Windows 7 Impressions

Well, it’s been a week and a half since the Windows 7 beta was released. I’ve been using it 97% of the time, with only short jaunts back to Vista about once a day.

Obviously, the biggest feature is the newly-endowed taskbar. It’s a whole lot easier to work with applications than in previous versions of Windows.  At the Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft’s principal design manager Samuel Moreau said of the new taskbar, “there is one face of your application; it is the place where we expect you to launch [the program], switch to your task, and be notified” (Design Principles for Windows 7). Instead of having multiple ways to get to an  application (i.e., a desktop shortcut, a quick launch icon, etc.) for a certain program, you only need to have one, always-accessible button pinned to your taskbar. What’s interesting about this is that the functionality to pin a program to your taskbar has been in Windows for several versions, and a taskbar button for all open apps has been there since the inception of the taskbar in Windows 95. Now, Microsoft has merged these features into one. In the screenshot above, I’ve a single program open (Vista on top, 7 on the bottom); notice how the shortcut in Windows 7 has become the face of the opened app.

Another cool feature of the taskbar is colour hot-track.  Technically, this is a normalized colour histogram across 27 different buckets that extracts blacks, whites, alpha channels, and greys and uses the most dominant RGB value to paint the button with the mouse. Practically, this just lets the application shine through by using its icon’s colour in the buttons highlighting. 

Windows 7 makes working with many windows open a lot easier. To maximize a window, you simply drag it to the top of the screen, or use the keyboard shortcut WinKey + UpArrow. Have you ever been moving documents between two folders and adjusted both windows until they each took up half the screen? Windows 7 makes that easy: just drag your windows to the sides of the screen or hit WinKey + LeftArrow / RightArrow. The “Show Desktop” button is now more than a shortcut: it’s built into the far right side of the taskbar. Obviously, clicking it will bring you to the desktop, but just hovering over it will show you the desktop, as well as the outline of any open windows.  (Click image to enlarge.)

Networking computers has always been a challenge; at the very least, it’s time-consuming. Microsoft aims to change that in Windows 7, at least for home networks: introducing the “HomeGroup.” Since you need at least 2 PCs running Windows 7 to have a HomeGroup, I haven’t been able to give this feature a try, but the Windows 7 website says that “HomeGroup makes it easier to connect to other computers and devices on a wireless home network, so you can share files, photos, music, and printers throughout your home.”

So if HomeGroup lets you connect to the content on all the (Win7) PCs in your home, how do you access that content? Enter Libraries. A library is a collection of folders, ideally showing similar content. Neat thing is, you can connect to folders from other computers and interact with the files on them as though they were on your PC.  (Click image to get a better idea of the libraries concept.)

There are dozens smaller perks in Windows 7, too: things like improved search, jump lists, and better device management. Altogether, I think Microsoft has done a great job with Windows 7, and look forward to seeing the final version.