar in Windows 7 is definitely awesome. I love messing with it, and I know you will too. Make sure that you download your beta copy of Win 7 if you have a VM or testing box to put it on. Don’t use it as your primary operating system yet, as it IS still in beta version. I think once you start playing around with it, you’re going to be happily surprised at everything it brings to the table.
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5 Comments
azaas
January 20th, 2009
at 1:56am
The right click options seem to be the ones that make that whole thing a productivity tool. On it’s very core it’s still not as intuitive or usable as expose and not that impressive. BUT,with the right click options it transforms to a really great thing. Now i’ve said in the past that this whole task bar thing was not that impressive to me,but i had no idea to the right click options menu. Now i can see me using this quite a lot!!!! The pin app to task bar and the close all windows thing will be two things to save you a lot of time.
Now a quick question.Are there any keyboard shortcuts to this?Can you assign keyboard shortcuts to all those things?
/me hopes that the answer is YES :P
George Tullius
January 20th, 2009
at 2:31am
QUESTION:
Ask on your video feed but got ignored because of too much BS from other users. Why is it that Windows 7 64 bit will not upgrade a Vista 32 bit with 64 bit Hardware and Dual 64 bit processor, and requires a full install. To test properly all hardware and software installed it should allow the Upgrad as the windows Vista 64 bit upgrade does . Is MS Stupid, this is not way to Beta test an OS, to disallow the upgrade to 64 over 32. ANSWER REQUIRED AND SOLUTION REQUESTED
Mike
January 20th, 2009
at 6:26am
@George
I’ve wondered this too. However I doubt MS will give the option. I was running Windows XP 64 before I upgraded to Vista 64… they didn’t even offer an upgrade path for me, just a clean install.
I doubt they will offer a 32 to 64 upgrade path for Windows 7. There is a lot of under the hood changes to make 64 bit happen and I doubt Microsoft wants to support that option along with all the complications that can arise from it.
One solution that might work for you is to install Windows 7 on a VM (32 or 64), use the “Windows Easy Transfer” to transfer your data into the VM. Then do a clean install of Windows 7 64 on your hardware and use the Windows Easy Transfer again to finally move all your data to your new install.
The Windows Easy Transfer tool is very very good at keeping all your settings.
Wade Dorrell
January 20th, 2009
at 7:24am
I’m fairly sure taskbar isn’t double the height… it’s 10 pixels taller than Vista (and I think Vista and XP have the same height.) The reduced clutter/borders around the icons make it seem bigger than it is.
LeviFiction
January 20th, 2009
at 6:25pm
I do double the size of my taskbar, but that’s to get the quick launch links all in one row on top of my opened applications list.
But I also hide it so that it takes up less space on my screen.
But all in all that’s pretty fancy.